With petrol and diesel prices skyrocketing,  it looks like people are getting on the edge even as the nation is set for an election year.  However, it seems all is is not lost yet. The future is in electronic vehicles. Though we have a small presence of E-vehicles, time is now changing. Electric motorcycles and scooters received far less global attention. That’s beginning to change, especially in India, where two-wheelers — predominantly motorcycles — account for 76 per cent of vehicles on the roads and a whopping 30 per cent of the country’s pollution. In Southeast Asia’s biggest economies, the number of households that own two-wheelers exceeds 80 per cent. Electric cars are already there but even the cheap ones, won’t solve the problem. Cost is the first and tallest barrier. In India, a new, entry-level commuter motorcycle can cost less than $500 (and, on the secondhand market, far less).

Traffic is the next burden. In the megacities of emerging Asia, jams are notoriously bad and getting worse. In Mumbai, the average speed of city buses has declined from 10 miles per hour to 5.5 miles per hour over the last decade. Little wonder that even commuters who can afford a car often look to bikes and scooters to get around. For similar reasons, the region’s booming e-commerce industry heavily relies upon two-wheeled transport for deliveries. Finally, there’s the matter of parking.  The good news is that Asia’s emerging middle class seems open to the idea of e-scooters if the price is right and charging is convenient.

There’s a limit to what current electric two-wheelers can accomplish, mostly due to the short life spans and ranges of their lead-acid batteries. To match the performance of a traditional motorcycle or scooter, e-bikes would require compact, lightweight, and reliable lithium-ion batteries similar to those that power everything from iPhones to Teslas. Traditionally, the costs of lithium-ion batteries have made vehicles powered by them too expensive for emerging markets. But prices are falling precipitously: It is predicted that  they’ll decline by  73 per cent by 2030. In fact, electric scooters and motorcycles are already coming down in price. Models offered by Hero Electric — a division of India’s biggest two-wheeler manufacturer — are price-competitive with low-cost motorcycles. Even better, once a buyer gets past the purchase price, overall cost of ownership is often times cheaper than with traditional two-wheelers (especially when oil prices are high).