Alan Dowds introduces Half One on this collection Electrical Bikes:
It’s not been an easy change, however electrical energy has turn into primarily mainstream within the automotive world. The place I stay, in SW London, battery-powered four-wheelers are in all places, with even the recently-cursed Tesla model a typical sight. Add in hybrid designs, with each electrical motors and inner combustion engines, and also you’ve received an enormous chunk of the vehicles sitting within the visitors jams contained in the M25, and past.
You most likely don’t want me to let you know that the bike world is a way behind the curve in relation to this changeover. For those who exclude 125cc and beneath city mobility scooters and bikes, the battery-powered market is moribund within the UK.
In February 2025 – admittedly a quiet month at one of the best of instances – the Bike Business Affiliation (MCIA) reported zero registrations of electrical bikes with energy outputs over 11kW (15bhp). Completely no ‘huge’ bikes offered in all the 4 weeks, in different phrases, with simply 123 electrical 125cc/moped-equivalent bikes plated. And that’s not an outlier: annual gross sales figures for electrical bikes have slumped up to now two years.
The explanations behind this are many and complicated, however they break down into a few fundamental classes. First, the know-how doesn’t presently exist to supply an equal electrical model of a BMW R1300 GS, a Kawasaki ZX-10R, or a Triumph Pace Triple. The load, measurement and price of even one of the best battery packs in 2025 simply can’t match petrol energy. If you need a motorcycle to make 150-200bhp, weigh in round 200-250kg, price lower than £20,000, and have a variety of 150-200 miles, it’s merely not attainable.
It’s comparatively simple for a automotive producer to ‘conceal’ a 300kg lithium battery pack which prices £10k and is the dimensions of some giant suitcases inside an 1800kg, £60k SUV, particularly whenever you’re changing an enormous multi-cylinder petrol or diesel engine, with gearbox, with a lot smaller and lighter electrical motors. However the engineering simply doesn’t add up on bikes. Certainly, Steve Sargent, chief product officer at Triumph, informed the current MCIA convention concerning the classes realized from the agency’s prototype electrical TE-1 bike. Sargent mentioned {that a} battery-powered Pace Triple is unattainable with present know-how and budgets. And with out a type of huge, heavy, dear batteries, you merely can’t have the 200-mile freeway vary which most bike house owners appear to treat as important (regardless of most of their journeys being a lot shorter than that).
One other huge technical downside is quick charging: electrical motorbikes can’t use the brand new high-powered superchargers utilized by the most recent Tesla and different vehicles, which ship a whole bunch of kilowatts {of electrical} energy. Charging at these charges wants particular battery administration circuitry, in addition to highly effective battery pack cooling techniques to keep away from injury – which provides much more price, measurement and complexity to the items. There’s additionally a scaling downside – in case your battery is smaller to start out with, you’ll be able to’t merely use the huge charging charges used on big automotive batteries.
For example, a brand new Polestar 4 automotive has a 100kW/h battery pack, which is sort of six instances the dimensions of the 17kW/hour battery on a Zero bike. The Polestar battery could be charged at a fee of as much as 200kW, filling it up from 10-80 per cent in half-an-hour – acceptable for many folks who’re joyful to cease for a espresso when on an extended journey. A 200kW charger would replenish the a lot smaller Zero battery in lower than 10 minutes, however present tech isn’t in a position to handle that firehose-level of cost surging into the cells. As it’s, the utmost cost fee of the top-end Zero SR/F is 12.6kW (with the £2.5k optionally available quick charger package), which means greater than an hour for a 0-95 per cent cost.
The opposite downside – maybe a fair greater one – is within the minds of us, the good British biker. Most of us, it appears, are wedded to the noise, warmth, vibes and character of petrol-powered equipment, for good or ailing. That’s partly as a result of they work very effectively – a contemporary bike engine is a marvel of energy manufacturing, compactness, gentle weight and effectivity. As an apart, it’s ironic that the bikes that are closest to being changed by battery energy – small petrol motorbikes and scooters made to Euro 5+ requirements – have a microscopic influence on the surroundings, with big 100+mpg gas financial system and super-clean emissions from the exhaust.
The distinction made by forcing all of those to transform to battery energy is frankly minimal. Certainly, the environmental influence of changing each petrol bike within the UK to a battery-powered unit could be a tiny fraction of the general transport emissions image.
It’s controversial that the Authorities ought to ignore bikes by way of ‘decarbonisation’ laws as a vanishingly small downside, which could be ‘mounted’ (inasmuch because it must be) over a for much longer time period. By all means, hold legislating for brand spanking new petrol-powered bikes to be cleaner and extra environment friendly, however enable them to be offered past the deliberate deadlines for brand spanking new inner combustion powered vehicles (presently 2030/35 however beneath overview as we converse).
The opposite a part of that psychological problem to battery energy is much less rational and extra psychological, and it’s tied to the demographics of motorcycling. Have a look round any bike meet, from Field Hill to Knockhill BSB, the NW200 to Hunstanton seafront, and also you’ll see, broadly, a load of previous males. Which is the group least more likely to consider in man-made local weather change, and the related want to cut back fossil gas use. Ask 100 of those typical bikers in the event that they really feel the necessity to transfer from petrol to battery energy, and also you’ll get a variety of responses, from unkind jokes about Greta Thunberg, to memes of burning vehicles and wind generators, ending up with one thing about personal jets at Davos.
Lastly, there’s an actual cultural heft to bike engines, bizarre although that sounds whenever you kind it out. There’s which means, nostalgia, heritage and fervour all tied up in these lumps of metal and aluminium which we grew up lusting after, fixing, tuning, servicing and blowing up. Put up an image of a Suzuki RG500 two-stroke engine in a motorbike social media channel, and watch the response. Ditto the Honda NR750, Yamaha RD350LC, Kawasaki Z1, Ducati 916 – even the Honda C90 single will convey out the love. Changing that complete tradition with the lore of AC everlasting magnet motors, three-phase AC controllers, efficiency battery administration techniques, high-power semiconductors and the like goes to be a tough promote.
NEXT MONTH
We take a look at the potential options for the electrical bike world. How can we bridge the hole between now and a attainable petrol-free driving future?
