Why I think sound is important to a motorbike.

One of my friends loves electrifying vehicles. He dreams of a world where petrol and diesel don’t rule and cars run on batteries. He talks about how good it can be, how you don’t have many moving parts, you don’t have to change the oil, you don’t even need to change gears. He talks about the silence, the smooth ride and plenty of other advantages.

I admit that it sounds great. I started looking online for electric motorbikes and there are several. I can’t really afford one right now, but it’s always nice to look. Some of them even look really nice. Most of them don’t go too fast but then I’m not a very fast rider anyway. With the price of fuel going up and not showing any signs of losing altitude, electric motorbikes looked tempting.

My wife, if you ever get the chance to ask her, will tell you that once I learn of something new I think about it for days on end. I started doing that with the thought of electric motorbikes. I researched, I learned and then finally, I started to think.

I thought about what I loved about riding motorbikes, what I enjoyed most about it. And then it hit me. The sound of a motorbike is part of what defines it. A noiseless motorbike just isn’t a motorbike in my book. I don’t think I could really enjoy it.

The first motorbike I ever owned was a 1982 Royal Enfield ‘Bullet’. You can tell a Bullet’s coming down the street. It’s got a very distinct sound and the entire bike has a character of it’s own. It’s not what everyone likes, but those who like it, love it. I loved it.

The bike I ride now in Addis belongs to a good friend of mine. It’s a 1984 Yamaha XT250 and it too has a rather distinct and loud note to it. It’s also a rather special bike because there are just a few of them left in the city.

What I’m trying to say is that most great bikes have a signature sound. You can recognise them by it. Without the sound, it’s just another bike.

The last few weeks I’ve been riding around I’ve also been thinking about what else I’d miss about the bike if I were ever forced to go electric. Here follows the (rather short) list:

• The ability to be heard (and safe): You may think this is obvious, but think about it. Addis streets get more crowded every day. There’s road construction going on on major roads. So if you want to get somewhere as fast as you can, you have to take shortcuts. These shortcuts are usually full of pedestrians and when they hear you coming down the street, they move to the side and you can get through without hitting anybody. Imagine doing that with a silent bike. You’d have to use the dreaded horn. Or have a dreaded accident.
• You get to voice your opinion non-violently. If someone stops in front of you, starts chatting and blocks the road, you just need to rev your engine a little and they’ll move (eventually). You can’t do that with an electric bike.

There are other reasons I can think of that make riding a petrol-fuelled bike special, but none of them have anything to do with sound so I’ll leave that for another post.

I will close this rather wandering post by saying that as long as I can get over 25kmpl out of a bike, I really don’t see any reason to go electric and take all the noisy joy out of the bike .