Vehicle ownership, including gas powered motorcycles, is extremely common in many countries. I’m not sure why you think it’s an American thing, because it’s definitely not.

“Developing countries” is a broad category, but it’s certainly not the case that they’re free of vehicles except for rich people driving around in expensive cars.

Gas powered motor scooters are being replaced by electric bicycles even before ICE cars are being replaced by EVs. In China, that transition is largely complete, and is happening in SEA and South Asia at a reasonable clip. See for example https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/paving-way-elect...

Here is another article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-04-20/hyperd..., quote:

> The second reason is that two-wheelers are going electric faster than any other segment of road transport. BNEF’s latest estimates put 2020 electric two-wheeler sales at over 25 million. That’s about 35% of sales globally, far ahead of passenger cars where EVs are still only around 5% of sales.

Although the issue with that statistic is probably because China has banned gas powered scooters (other developing countries are still catching up).

I predict that Electric scooters will long replace gas powered ones in developing countries before EV cars replace ICE cars. It’s kind of an economic no brainer given how cheap they are.

> Vehicle ownership, including gas powered motorcycles, is extremely common in many countries.

And I bet that the countries with cheap, polluting vehicles are those with lower life expectancy.

A large part of that will be correlation. Thailand has bad pollution from agriculture burning and some reallyy nasty car pollution. It looks like their life expectancy is very close to the US while other countries like the Phillipines with less pollution have significantly worse life expectancy. So you can't just chalk it up to one factor and think these countries would be better off if you suddenly took away all their gas powered vehicles - they wouldn't.

I'm not sure where you got the idea that the rich people clogged the road in developing countries, but we heavily depend on cars/motorcycles for our transportation. Poor people use them all the times (especially motorcycles). And people with low wages do take loans just to buy a cheap car/motorcycle, even way before buying a house since they provide immediate benefits with manageable monthly installments.

EDIT: It makes me think why there is not much push for electric motorcycles. Whenever EV is mentioned, it's always been a car.

Cheap Chinese electric bikes and trikes aren’t a thing in your country?

> It makes me think why there is not much push for electric motorcycles. Whenever EV is mentioned, it's always been a car.

That simply isn’t accurate. Chinese electric scooters were common even back in 2008, they are pretty ubiquitous by now. Electric motorcycles aren’t common, but neither are gas powered motorcycles in that country. These aren’t the fancy “for play” motorcycles replacements or electric bikes that the west want, but are definitely work horses in developing countries.

A lot of places don't have electricity or paved roads...

They don’t have paved roads, but they still have electricity. I stayed in a place in China off the grid on a trip (it was on a mountain in the Tibetan part of Sichuan), they still had electricity via a water wheel. When the water wheel was knocked out of alignment, the electricity went off.

A lot of off the grid solutions for electricity, getting regular gasoline shipments to those locations is much more of a challenge.

EVs are going to transform the developing world, in conjunction with solar/wind/storage solutions.

The EVs will be small motorcycles, e-bikes, scooters, etc. You get the EV with a 100 mile range, you already have a (used) panel. The small EVs can be quickly recharged because they are small (or battery swaps, which are far more feasible on e-bike/e-scooters).

Starlink or cell towers provide the internet.

As stated in the article, air quality will increase substantially.

Unfortunately global warming will disrupt everyone's fundamentals: water and food.