Gas Scooters, the New Pollution Menace

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2.25/0.098 = 23

The fewer miles issue is really only a strong point if you are buying a scooter instead of a car.

@MvB: I agree. When I bought my scooter the electric options were few and had poor performance. They're getting much better every year.

Actually, when I went to China a few years ago seemingly everyone in the cities drove an electric scooter. They were small (somewhere between a scooter and an electric bike) and didn't go very fast, but they were all over the place. When I came home I looked for something similar, but we just don't have them here. They looked a bit like this.

Last time I checked, my motorcycle had both fuel injection AND a catalytic converter...

I don't understand where he gets this figure of "23 times more hydrocarbon emissions per mile than a car". Isn't it really more like only 2 1/2 times as dirty (still a lot) based on the figures he cites?

Besides, scooters tend be driven a lot fewer miles than one would a car, so there's definitely a trade-off in terms of total number of miles driven as well, which, one would think should also be a factor.

It is sort of a similar trade off with diesels (in their case particulate pollution is much higher). Which is worse, local pollution or global climate change? I'm not saying there is an obvious answer, in some cases local air quality is terrible, and probably should be the top concern.

With our (American) emmissions laws we have tended to focus on the local issues (smog, ozone, particulates), where as in Europe they tend to favor efficiency.

@Matt G1: oh well, thank god. That was killing me. It was a little too You're-screwed-no-matter-what-give-up. Although I actually am more interested in an electric ride anyway.

As I've commented on the Daily Score blog, be careful with these numbers. While definitely true for 2-stroke scooters (that inefficiently burn gasoline - and oil), it's not so true for 4-stroke scooters. In fact, 4-stroke scooters seem to be much betterthan cars when it comes to hydrocarbon pollution (or CO, or CO2, or gas efficiency...).

But the point holds for 2-strokes. They're leaf blowers with wheels.

<nelson>ha, ha</nelson>

Oh man. I guess that should have been obvious. Thank god I'm too cheap to buy a scooter and too lazy to get my motorcycle endorsement.