With temperatures rising like gas prices, scooters may seem the perfect mode of transportation.You get up to 100 miles per gallon, on top of the hipster factor and the feel of the wind in your hair. But there’s one imperfection to these sassy little two-wheeled machines: A March 2005 study by the Environmental Protection Agency shows most scooters on the road pollute more than SUVs.
That sounded so counterintuitive that WW decided to test a few scooters, with help from the crew at Esquire Motors in Goose Hollow, which donated its time and emissions-testing equipment.
read the whole story…
It just goes to show that our thinking about these sort of things needs to be re-evaluated. It sounds like a good idea to get a small scooter to get around town. The gas is cheap for it and you aren’t having to haul around all that extra unneeded weight of a car. But two cycle engines aren’t that environmentally friendly.
Course, you could always turn it into an eclectic scooter. Then you could plug it in and get all your pollution done by the power companies burning coal.
Sigh…
August 11th, 2006 at 3:58 pm
The article quoted is misleading, and BAD research.
They are comparing parts per million of different volumes.
My favorite quote from the article “Four-strokes tend to burn cleaner than two-stroke engines” Duhhhh
They don’t compare fuel usage or miles traveled per volume of emissions.
Gee what operates cleaner a 1968 two stroke or a 2006 four stroke?
I never saw anything like - a 150lb vehicle uses x ammount of fuel to travel 1 mile, a 2800lb vehicle uses y ammount of fuel to travel 1 mile.
I’d ditch this post so as not to continue to misinform
and to not tarnish your posting history.
August 11th, 2006 at 4:52 pm
Wow, I’m a bit surprised by your accusatory tone. The article isn’t research by the way, but it might be considered poor reporting to people who understand the measurement of such things (as you do) since they left a lot of the number crunching out.
This from the EPA regulations that quote their study:
“Nationwide, highway motorcycles are significant contributors to mobilesource air pollution and produce more harmful emissions per mile than a car or even a large SUV. Motorcycles currently account for 0.6 percent of mobile-source hydrocarbon (HC) emissions, 0.1 percent of mobilesource oxides of nitrogen (NOx) emissions, and less than 0.1 percent of mobile-source particulate matter (PM) emissions. The highway motorcycle standards will reduce the combined emissions of HC and NOx in the exhaust by 50 percent. Without these further regulations, highway motorcycles would account for 2.2 percent of mobile source HC and 0.3 percent of mobile source NOx by 2020.”
There is a key factor that I think you forgot about in this. Motorcycles and scooters almost never have catalytic converters.
And as for your per mile argument, wouldn’t a per minute of emissions be more telling? Doesn’t matter per mile when you’re sitting at a stoplight.
Here’s another statement from the epa scooter alert:
“EPA studies show that motorcycles have much higher emissions than cars. A motorcycle emits as much hydrocarbon in 10 miles as a car driven 850 miles. Uncertified Class I motorcycles may emit three to five times as much hydrocarbon and carbon dioxide as similar certified Class I motorcycles. These emissions form smog and contain toxic compounds such as benzene.”
They also mention in the above that one of the reasons for the larger emmissions is that the imported scooters/motorcycles that are coming to the US don’t hold up to the standards that the EPA sets, thus being even worse than their domestic counterparts.
And if you want to crunch the numbers for their testing procedures you can see them here.