Wish the proponents of stricter immigration would push for a proper national ID first.
Right now you have all the cons anyway, with none of the pros. A stitched-up database that has no laws attached to prevent its misuse. Just like with gun control, law enforcement could've made their job easier decades ago.
The government already has every record ever generated, and no law has ever permitted or prevented it. Once it was revealed, the only thing that happened was they exiled the guy the told us. A codified national ID doesn't afford any benefit to anyone. On top of that, nobody, regardless of political persuasion, wants it. At least we can agree on that.
It's the opposite IME, most petrol two-wheelers are massive money sinks past 5 years of ownership. You will likely spend close to original price in maintenance and repairs, with most models developing "unfixable" issues that massively degrade the experience. It doesn't need to be engine related for the costs to add up.
Even if the battery craps out after 5 years (extremely unlikely), it's a wash. That's before considering the fuel savings. Battery degradation is a bit of a meme, we aren't even 10 years into mass adoption of EVs for this to be a common experience.
Never had any problem with any bike, except regular maintenance which is changing oil, changing chain, and changing tires. There aren't physically any parts on a motorcycle which could become a "massive money sink" if it breaks from normal use.
Are you talking about weird vintage bikes or Harley Davidson bikes? Because modern bikes don't have maintenance or factory issues.
> Battery degradation is a bit of a meme
Well, what is the explanation then? If there isn't a major drawback with electric motorcycles, they would already have sold hundreds of millions of units.
Because of no gas cost, cheaper/no maintenance, better performance, better riding experience, less noisy. Which commuter wouldn't want an electric motorcycle? Are hundreds of millions of potential customers in India, Asia and South America simply fools who don't have the hacker enlightenment?
The explanation is that the trusted brands (in 2Ws) are just now rolling-out EVs, the market is very conservative and home charging likely isn't an option if one's renting.
The cheaper variants now have enough range to relieve (urban) range anxiety, wasn't the case a year or two ago. My own model that's 4 years old, the new variant now has 2.5x range, faster charging and much better features. All that for the same price, and without any of the subsidies that used to exist.
These things take time, this is a low-margin business that isn't drowning in VC money.
It's a plausible explanation, but I find it a bit difficult to believe. Motorcycle companies are mature and well funded, they're hardly in need of any venture capital at their stage.
As for the motorcycle market being conservative, I rather think that there's a lot of people chomping at the bits to try an electric bike. The motorcycle market is much more diverse and playful than the car market, in my opinion. If electric bikes were even "almost as good" as gas bikes, then I'd expect to see at least some percentage out on the street being electric. Or hear people talking about them.
But I don't see them anywhere, or hear anything about them. And they are easy and affordable to buy here. What I see is tons of gas motorcycles, and a whole lot of electric cars, and electric scooters (those that go on the pavement).
I would expect most ladies who commute on a 125cc scooter to much rather go on an electric motorcycle, just to name a very large customer group.
For the established players, it's the battery supply chain that's the main issue. Rest can be locally-sourced or manufactured. Makes them very nervous, having to import when tariffs and rules change everyday.
My city in South India could be an outlier but I see green EV number plates everywhere. Would love to see a state-wise breakdown for sale share.
Leasing land for solar pays very little. The only reason people do it is because the land has no better use and solar doesn’t permanently damage it the way mining or farming could. Other industries aren’t being priced out.
Talking more about some unrelated function taking down the whole system, not advocating for "offline" credit card transactions (is this even a thing these days?). Ex: If the transaction needs to be logged somewhere, it can be built to sync whenever possible rather than blocking all transactions if the central service is down.
Payment processor being down is payment processor being down.
Having kids is half the reason (or more) for such marriages, nothing completes the nuclear family picture quite like it. And not like it's easy for gay couples in accepting environments to have kids either, surrogacy is banned in most countries ("liberal" ones too, US is kind of an exception here) and adoption is nigh impossible. Some countries like Italy go as far as selectively making both illegal, but only for gay couples.
I would say many asian parents care very little about the partner, as long as they get their grandkids. A mix of that and "what would society think".
Where did you hear that surrogacy is banned in most places outside the USA? That's just not true, and I suspect you've been indoctrinated with more US-exceptionalism. Surrogacy is not banned in the UK, Australia, NZ, much of Europe, Iran, much of Asia, etc.
It's "legal" at first glance but it's effectively banned in most cases. No monetary compensation, only direct relatives, only traditional pregnancy, etc.
It's outright banned (commercial) in most of EU. In most countries it was left unregulated for a long time but most of them are choosing to ban all commercial forms of it. Besides US, most major countries have banned it.
Now many people do ignore these laws and most governments do little to enforce them unless they make the news for some reason. Banning commercial forms of it just ensures abuse and issues go unreported. It's the paternalistic part of feminism that's been leading the charge for modern bans, with both liberal and conservative roots.
Surrogacy is illegal in Spain, Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Norway, Finland, and Turkey. Also banned in China, some states in the US and Québec.
Thats a pretty hefty chunk of the worlds population.
A lot of other countries also have a limbo status where there is either no clear law making it illegal but put so many hurdles up that its impractical.
Some countries, like Italy, also make it illegal for Italian citizens to go abroad to a country where it is legal and then do it there.
I'm guessing India, and it's dowry part of it that complicates things a lot. And once either party goes into legal proceedings, it becomes a shit slinging mess of he-said she-said. Hence why most people try to "settle" things out of the court even if they were the victim. You wouldn't wish the Indian legal system on your worst enemy.
The "omg centralized infra" cries after every such event kind of misses the point. Hosting with smaller companies (shared, vps, dedi, colo whatever) will likely result in far worse downtimes, individually.
Ofc the bigger perception issue here is many services going out at the same time, but why would (most) providers care if their annual downtime does or doesn't coincide with others? Their overall reliability is no better or worse had only their service gone down.
All of this can change ofc if this becomes a regular thing, the absolute hours of downtime does matter.
Right now you have all the cons anyway, with none of the pros. A stitched-up database that has no laws attached to prevent its misuse. Just like with gun control, law enforcement could've made their job easier decades ago.