Imagine this in your city.

I love the concept. Cutting down on all the unnecessary extra weight of a car when most trips are single passenger anyway.

But most customers and manufacturers see them a lot differently. Meant for thrill seekers, speed chasers, and projecting more obnoxious masculinity. They need to be loud, smoky, and dangerously fast. They should have been first in line for electrification but instead they're lagging behind cars.

I currently own and use my fully electric Zero SR motorcycle for daily commuting. It's obviously much quieter and somewhat cleaner than a traditional ICE motorcycle but I would think motorcycles in general are cleaner than traditional vehicles (SUVs, Pickup Trucks, etc.). Just like any motorized vehicle however, you still deal with brake dust, tire dust/shavings, emissions, and other vehicle waste (like tire disposal or motor oil disposal) but on a smaller scale I think.

I reside in the US, specifically in a southeastern state, where public transportation as well as pedestrian infrastructure is absolutely abysmal and/or non-existent, in my opinion. I try to make the best of the situation by limiting my method of travel to my electric motorcycle where possible. I would prefer to walk to places if I could, but in most cases, I just think it isn't feasible or safe where I reside due to the vehicle-centric civil design of where I reside.

I bought an Ebike so I can drive my car less

There's definitely a tier list, and motorcycles are overall better imo. They're smaller and generally get better gas mileage. I can't say for certain, but if I had to guess people driving a motorcycle are also paying more attention to the road and less likely to hit pedestrians.

My biggest complaint with them is the noise and the emissions. Ideally they will be replaced by electric alternatives in the future and that will resolve both issues.

It may have changed but my understanding is emissions regulations on motorcycles tends to be much more lax than in cars.

Engine size often time changing the emissions standards, smaller engines often having less requirements.

From that perspective motorcycles are worse.

From the perspective of mass transit being the best option, motorcycles are worse.

Motorcycles fill the same role as cars, just less efficiently (saving on size).

The fossil fuel motor is the primary issue.

I think that sound pollution regulations should be enrforced fiercely.
Want to drive around on a motorcycle? Go right ahead. Want to mod the exhaust and create a multi km wide disturbance? Get your license revoked, get your vehicle taken away, get a mandatory rehabilitation course and community service.
I don't understand why we tolerate the morons that think it's okay to just straight up blast deafening noise at everyone and everything they happen to pass by

They usually are much noisier than cars which can be very annoying. But a big part of it is due to the type of people who ride them in my city, they usually really don't care about others.

But if the motorbike is chosen and used correctly, they are better than most cars.

While the pollutant volume is smaller, the exhaust is typically worse that a car/truck: https://gearjunkie.com/motors/motorcycle-vs-vehicle-emissions

It's all or something, not all or nothing. You do the best you can. Use as much public transport or eco-friendly modes of transport. Walk, if you cant walk, bike/scoot, if you cant bike or scoot, bus/tram, if not that, motorcycle.

You get the idea, sounds like you're already approaching this the right way, doing what you can. Be safe, driving motorcycles is dangerous, especially in the US.

They should be more common since they're smaller and lighter, especially for individual travel when public transport or bicycles aren't feasible. However, as everyone who rides one knows, it's drivers that make them dangerous.

With larger electric bicycles overlapping with scooters for city travel they really have so much potential.

1. Don't feel bad for using motorized vehicles, be it a car or a motorcycle. Do what is the most you can do personally. Of course, if you're one of those big truck ppl then u'r a problem. Unfortunately, we don't have infrastructure suitable for non motorized vehicles everywhere. Shifting the blame from governments to individuals in this case is comparable to the individual carbon footprint bs.
2. While motorcycles are much better than cars, they're still bad. They cause air and sound pollution. Because of their ability to go higher speeds, they make cities unsafe for pedestrians and bicyclists (basically humans). Essentially, they do all the bad things that cars do, but just with a lower magnitude.

I had scooters, powerful scooters, motorcycles and very powerful motorcycles.

In the end I gave up that noise of transport

I love the front when being on two wheels, but there's no way I can continue doing that in America.

Its just ridiculously dangerous with the way drivers in the US are

There was a study that "found that if 10 percent of all private cars were replaced by motorcycles in the traffic flow of the test area, total time losses for all vehicles decreased by 40 percent and total emissions reduced by 6 percent (1 percent from the different traffic composition of more emission-reduced motorcycles and 5 percent from avoided traffic congestion). A 25 percent modal shift from cars to motorcycles was found to eliminate congestion entirely."

It's way better than a car for most situations. I commuted on a motorcycle for over a decade. I was in California where lane splitting and filtering is legal, which made traffic almost disappear from my perspective.

I think overall they are better than cars but still have issues. They are smaller and less dangerous to other people (though far more dangerous to you). However, many models can be quite polluting in spite of their fuel efficiency because of lesser emissions controls. And they are often extremely loud. This one makes me the most angry because lots of riders tend to be really dismissive of the real harm that their noise imposes on the community.

But if your motorcycle is clean and quiet then I think it’s relatively fine. Even if it’s not, an awareness of the harms you are causing and active efforts to minimize them and transition to other modes of transit is all we ask. I still drive a car when I need to. It may not be the maximally ethical decision but I think some people underestimate the difficulty of the total transformation our society will need to undergo. I applaud anyone who is taking large and serious steps in the right direction even if they are not all the way there yet.

Better than ICE cars. Way more efficient and doesn't take up as much space on the road. As long as it's not one of those deafeningly loud ones, I wouldn't worry about it. If you're using your bicycle when you can, you're already doing more than most people. If money's no object, you could get an EV motorcycle, but don't feel like you need to change. I am personally in the same boat as Neato though, I'd never ride one in the US, but that doesn't really matter for your question.

Personally, I live in suburban hell. Public transit sucks here, there's nothing in walking distance, and incredibly narrow bike lines (if any at all) to get anywhere useful. I switched to an EV (car) because there's literally no other way to commute where I live.

Better than a car, worse than a bike.

I only barely survived an unavoidable and unpredictable crash on a road bicycle with 2 cars. I've had 6 crashes with 7 cars in 170k miles on the bike since 2009. Only 2 of those crashes were bad. However I only barely survived crashing at 30mph where the weight of the bike was insignificant. I wouldn't have survived that same crash on anything more significant or at any higher speed. I had the critical damage of C1 and a fracture at the base of my skull. I was told if I hadn't been knocked out completely, I would have died if I had moved before the swelling could keep everything together.

I wouldn't recommend motorcycles until humans decide to replace driver's side airbag covers with daggers. People drive like fools and since their incompetence is nonlethal to them, the culture of incompetence is unavoidable.

You likely think you can avoid anything by just being careful. This is not the case. I was ultra cautious and went out of my way to avoid hazardous areas. Most of my hits were from illegal U-turns. If you can predict a random vehicle parallel parked on the side of the road will try and make an illegal U-turn suddenly without warning, directly in front of a large SUV that is passing them, you can avoid the crash that almost killed me. That is the level of stupid that finally got me even on a road bicycle.

The human body is not capable of handling the forces of collision. It doesn't matter what kind of armored jacket you wear, it will never compare to a car's tolerance. I've seen a lot of people die on bicycles including 3 people I knew. My cousin died on a motorcycle last month.

It's less pollution but you'd never see me on one in America. I used to be a daily rider in college and shit was so incredibly dangerous. Americans drive with abandon and cars are so huge now even with $1k+ in gear you won't really be safe. I'll take surviving an accident over a small change to emissions and size. You still need a space to park most of the time unless you want to flirt with tickets and curb parking.

I am in a city where a car is almost mandatory. I can still push for change, while having to drive daily to pay the bills and such. I think your thinking is logical for your situation. Similarly, I chose what is, to me, the least bad option - a small, affordable EV. Over 50% of the time I have a passenger. I try to work from home. I charge on my home solar as much as I can. Fuck cars. Fuck unsafe drivers

Better than cars for sure. An electric bike is even better.