The ideal number is +1, where n is the number of bikes you own

Have you heard the one about bicycles and algebra? (I know; exciting!) That the ideal number of bicycles is n+1, where n is the number of bicycles you currently own? Cute, but true too.

CAR’s Gavin Green owns several bicycles, all of significant aesthetic merit, and he does so for very sound reasons. (For me it’s motorcycles; three in the garage, one in the loft. So, officially at least, n= 3…)

On the face of it such behaviour makes no sense, of course. You can only ride one bicycle at a time. But if you’re really into something chances are you’ll look to test those skills in new ways. Just as few climbers only ever tackle one peak, so owning a couple of different bicycles brings variety and challenge to what is fundamentally doing the same thing – a thing you love to do.

Whether it’s guitars, bicycles, motorcycles or cars, though they all do ostensibly much the same thing, no two will do it in quite the same way. If, like Gavin, you love cycling, the same route on a vintage, steel-framed racer will be very different to the sensations and experience of the same miles on a carbon-framed weapon. I own two sportsbikes but they’re entirely different to ride. One, powered by a 1200cc air-cooled flat-twin, is a bruiser of a thing; heavy, stiff, torquey, ballistic. By contrast my 400cc Honda weighs nothing, has no power below 9000rpm and can be steered with the power of thought alone.

For us drivers, electric cars present a pretty incredible example of the same thing made different, intriguing, new. If you love driving then the opportunity to re-think every aspect of it for the new powertrain is fascinating, and really satisfying. Of course, it’s not mandatory: if you can drive, you can drive an EV. In most ways doing so is easier.

But if you want to really get into it, as you do when you switch to a new, very different bicycle or motorcycle, then there’s a great deal to think about, and to try. Some sensations are missing, of course. But new things fill their place. Stunning, instant torque that squeezes every acceleration event into a blur. The option to work your tyres mid-corner whenever you fancy it – there’s no such thing as being in the wrong gear, or turbo lag. Overtakes become entirely effortless; motorcycle effortless.

Then there’s the art of power management – doing all of the above while trying to draw as little from the battery as possible. So you switch between regen and low-resistance coasting, run high corner speeds and minimise the extent to which you brake and accelerate, like a hyper-miling endurance racer trying to do Le Mans with one less fuel stop. And while these cars tend to be heavy, that’s not to say they’re clumsy. The best –Porsche’s Taycan, Tesla’s Model 3, Jaguar’s i-Pace – revel in a little weight on the nose on turn-in, deftly supplied either by the car’s in-built regen or one of your feet (ideally your left foot, since it really doesn’t have much else to do).

Can’t be arsed with any of the above? Then just revel in a level of refinement it took the combustion engine a century to achieve.