For those addicted to the throaty throb and growl of high-performance motorcycles, the future is bleak. The future of motorcycling is silent, and diehard fans of today's popular marques are destined to become the steam train enthusiasts of tomorrow.
The quaint, eco-friendly but clunky and underpowered electric moped has morphed into an explosive yet eerily noiseless high-performance beast capable of competing with the best.
In March, an electric drag bike entered the history books by winning the Wednesday night drag race event at Infineon Raceway in California. The maker of another electric dragster, the 500hp Killacycle, claims it's the fastest of its type in the world and it can be seen on YouTube achieving a blistering 0-100km/h in less than a second.
Top-class performance, skyrocketing fuel prices and concerns about global warming are all excellent reasons for two-wheeled petrol-heads to consider going electric. But there's another, even more compelling argument: electric bikes are an absolute pleasure to drive, as I discovered when testing the Vectrix electric scooter, now available in Hong Kong via Richburg Motors.
For starters, it's dead easy to operate, with no clutch or gears and therefore no pedals. In fact your right wrist is virtually all that's needed for speeding up and slowing down: the hand-operated brakes can largely be ignored, as all decelerating except the most urgent can be achieved by simply turning the throttle closed. (Try this with the bike at a standstill, and it becomes a gentle reverse gear, great for tight manoeuvres.)
With feet free to rest up against the vertical running boards, the rider can brace more effectively for sudden, hard braking than is normally the case on a motorcycle - and just as well, as the powerful front and rear Brembo discs bring the Vectrix to a rapid halt when called upon. A low centre of gravity (the electric motor sits down on the rear axle and there's no heavy fuel tank at the top), stiff frame and good weight distribution all contribute to great handling. And it's exquisitely quiet and vibration-free.
The reduction in driver effort and discomfort is extraordinary, although I can already hear the purists protesting that it's not the enthralling sensory overload of 20th-century motorcycling that they know and love. And they're right. It's something else entirely.