be difficult due to the lack of feedback from any kind of engine noise?

I think the engine revs / vibration / noise helps you judge the level of grip when giving it some into / round / out a bend.

Surely with the new hydrogen-cell electric bikes that we'll all be riding in 15 years time, there will be a complete absence of noise.

will that make us all crash? Or do you really think you can 'feel' levels of grip regardless of having an actual petrol engine?

I feel grip, I dont hear it!

if you're riding a mountain bike you can feel when you're loosing grip, regardless of engine noises, so why not with an electric powered motorbike?

I've ridden three electric bikes over the last few years, one of them the Vectrix which, while certainly no 'performance' bike, could crack 60mph and I can tell you that none of them were silent by any means.

All of them have a motor whine that increase and decreases depending on how fast you're going.

A metaphysical dichotomy has caused this unit to overload and shut down.

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My washing machine makes a lot of motor whine on spin so I expect the appropriate noise will be engineered into an electric bike. I'm sure that the sound level (and maybe the type of sound) can be switched between say town and country environments.

My little electric moped is far from quiet.

Electric bike, direct drive = silent.
Scoot with belts, reducing gears, brushes. = noisy.

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It would be just like riding a Honda.

except more interesting......

Too much is NEVER enough...till it hurts...

how would you keep em clean?

going down on your nan

The bloke who gave me a Vectrix to test ride the other day said they were planning to add an artificial noise to it. You'll be able to choose between a 125 and a CBR1000, he said. I'm not sure if it was a wind-up or not

Some electrical appliances are self cleaning.

my hoover aint

going down on your nan

I think it'd be harder to get used to the totally different torque and power delivery. Electric motors can have pretty much constant power and torque that reduces almost linearly with speed.

I.e. you could have 150bhp and 700-something lb.ft torque at 1000rpm (theoretically you can have 150bhp at 1 rpm, but you'd have stupid stupid high torque)...you could maintain that same 150bhp up to 20,000 rpm (or whatever) with decreasing torque.

Imagine riding something like that...

Wouldn't decent gearing largely overcome that? (Genuine question - I dunno... )

It wouldn't have to be like that, you could put a control device in to make the torque characteristic almost whatever you want...the situation I described is just the most extreme possible.

Gearing wouldn't really effect it that much. If you plot a graph of tractive force at the rear wheel (i.e. the force actually pushing the bike along) against vehicle speed, it's exactly the same shape as torque vs. engine speed, it just gets stretched one way or another depending on the gear ratios.

Similalrly if you had an electric motor that provided maximum torque at minimum speed, you'd always get maximum torque at minimum speed the gearing would just change the magnitude.