Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said that the company isn't interested in making a motorcycle.

But the incipient electric motorcycle industry in the US could use some help — and Tesla would be a welcome addition to the team.

Motorcycle sales in the US have been stagnant, and newer, younger riders aren't taking up the passion, so the market needs something to spur it.

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said that the all-electric car maker is totally, completely uninterested in building a motorcycle.

He points to his own youthful experiences as a rider, including at least one incident when he claimed he was nearly killed at the tender age of 17 in a close-miss accident. The lucky break clearly affected him; he's declared that Tesla, the world's best-known and most successful electric-vehicle company, would never do an electric two-wheeler.

Missed opportunity, if you ask me (I won't argue with Musk's background because motorcycles are a lot more dangerous than cars, but most riders are aware of that and have accepted the risks). Motorcycle sales declined substantially before and after the Great Recession and haven't shown signs of recovering any sort of upward trajectory. For roughly the past 10 years, half a million bikes had been sold annually in the US.

That plateau, combined with an aging demographic for brands such as Harley-Davidson, has led to widespread speculation that the motorcycle industry could be entering a period of slow, structural decline. The only long-term solution to that problem is to get younger riders interested in throwing a leg.

I think there are five ways to speed up that solution — and critically, I think Tesla is what the market needs to rebound (it doesn't hurt that Tesla's stock is now hitting historic high levels). Here's why: