Motorcycles and electric motorcycles in Madrid – Part of cityscape

EV, Miscellaneous

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.

During one week that I stayed in Madrid after covering the MotoGP SpanishGP, there was something that I was surprised by every time I walked around the city.
It is that there were so many motorcycles on the streets and parking spaces for motorcycles on the road shoulders of the main streets.
It is expected that there are so many cars and motorcycles in the metropolis because of the large population, but what caught my attention was the type of motorcycles there were.
Of course, many of them are scooters, but there are also a lot of so-called hobby motorcycles – naked and sports types.
Perhaps these other types of vehicles apart from scooters are also popular as everyday use. Many times, I came across men in suits and on motorcycles who looked like office workers, possibly going to and from their offices.
Another notable thing is the parking situation for motorcycles in Madrid.
There are abundant parking spots from the road shoulders to dedicated parking lots for not only motorcyclists but also car drivers.
Some of the spots where a motorcycle is parked is a mere corner of the road where I would personally find it too dodgy to park. I even saw some parked on unmarked part of the road. I got an impression that motorcyclists are spoilt for choices of a parking spot as the rules are not so tight.
This is the complete opposite of the parking situation in Japan where the parking spots are limited, and it must be a haven for motorcyclists here.

Another thing that caught my attention was the large number of electric motorcycles.
I noticed a lot of electric scooters in Madrid, then I realized most of them seem to be rented (or shared) ones.
The guesthouse where I stayed was near Real Madrid’s stadium, and at least in that area, these rental electric motorcycles were a common sighting.
Given the current electric motorcycles cruising range, I always thought that they are most suitable for getting around, the distance of which is slightly too far to walk, so it really makes sense that they are used as rented motorcycles, which must be making life much easier for the people in the city.
From the number of them I have seen, I gathered it must be a popular, widely used service.
In Madrid, electric motorcycles were widespread in the form of rental motorcycles.

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.