Electric motorcycle seen in Alvor, Portugal

EV

Hello! My name is Eri Ito, a Japanese motorsport journalist.
I mainly cover MotoGP, MotoE which is the electric two-wheel road racing championship.
This blog is all about Eri Ito’s personal experiences of visiting different countries to cover the MotoGP.
Please click: ABOUT for more details.

I stayed at a hotel in Alvor while I covered the Portugal GP, MotoGP.
A hotel staff laughed and said, “this is a small village,”.
Alvor looked like a small resort, and situated between Lagos and Portimao, and near the mouth of the Odiáxere.
It is 20km away from the Autodromo Internacional do Algarve (where MotoGP is held). It’s not very close but there are not hardly any traffic signals nor many cars, so I could arrive at the circuit from the hotel in about 30 minutes.

I realised that there are a lot of slopes in this town.
It seemed that whenever or wherever I walked, I was always going up or down the slopes.
I thought that walking around the town will be just an easy leisurely walk but actually, it was more than a mini exercise.

Maybe because of this kind of terrain,
I noticed electric motorcycles everywhere in the town.
I saw electric motorcycles passing the street in front of hotel several times.
This is what happened one day, when I was walking and thought there was a scooter, I walked over to find out the maker of it, it turned out to be an electric motorcycle.
It seems that electric motorcycles and scooters are quite common in this town.

On my return to my hotel, I mentioned to the ladies at the reception,
“I see many electric motorcycles in this town.”
They nodded, ” oh yes, yes”.
It heard that electric motorcycles are a part of the sceneries of this town as I saw.

How about EV cars? – I saw none.
Actually, I was reminded of Nagasaki, Japan that I traveled alone several years ago where there are also many slopes. “Because there are so many slopes here, we have scooters more popular than bicycles” – a bar owner told me where I enjoyed a drink or two.
Like in Nagasaki, electric motorcycles must be a better companion than bicycles for people in Alvor.

FYI：This blog is all about Eri Ito’s personal experiences from visiting different countries to cover the MotoGP.
Please click: ABOUT for more details.