** Death knell of motorcycling as we know it. **

[baxtercat_imp]

I agree with Baxtercat.

This may be politically incorrect, but I don't care: Until China and India begin to curtail their pollution, I'm not going to waste my time trying to save the environment. I'll keep buying and riding gas-powered vehicles for as long as I can, and until I'm no longer required to pay fees to recycle my trash, I'll keep tossing my bottles and cans onto the landfill.

Yes, LR, but it's like comparing watermelons and walnuts. Motorcycles, esp. the leisure-activity motorcycles we ride in the US, are neither major consumers of gas nor major producers of emissions. Cars and trucks are. Coal-fired power plants are a much bigger problem than motorcycles in the US. And this is true in places like China and India in particular. But it's easy to confuse questions of technology with questions of economy. We've had the technology for electric and hydrogen vehicles for some time now, and with just a bit of commitment from industry, that technology can quickly advance (as battery technology is now advancing with Tesla etc). But we still have a massive infrastructure built around gasoline technology: not just the making of cars, but repair shops and their technicians, testing, parts suppliers, gas stations, refineries, distribution of gasoline and diesel to stations, oil exploration and drilling, transportation of crude through pipelines and on ships, and so on. Large segments of the economy are involved, and some big and powerful corporations, and neither governments nor those industries are anxious to just give this all up. For that matter, our foreign policy is all caught up in making sure the oil keeps flowing our way, cheaply. When it's no longer cheap or dependable or acceptable for consumers, the "new" cleaner technologies will quickly be brought on, and the infrastructure for it (charging stations, hydrogen stations, electric bike repairmen) will quickly develop as well. In many ways, the new technology is clearly better and safer than what we have now, and will only improve. When the switch is made, places like China and India will have to switch as well, or get left behind the rest of the world economically (like Cuba did). No use waiting for them to fall in line. You are already saving the environment in a way, when you ride your CB to get milk at the store instead of a two-ton pickup or SUV.