It was nearly a year ago that Vietnam's capital city, Hanoi, announced an ambitious plan. Air quality is notoriously bad, posing difficulties for anyone who has health issues that affect their breathing. Unfortunately, the city's millions of combustion motorcycles aren't helping the matter, so the city government of Hanoi said it would ban fossil-fuel bikes from July of 2026.
Outcry against this plan was almost immediate, and it's not difficult to understand why. Motorcycles are far and away the most popular form of transportation in Vietnam, and Reuters even estimates that around 80% of the population rides. Even if you agree that something needs to be done to improve air quality, asking everyone to make a change like that in such a short period of time seems unrealistic, to put it in charitable terms.
