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Vehicle ownership, including gas powered motorcycles, is extremely common in many countries. I’m not sure why you think it’s an American thing, because it’s def

Vehicle ownership, including gas powered motorcycles, is extremely common in many countries. I’m not sure why you think it’s an American thing, because it’s definitely not. “Developing countries” is a broad category, but it’s certainly not the case that they’re free of vehicles except for rich people driving around in expensive cars.

seanmcdirmid 5y ago
Gas powered motor scooters are being replaced by electric bicycles even before ICE cars are being replaced by EVs. In China, that transition is largely complete, and is happening in SEA and South Asia at a reasonable clip. See for example https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/paving-way-electric-mobility-south-east-asia https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/paving-way-elect... Here is another article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-04-20/hyperdrive-daily-the-ev-revolution-rides-on-two-wheels https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-04-20/hyperd..., quote: > The second reason is that two-wheelers are going electric faster than any other segment of road transport. BNEF’s latest estimates put 2020 electric two-wheeler sales at over 25 million. That’s about 35% of sales globally, far ahead of passenger cars where EVs are still only around 5% of sales. Although the issue with that statistic is probably because China has banned gas powered scooters (other developing countries are still catching up). I predict that Electric scooters will long replace gas powered ones in developing countries before EV cars replace ICE cars. It’s kind of an economic no brainer given how cheap they are.
jhgb 5y ago
> Vehicle ownership, including gas powered motorcycles, is extremely common in many countries. And I bet that the countries with cheap, polluting vehicles are those with lower life expectancy.
- weird-eye-issue 5y ago
  A large part of that will be correlation. Thailand has bad pollution from agriculture burning and some reallyy nasty car pollution. It looks like their life expectancy is very close to the US while other countries like the Phillipines with less pollution have significantly worse life expectancy. So you can't just chalk it up to one factor and think these countries would be better off if you suddenly took away all their gas powered vehicles - they wouldn't.

seanmcdirmid 5y ago

Gas powered motor scooters are being replaced by electric bicycles even before ICE cars are being replaced by EVs. In China, that transition is largely complete, and is happening in SEA and South Asia at a reasonable clip. See for example https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/paving-way-electric-mobility-south-east-asia https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/paving-way-elect... Here is another article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-04-20/hyperdrive-daily-the-ev-revolution-rides-on-two-wheels https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-04-20/hyperd..., quote: > The second reason is that two-wheelers are going electric faster than any other segment of road transport. BNEF’s latest estimates put 2020 electric two-wheeler sales at over 25 million. That’s about 35% of sales globally, far ahead of passenger cars where EVs are still only around 5% of sales. Although the issue with that statistic is probably because China has banned gas powered scooters (other developing countries are still catching up). I predict that Electric scooters will long replace gas powered ones in developing countries before EV cars replace ICE cars. It’s kind of an economic no brainer given how cheap they are.

jhgb 5y ago

> Vehicle ownership, including gas powered motorcycles, is extremely common in many countries. And I bet that the countries with cheap, polluting vehicles are those with lower life expectancy.

weird-eye-issue 5y ago
A large part of that will be correlation. Thailand has bad pollution from agriculture burning and some reallyy nasty car pollution. It looks like their life expectancy is very close to the US while other countries like the Phillipines with less pollution have significantly worse life expectancy. So you can't just chalk it up to one factor and think these countries would be better off if you suddenly took away all their gas powered vehicles - they wouldn't.