- The move toward carbon neutrality has posed a unique challenge for motorcycling.
- Representatives from European Parliament, Ducati, and Shell Oil Company say the motorcycle industry is set to explore options outside of battery-electric propulsion, such as hydrogen and e-fuels.
- As the industry prepares for a sustainable future, manufacturers hope to balance eco-friendly development with a continued period of strong sales that have been growing steadily since 2020.
Motorcycles often mirror the four-wheel counterparts around them. By design, a motorcycle is rudimentary and requires less of everything than a car does, yet the technology from cars eventually makes its way to motorcycles. This is partially a result of the current or previous automotive ownership bestowed upon motorcycle manufacturers (Honda gets special recognition for flipping the script and producing motorcycles before cars), with companies like Suzuki and even Ducati being controlled by automotive overarches.
While the automotive industry makes the shift of a lifetime to battery-electric cars, hydrogen fuel cells, and new hybrids, government mandates to limit emissions and carbon footprint and establish an EV charging infrastructure represent a moving target globally. For motorcycles, the regulatory landscape is even muddier.
Representatives from the European Parliament, the European Association of Motorcycle Manufacturers, and the omnipresent oil company engineers gathered in a video conference room just a few weeks ago with the goal of hashing out what the future could look like. The conversation didn’t represent any hard change. But when the CEO of Ducati Corse Claudio Domenicali speculates on what the future will be, you listen.
Domenicali and Karl-Maria Grugl from KTM were the first to speak, and both parties generally agreed. Despite a preference for the number of cylinders a bike should have, the Italian and Austrian manufacturers both believe carbon neutrality is an inarguable responsibility that manufacturers will carry, and they gave examples of how they’ll do it. This discussion wasn’t a back-patting exercise or a promotional stunt for a new electric model—it was a chance to put ideas on the table.
Battery-electric motorcycles have existed for some time and are likely to become the most popular alternative to traditional internal-combustion bikes, but that doesn’t mean hydrogen fuel-cell technology or synthetic fuels should be forgotten, KTM’s Grugl said. While electric bikes are well suited for urban mobility, KTMs are rugged, go-everywhere, and do-everything style adventure motorcycles, meaning the range and weight constraints of an all-electric bike won’t always work for the KTM customer. In these cases, a form of synthetic e-fuel is much more favorable. Understanding how the bike at hand will be used is much more important than setting an arbitrary propulsion standard, in the eyes of KTM.
By most accounts, these manufacturers are confirming that motorcycles and the accompanying industry operate outside the guidelines of automotive conformity, and they operate without much regulation. Within the European Union, motorcycles don’t have a specific CO2 reduction target as cars do, and European Parliament member Andreas Glück said no legislation is being created at this time. While Euro Five emissions regulations stand (which regulate the carbon-monoxide and hydrocarbon output of modern motorcycles), the EPA and CARB regulations in the US are even more relaxed.
This doesn’t mean motorcycle manufacturers are taking a back seat in the decarbonization effort. They’re actually planning ahead for what’s likely to be an inevitable push toward new technology. In order to do so, however, the support of energy providers is required. Joining the panel discussion in hopes of answering this question was Wolfgang Warnecke, Shell’s advisor for carbon management in Germany. Based on research and development from Shell, Warnecke said the types of alternative fuels capable of pushing sustainable motorcycle development can be broken into four categories: biofuels, natural gas, hydrogen, and e-fuel.
“There are no golden pathways,” Warnecke said. “Energy availability, especially renewable energy availability, is at the moment very important.” And the most efficient pathway is going fully electric with a closed-loop source, according to Shell’s analysis. Alternatively, the company’s data suggests hydrogen production and eventual usage to generate electricity is a similarly effective way to use renewable energy going forward, though he acknowledged that storing hydrogen onboard remains a significant challenge. Finally, and wearily, he said internal-combustion engines using advanced bio-fuels or e-fuels represent another potential way forward.
Warnecke cautioned against being too reliant on e-fuels, as it takes about 30 kWh of electricity to produce one liter of e-fuel. Not only will this lead to additional production time and costs, but it’s also liable to be a less efficient means of producing energy as compared to direct electricity use. Shell’s presentation suggested the sustainability of electricity from the production, distribution, and implementation perspective was unparalleled.
Still, bikes of all type are becoming increasingly popular, according to data provided by Statistical Surveys Inc. and Cycle Trader. Year-to-date sales from 2019-2020 were up 20%, then up another 1.3% from 2020-2021. Within this data set, an increasing number of young people (under 44) were buying motorcycles. Across the European continent, an estimated 14 million motorcycles are on the road, representing an industry revenue index of €21.4 billion ($20.9 billion) of GDP across the EU.