This is the PRIMARY REASON I got interested in motorcycles and scooters, because the motor scooter, while over 100 years old and the natural progression from the bicycle, has been getting around 120 mpg since shortly after their inception. Pause and consider that. Their manufacture is cheaper now, so the profits are greater. Your basic 50cc Vespa takes about 20 minutes to build on its assembly line in China or Italy and its body panels are plastic, rather than the heavier but more durable sheet metal they used to be. The panels just sort of curl around like Tupperware, which is why they have that nickname by their most jaded riders. This is my OTHER objection to the pricing on Vespas. You're buying a bent steel tube, some tupperware, an engine, and a couple wheels for that $4-6K you pay for the bike. That's a lot of money for 20 minutes assembly work. You'd think for all that you'd get something refined and state of the art, but you'd be wrong. The weight of the engine remains on the rear wheel, which ruins the handling and makes it more dangerous to ride compared to a motorcycle. The step through frame lets you wear a skirt (if you swing that way) and carry a bag of groceries on the flat floorboard between your feet, which makes it very useful. You have to have bags or cases on a motorcycle to do the same thing.
Some motorcycles come with those, like the venerable but very useful SuperCub. Its bigger wheels and better suspension also deal far better with bad roads. If the SuberCub were built with modern aluminum frame, disk brakes, a better transmission than the semi-Automatic such as a scaled down N-series double-clutch or one that simply enabled engine braking on hills or turned on an electromagnetic battery charger when you throttle back for very limited regenerative braking (if you can do that light enough) and replace the pressed steel wheels with cast alloy, well, the bike starts to be safer and more useful. Working with aluminum really isn't that hard. We've got good welders for that these days. Add an inch to the suspension travel and real progressive shocks, which are pretty cheap these days, and you'd have a reasonably safe two wheel scooter capable of dealing with real American roads. And for less than Vespa sells for.
I've been really pleased with Deus Cycles of Bali, Australia, and now the USA because they've taken very basic ugly bikes and fixed them up, stripped off the garbage, and leave behind a very simple bike that gets the job done. Its that kind of simple elegance that thrills me most. Much like the Mazda Miata is the ultimate in a British convertible, only it works all the time unlike the real thing. The original version wasn't that fast, but it was light and it had a great independent double wishbone suspension and the simplicity of the A-10 Warthog. Everything was manual. There were no computers to fail, other than its fuel injection. The lights always worked, the top was fabric, the car was simple and cheap. What's not to like about that? Its pure. That's what a sports car should be. Its why I like the Lotus Elise and the 1970's Porsche 911 and the newer but still basic Noble M400. I would love to have one of those for my next car. I probably won't because they're not practical and I lack the personal wealth to own an impractical car, but any of these would have been great to drive for the last 20 years. I'd probably be dead, having missed the apex of a turn by just that much, but at least I would have had many happy corners prior.
I don't see much point in straight line speed. That's BORING. Entering and exiting corners, apexing them each time, that's REAL DRIVING. It takes skill to do it right. It takes concentration to roll on the accelerator at just the right spot to sling you out of the corner faster than you went into it. When I look at the result of artistically stripping down an old bike into a purely functional machine, I see the same degree of elegance as I do in a pure sportscar. Bali pleases my sense of minimalism. Maybe someday I'll use that inspiration to do a similar bike.
Ford recently announced they are going to start building trucks with aluminum bodies. Now Ford is working to make carbon fiber body panels for common cars, cheaply, to reduce their weight and get them up to that mandated 80 mpg. I'd love to see that. I hope it happens well before their 2020 prediction. Considering that Ford currently has 1.0 L Ecomotor diesels running in their European Fiesta and Focus models, presumably they'll bring that here someday too. The engine block is cast aluminum, presumably heat treated, and the critical parts give it around 50 mpg. The Geo Metro, which is running a water cooled 1968 Triumph Triple engine built on contract by Suzuki of Japan got that kind of MPG with gasoline. Its true that Diesel is more energy dense fuel, but it also lacks the torque range of a gasoline engine, and Diesel motors are slightly harder to build since they are stressed more during the power stroke. Given the choice, in a rainstorm or a gravel road, I'd rather be in a 4 wheeled vehicle running on diesel than on a two-wheeled bike. Of course, if I had to grow the fuel myself, the bike would look pretty attractive.
People are willing to trade safety for fuel economy and for fun. A lighter car won't be as safe as one with lots of steel in it, but that lighter car will use a lot less fuel and maybe get us to that 80 mpg. Right in time for roads to stop being paved since the tar in asphalt could be turned into gasoline which has a better profit margin. Light cars are great, but everything in economics is about tradeoffs. The solution to fuel economy, biggest solution of all, is to work near our homes. Take that Minimum Wage job. I dare you. Live on that. You can eat Government Cheese (Velveeta) and pretend someone cares about you. It might not be fun, living that way, but if you work really close to home you can just walk there and walk home. 100 years ago this is how people did business in London. Are we brave enough to give up all the perqs of the transportation economy?
I happen to have recently seen a BBC documentary about the McLaren production car, which is appropriate here because it is ultralight, based on a carbon fiber tub for the central loadbearing crash box for the passenger(s). The cars are so light they are pushed around on roller skates rather than pulled on a big conveyor belt or rails. Have a look.
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