The growing demand for sports bikes, high powered bikes with full fair

OFFICIAL EXPLANATION



THE PROMPT

• Strip the sentence
→ The phrase high powered bikes with full fairing and wide tires that appeal to youngsters is an appositive that modifies sports bikes.
Appositives often rename a noun or give clarification about its details.
→ Strike it: it's a long noun modifier set off by commas.
A non-essential modifier set off by commas can be removed without ruining the meaning of the sentence.
Remove the modifier and its commas. The commas exist to flank the modifier.

The sentence, stripped:
The growing demand for sports bikes . . . have surprised automotive experts and companies alike, which has risen from $3 billion in sales in 2010 to nearly $9 billion in 2020.

THE OPTIONS

• subject/verb disagreement
→ The singular subject demand does not agree with the plural verb have

• which is too far from its noun
→ What does which modify?
The word which does NOT have to modify the immediately preceding noun or immediately preceding head noun (anchor noun) in a noun phrase.
The antecedent of which can be a little farther away, despite the content of the Touch Modifier rule (noun modifiers should be as close as possible to their nouns).
→ In this case, though which refers to growing demand and is too far from its noun.
Which cannot "jump back over the verb" (surprised) in order to reach demand.
ELIMINATE A

• subject/verb disagreement
→ The singular subject demand does not agree with the plural verb have

• redundant: rising UP is redundant. What's it going to do? Rise down?
ELIMINATE B

• redundancy
The phrase Both X as well as Y alike contains a lot of redundancy.
Both, as well as, and alike all signal that automotive experts and companies were surprised by the growing demand for sports bikes.

• not idiomatic
→ The correct idiom is Both X and Y, not Both X as well as Y
ELIMINATE C


• I do not see any errors
The part after the comma, rising from, is elaborating further upon the subject (growing demand) in the previous clause.
Typically, the best way to elaborate on a faraway subject (or an entire previous clause) is to use COMMA + ___ing.
KEEP


• do not separate a compound predicate with a comma
→ When two verbs share one subject (i.e. when one subject does two things), the verb part of the sentence is called a "compound predicate."

→ Almost always, we should not put a comma before the second verb in a compound predicate.

→ We want to keep the subject and its two verbs connected; a comma may seem to indicate that the verb after the comma does not belong to the subject.
Correct: Simon bought lentils and cooked lentil soup.
One person does two things. No comma before the second verb.
Highly suspect and probably wrong: Simon bought lentils, and cooked lentil soup.

That example is easy. The official sentences that press on this rule are a lot harder.
This rule holds regardless of the conjunction that joins the two verbs.
Another way to think about the matter in this instance is that COMMA + AND seems to signal an independent clause. Just one problem. There's no subject in that clause.

• illogical meaning
→ the use of and before has risen does not make sense because growing demand has not done two different things.
If demand had done two different things, then the word and would be appropriate (preferably without the comma).
The trajectory described at the end of the sentence describes growing demand in a noun-modifier way. The trajectory elaborates on growing demand.

→ compare to option D.
GMAC writers really like these COMMA + participle (verbING) modifiers, which modify the subject of the previous clause or the whole clause itself, often but not always presenting the outcome of the previous clause.
For a while GMAC mostly pitted COMMA + ___ING against COMMA + which, but now the COMMA + participle modifier is tested against a good handful of other constructions—including superfluous verbs.
Option D wins. (If nothing else, go for concision, which really is a thing but which you should not use until the end.)
ELIMINATE E

The answer is D.

COMMENTS

gokulram1990 (no, you were not missing anything) , Anshul234 , anisinghal , MBAAD21 , welcome to SC Butler.

I am glad to see quite a few new people.

As always, for all aspirants, there exists a standing invitation to post.
If you can write an explanation, you are well on your way to mastering the concept.

Whether the answers are correct or not, these posts display good reasoning skills.
Some of you took a slightly wrong turn in your analysis. No matter.
Better to make mistakes here and learn.

Kudos go to correct answers, though I am pleased by the hard work I see all around.
Nicely done.