For those living in high income countries like the UK, Canada, the US and many countries in Europe and Asia, electric vehicles (EVs) may seem to be an integral part of the fight to lower emissions from personal transportation.
A recent Earthbound article, suggests “[A]ccording to Bloomberg’s Electric Vehicle Outlook, just under half of all electric vehicles sold are two or three wheelers. Add them all together and you have a global fleet of 292 million vehicles on the world’s roads. That’s ten times more than the number of electric passenger cars, which is nearer 26.5 million.”
Not only are there many more electric two and three wheelers actually in use today they are much lower emission than EVs; “the lifetime emissions of an e-bike, including the battery [are] around 22 grams of CO2 per passenger kilometer. That’s a lot cleaner than the 104 grams per km produced by a Nissan Leaf electric car.”
This graph from article, shows how much more oil is being displaced by 2 and 3 wheelers versus other types of electrical transport.
Many places around the globe have seen electric bike use surge, particularly since the pandemic, and it turns out this trend is not just good for a person’s wallet but also has significant implications for lowering emissions.