I was impressed by the large number of people in China who despite the cheap local petrol (which was probably still expensive to someone on an average wage) had chosen an electric bicycle in order to encompass their entire transportation needs.
It has to be said though that whilst it had pedals for assistance and shop owners had powerboards for people to plug their bikes into whilst they shopped – the machines didn’t seem to keep up with traffic and were used mostly as bicycles that didn’t require pedalling and were used in the bicycle lanes. When I saw my first electric bicycles and scooters I had visions of people adding batteries with higher capacities and output coupled with high efficiency brushless motors so they could tear around the streets on their eco-friendly racing machines, but in reality none of this appeared to be happening and the owners stuck to the bicycle lane.
In 2001 I was in Jakarta and I remember speaking to the son of a wedding photographer who was a) thrilled to be talking to someone who was more than happy to have a natural conversation in english and b) absolutely stunned that I owned a 1000cc superbike.
His dream motorcycle was a NSR250 which was apparently quite an expensive and large capacity motorcycle. He went on that his family shared a 50cc scooter between them and it was unlikely he would be able to afford his dream NSR250. It really struck home the difference between myself at the time a student, I felt like I was scraping by in my home country eating noodles, whereas in Indonesia I was having a conversation with another student who for all intents of purpose I may have owned a spaceship – it was so far out of his financial reach.
That said, I got the strong impression that if you could afford a 1000cc motorcycle in Indonesia (even 2nd hand like mine was) socially you’d be mad not to own a car instead. 