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You guys will be trashing your Guzzis, Ducs, vintage Brit Twins and 4 cyl UJMs for electric.
I'm actually becoming concerned that the whole "electric bike" "carbon footprint" stuff will impact my ability to sell my old internal combustion two-wheeled dinosaurs. How many car manufacturers have announced they are going all electric by a certain year? California would ban IC engines now if they thought they could get away with it. In a few years, they will.
When they go electric, they will finally be making MOTORcycles....
Humans went from floating on logs, riding on animals, carts with wheels, ships, trains, automobiles, airplanes and space rockets. I appreciate change and look forward to it. I like my climate controller on the wall of the house, not owning a chain say to cut firewood or a windmill to pump water. Power steering and anti lock brakes are great along with an automatic transmission.
Things never change as fast or as much as we think they will.
Stuff can happen fast. Motorcycle factories that want to survive (not to mention thrive) have to recognize that they're not in a motorsports business but in the cheap transportation business. Whatever it takes to grow in emerging economies is what they'll need to do. Successful companies will compete in the developed world with innovative products that can soak up discretionary $$ and meet as-yet-undefined needs.
Well, actually they can change much much faster than anyone expected. In 1907 only 140,000 motor vehicles were registered in the U.S. Ten years later it was 23 million (not including farm equipment), equal to the horse population. The number of horses later fell to 3 million. Over the same period we went from 148,000 miles of paved roads to more than 30 million. All of this was powered, in part, by government subsidies of petroleum development, which happened because the Navy needed fuel oil for its battle fleet and the Army needed gasoline to run tanks and trucks.
The most successful motorcycle company worldwide is Honda, which leveraged a reputation for dependable engines to carve out a huge piece of the auto business -- one of the best-ever examples of hedging. Yamaha's engine-design alliance with Toyota is a good example of beyond-motorcycle thinking.