If you haven't spent time in Vietnam recently, and particularly in a major city like Hanoi, then you might not realize just how popular motorcycles are there. Let me hit you with a couple of numbers to help; as of 2020, there were approximately 65 million registered motorcycles in active use in the country according to Statista. How does that number stack up with the population? That's around one bike for each of two-thirds of Vietnam's inhabitants.
Or, to put it another way, one motorcycle each for over half of the country's population. In other words, they're kind of a big deal, and that's a fact that's undeniable if and when you visit Hanoi. They are, quite simply, everywhere. In large part, that's why my colleague Robbie Bacon had such a difficult time taking the Hanoi city government's plan to ban combustion motorcycles from the city starting in July 2026 seriously.
