If you’ve read The Last Word at all lately, you’re probably aware that electric motorcycles have been an unmitigated failure so far. Unlike the auto industry, where the EVs have established themselves as a significant — if not quite the all-dominating — alternative to internal combustion, battery-powered (full-size) motorcycles do not sell in anything remotely resembling industry-changing numbers. Worse yet, other than Zero – which, is not really successful but it has at least not gone bankrupt — there are no start-ups on the horizon that look like they can sustain a charge to respectability. Simply put, while the concept of reaching 100% battery-power is still a very unlikely probability, there is absolutely no chance that two-wheelers will ever all be ZEV.

The truth is that the motorcycle industry’s difficulty in enticing bikers to batteries brings its own set of problems, the most significant being whether the motorcycle industry can actually significantly reduce its emissions. Europe and California — both of which currently set emissions standards beyond their borders — are unlikely to soften their demands because bikers are turned off by battery power. 

Indeed, follow European politics and there’s a marked anti-motorcycle vibe permeating the European Commissions these days and, were it not for the pushback from countries that rely on their native motorcycle manufacturing industries for quality, high-paying jobs — notably in Germany and Italy — it’s not inconceivable that many would not lament the death of bikes via emission standard. 

In other words, take all the delight you might want from the failings of electric motorcycles, but traditional motorcycles are far from out of the woods. What that means is the motorcycle industry is going to have to come up with alternatives to lithium-ion that have a dramatic effect on two-wheeled tailpipe emissions far beyond the recent rule changes to placate emissions conscious bureaucrats.

So, what amongst all the technologies available, might be first steps toward a dramatic reduction in CO2 emissions?

The leading candidate has to be hybridization. Already a known quantity in the automotive world, unlike battery-electrics, hybrids are a mature technology in that most major variations — plug-in versus “self-charging;” series versus parallel — are amazingly well-developed. And, of course, Kawasaki’s Ninja 7 has already proven that a hybrid motorcycle is possible, if not yet competitive. Most importantly, Team Green has proven that the packaging of multiple powertrains is possible (something that still challenges hydrogen as well as full electrics). Indeed, as I recounted in my test of the hybridized Kawi (March 2025), its electric motor mated with a 650-cc or 800-cc twin might prove powerful and affordable enough to make sense for the 1,000-cc adventure touring segment.

Next up on the list would be synthetic fuel. Of course, there be all manner of synfuels around, but the most promising is synthetic gasoline. Essentially, it takes carbon captured from the air and hydrogen from electrolysis or other green sources and recombines them into actual gasoline. The benefit — and that which perhaps vaults it to the head of the list — is that it would require no changes at all to current engines. 

Even classics bikes would technically be (mostly) green. That’s because every gram of carbon pumped out the tailpipe would have been previously captured from the atmosphere. It is the perfect definition of net zero (assuming you have clean, green electricity powering the entire process). Downsides are many. As one might imagine, creating gasoline synthetically is going to be more expensive. 

Achieving an even remotely competitive cost would require governments to ditch the costly taxes currently applied to gas at the pumps. More importantly, traditional gasoline refiners are unlikely to get in the business leaving motorcycle manufacturers to produce one litre of syngas for every litre their bikes produce if they want to truly reach net zero.

There is, of course, the possibility of powering motorcycles with hydrogen. And, while fuel cells seem out of the question — at least as bulky and heavy as batteries — fuelling an internal combustion engine with hydrogen is a long-known technology (I drove a hydrogen-fuelled BMW V12 almost two decades ago). Kawasaki has teased a hydrogen-fuelled supercharged Ninja H2. 

Hydrogen’s problems are two-fold: First, there are extremely few refuelling stations in the world and, second, internally combusting hydrogen may be green — hydrogen-ICEs are virtually as CO2-free as EVs — but they aren’t efficient; the aforementioned Kawasaki has to use its saddlebags as fuel tanks to achieve sufficient range. 

There are, of course, more ways to skin the ICE emission reduction: Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) engines for one. A new design with a novel rotating piston for another (featuring a good power-to-weight ratio so it might be excellent for motorcycles). But those would require almost as big a rejigging of the industry as electrification. 

More novel, perhaps, and certainly more producible is an ingenious little device called a thermoelectric generator or TEG, which, when mounted on an exhaust pipe, captures heat and turns it into electricity. Because all ICEs produce “waste” heat, pumping whatever wattage could be produced by such an electrified heatsink would literally be a “free lunch” if the bike were a hybrid. Maybe that’s the solution? A hybrid powered by synthetic fuel regenerated by its own exhaust. As complicated as that may sound, it’s probably got a better chance of success than battery power.