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Comment by rolleiflex | Hacker News Reader

This is cool, but I’d love to see a comparison of ebikes against good old dinosaur-juice (or even electric) motorcycles.

Much more difficult to steal, and for gasoline motorcycles, much better mileage per charge, charging to 100% takes 30 seconds, can go as fast as you have the guts for, much more stable at speed, almost as easy parking, can go on highways. Almost as cheap fuel as electricity with the smaller end of motorcycles doing 90+mpg. In California, you can also lane split, which makes motorcycles effectively transparent to traffic.

On the minus side, you do need a license and insurance for it, and the bar for hand-eye coordination is higher — there are more people on the planet that should not touch a motorcycle than those that shouldn’t do bikes.

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I am also surprised, it is true that I live in a city very conducive to motorcycles for the climate (Barcelona) but here it is practically impossible to see electric city bikes (electric MTB for enduro or all mountain enthusiasts there are many) because basically you can have a 125/150cc korean or japanese scooter for almost half the price. It has all the advantages and more than a ebike and practically none of the disadvantages.

As a keen cyclist who almost got a motorbike license, one massive difference is that a bike weight 10kg (ebike lets say 20) whereas a motorbike upwards of 100, or thereabouts.

I think in traffic you are fairly vulnerable to both, but on a bike, at least if you fall, you don’t have the insult of your own vehicle crushing you as well as whatever obstacle / other vehicle you hit.

Yeah, that makes sense. I’m on both sides on this one, I have two motorcycles, one electric scooter and one electric skateboard. Motorcycles are by far the heaviest thing.

On the other hand, many motorcycles come with sacrifical rubber ‘sliders’ where if a motorcycle is dropped to the ground, the only thing that touches the ground is still the wheels and the rubber sliders on the dropped side. The slider itself is a block of rubber and it’s $10 to replace when ground down sufficiently to a nub.

I’ve found weight to be a less of a problem than I expected in practice.

As a cyclist (several of them, most often either a Trek 1.5 and Tern Vektron) and motorcyclist (700+ lb Concours 14), the bicycle is scarier. The motorcycle's weight isn't an issue in a tip or slide situation, and I can wear pretty serious armor in all weather conditions.

The bicycle leaves me exposed in traffic and more often than not wearing a t-shirt for heat control.

Just to give a different perspective on it.

Deaths per mile of bikes is 1/4 that of motorcycles in the UK.

https://www.motorbikeclaims.org.uk/blog/these-shocking-accid...

Anyone reading this critically should be thinking: OMG, per-distance bicycle fatality is a whopping 25% relative to the crotch rocket.

(And still 17X more than in an automobile.)

Interesting.

The bit I found most terrifying on a motorbike is seeing a car pull up to a stop , about to turn onto the road I’m on (with priority) and wondering if he’ll stop.

On a push bike, I’m doing maybe 30-35 kph in a city, and can stop very quickly. Splatting into the side of a car at this speed (less some braking) is serious but unlikely to be very dangerous.

On a motorbike, suddenly I have 200kg gyrating under my pelvis about to crash, and bounce into the traffic. Just feels terrifying.

And crucially, this situation (not the crash but the scenario) happens all the time.

Why do electric motorcycles get better mileage than electric bicycles? That just doesn't make sense to me; electric bicycles are so much lighter.

> ”Why do electric motorcycles get better mileage than electric bicycles?”

Motorcycles tend to have much larger batteries. Both in absolute and relative terms. For example, a full-suspension electric mountain bike might weigh 25kg and have a 500 Wh battery pack.

On the other hand, a Harley-Davidson Livewire weighs 210kg but has a 15.5 kWh pack. It weighs 8X more - but has more than 30X the battery capacity!

They don't. But they usually have far larger batteries. A typical e-bike battery will only weigh 3 kg or so.

> In California, you can also lane split, which makes motorcycles effectively transparent to traffic.

Not really a great idea for rider safety though.

Lane splitting is one of the things where it helps to be brutally honest about your skill level, lest nature calls your bluff. I personally only do it if the cars are stopped (i.e. on a red light) and not while anything other than me is in motion, and even that helps a lot.

Everything I've ever read has said it's about a wash, leaning slightly toward being more safe for riders. It's not safe (or necessary) to sit in traffic and be rear-ended or run over. It's also not safe to create a large speed differential with traffic.

That said, it sure makes commuting more reasonable. I'm for it.

I've filtered past many rear-end accident scenes on my London motorbike commutes.

Those commutes would be 2x as long at least if I didn't filter.

According to what?

Data on this is less robust than one would hope, but around a fifth of motorcycle accidents happened while someone was lane-splitting. https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/sta...

motorcycle vs ebike - from a safety standpoint - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM8Xli2KTzI

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