> so are less able to afford ebikes

Many countries with gig economies where the individual can't afford to own the actual method of transport, a rental market pops up to enable people to be able fulfill orders.

This usually does mean they're the first ones to get squeezed. But lesser known who gets squeezed is the rental operator/provider as well. Because many times they don't own their own fleet. They can't charge higher prices like normal car rentals and own the fleet because the individual gig driver is very price sensitive.

It doesn't take too many vehicle losses to really upset the delicate math.

It's just rentals all the way down.

In San Francisco, I noticed that many of the delivery drivers' e-bikes and e-scooters were labeled HMP. The natural structure for these is that you rent the bike from the provider and you keep net earnings post rent. And sure enough, when I came home and Googled there is precisely such a structure: https://www.hmpbikes.com/pages/rental-page

Indeed. I’ve noticed a large number of Pakistani taxi drivers and Southeast Asian service workers. But considering the income of food delivery riders(most of the time > avg salary in the city china. not sure in UAE, but the service like Uber is pretty expensive), buying a not-too-expensive electric scooter seems to be a fairly good investment.

> but given their safety profile (terrible!)

I feel like there's kind of a cycle of unsafety with motorcycles on the social level in the U.S.

There's a societal understanding in the U.S. that motorcycles are unsafe, which results in an increased number of people purchasing motorcycles with the intention of showing off how unsafe (dangerous) they can be. And the cycle perpetuates.

Obviously, motorcycles are inherently less safe in certain ways, like your body is going to fly if you get into a high-speed collision, and that's pretty much unavoidable. But when I visit European countries, it seems motorcycle culture is _so_ much healthier. They are mostly seen as simple transportation tools, a far cry from what I regularly see in the U.S.

Mopeds are at least as dangerous to operate as motorcycles.

Full agree on these auto maker comments. The US makers for decades have dug in their heels on any new features: look how long it took to get basic safety features like seatbelts, airbags, and crumple zones. Then delay wipers. Then it took decades to add a $1 part like an aux input for the stereo. And of course all the super poor EV gestures.

But I was talking about motorcycles. There are some new brands like Zero and some old ones like Harley (the "live wire" disaster). They need a fire lit to make real bikes at real prices.

There is no way we can compete in a global free market while paying 4x as much for labor. At a comparable level of technology and organizational skill the Chinese will win every competition, labor costs are that important. They have already caught up.

Surely the most important area of innovation is not the end product itself but how it is manufactured at scale. That is what made Henry and what will make Chinese manufacturers win.

With bicycles weight and refinement is a huge issue so to get something nice you do have to use more premium materials and production techniques. If you forego low weight and refinement, there are plenty of Alibaba specials both in kit and kickstarter brand form, but if you want a 40lb middrive with 300-400w of power, 0.3-0.4kwh and a natural feeling torque sensing control, you need to open you wallet to the tune of $4k.

Motorcycles are also interesting because they're at most 1.5-2x as efficient as cars, especially on the highway (poor aerodynamics). They're small so people assume they're gas-sippers, but at 80mph a sportsbike is not giving you much more than 45mpg. A typical bike carries 3-ish gallons for an effective range of 150 miles. To give an ev motorcycle a comparable range, you're looking at close to 20kwh of battery. In China a kwh of NMC battery is said to be $120-ish, so you're looking at $2k in just battery, excluding drive unit, inverter/charger, thermal management. Conversely a motorcycle engine and transmission is typically a single unit, all bathed in the same oil and amortized over huge production runs, for a simple 80hp drivetrain, I wouldn't be surprised if the marginal cost of production is $2k for the whole thing.

> As for electric, I would guess it's zero?

Yes, exactly [0].

[0] https://zeromotorcycles.com/

The US, broadly speaking, does not make a distinction between step-over and step-through two wheeled motor vehicles in any category.

Again, broadly speaking, over 30mph is a motorcycle, under 30mph is a moped (unless it's an ebike with pedal assist, but only in some states). It's complicated.

You used to see a lot of scooters (step-through motorcycles or mopeds) in California college towns but ebikes have decimated that market.

Legally, they’re all motorcycle. Unless they’re mopeds (50cc, speed limited).

But colloquially, if it’s a step-through, it’s called a scooter. Most of which have a CVT transmission, where most motorcycles have a 6-speed manual (toe shift) transmission.

It's a lot more reasonable to use a motorcycle or scooter as your main form of transport when the max speed you are likely to encounter on the roads is 40MPH. In the US you will be sharing freeways with people going 80+MPH in SUVs daily.

I usually call the scooter ones mopeds, even though they lack pedals. Or sometimes Vespas, even when they're not made by Piaggio.

The Venn Diagram of people who ride motorcycles purely for entertainment, and people who like to annoy others by being loud and obnoxious is just a circle.

One the primary reasons I have a vespa is that in my big city you are allowed to park them for free on the sidewalk as long as you are not blocking the main flow of traffic. Never having to worry about parking gets me out and about when I never would have due to the headache before. It is so convenient and the gas mileage is nuts.

On the other hand, I would never ever consider a traditional motocycle (partly because they are so noisy).

They don’t come that way, jackasses modify them. My large displacement BMW is louder than our ICE car, sure, but you probably won’t notice it sitting next to you at a stoplight. And yet it still has enough power to smoke just about any car that doesn’t cost deep in six figures.

They aren't faster in the cases I know of. As an example, the Isle of Man TT Zero was discontinued partially because 2008 predictions of electric bikes reaching parity with gas by 2025 didn't pan out.

Even for small stuff, a minibike with a 212cc 4-stroke can have comparable performance to something like a Cake or Surron and is a fraction of the cost.

Personally I think the electric motorcycle market should try and max performance versus weight. Perhaps something pedal assisted that could hit 60 mph without too much fuss but light enough that it could be shouldered up a few flights of stairs. Range can be low, as in 10-15 miles per charge max but balanced by swappable battery packs.

ICE engines lose power when changing gears, so they aren’t strictly grip limited.