Electric motorcycle and scooter sales to reach nearly 18.7 million annually by 2018

[Bob]

According to a new report by Pike Research – specialist analysts of global ‘clean’ technologies – worldwide sales of electric motorcycles and scooter will be close on 19 million vehicles a year by 2018.

The bulk of this drive away from petrol to electric vehicles will be driven by the Chinese market and the Asia-Pacific region in general, as the increased traffic and pollution in this region is forcing significant government interest in promoting these machines.

[Laava]

Worlds gonna end in 2014 dude.

[roogazza]

I read a week or two ago, the powers that be were backing away from battery vehicles as an alternative power source for the future ???
More work is going into finding alternative fuels to use in our combustion engines. No ?

[Zapf]

Lots of electric bicycles and scooters in major cities in China..... In Shanghai they allow electric scooters with no license fees.... where as petrol engines need license.

[awa355]

A massive increase in the demand for electricity to maintain these electric vehicles will create another major headache for the enviroment. Increased hydro power production has its own hidden forms of pollution and costs.

I cant see the long term solution to any of mans transport problems on the horizon yet. I dont know of any current, alternative fuel that is the answer.

More legislation restricting usage of personal transport use/design will probably raise its head in the next 30 years.

[Zedder]

Hydrogen fuel cell techology, which works by converting energy into electricity via a chemical reaction, is gaining ground rapidly for vehicle use. The units are projected to hit the 50 Gigawatt output mark by 2020.

[Dave-]

Hydrogen fuel cell techology, which works by converting energy into electricity via a chemical reaction, is gaining ground rapidly for vehicle use. The units are projected to hit the 50 Gigawatt output mark by 2020.

Haha, not being dick here Zedder, but a conventional battery works by converting energy into electricity via a chemical reaction, in fact most forms of energy conversion have a basis in a chemical reaction, however abstracted.

But I agree, I lean towards Hydrogen too.

It depends a lot on where we're going to get the electricity from in the first place to power 18.7+ million electric bikes/scooters, I've been keeping tabs on the national ignition facility in the US, they're planning to fire a lot of lasers at a pellet of hydrogen in the hopes to start a fusion reaction much like the sun (except on a much smaller scale of course) the idea being that they'll get passed the "break even" point where they get out more energy than they put in (which I know is a violation of the exact laws I just quoted from) last I read I think they were aiming to do this in the next 5 or 10 years?

Also if we actually go ahead with asteroid mining there'd be a tonne more lithium to go around too.

Of course if they do the above we could do electrolysis and extract hydrogen too, I think it'd just come down to a race for the first to market or some marginal difference in performance.

Currently Asia's energy woes would only be exacerbated by 18.7 million evehicles of any nature