Modern Vespa

GM makes this handy dandy fuel economy calculator that makes it really easy to gloat about how much money you can save riding a scooter. Check it out: http://gmdynamic.com/gmfuelcalc/

Here's a sample SUV:
ACURA, MDX 4WD, 6 cyl, 3.7 liter, Auto(S5) , 4 wheel drive,
Fuel Type: Premium

Vehicle Fuel Economy (MPG)
City = 17 mpg
Highway = 22 mpg
Combined = 19 mpg

Annual Fuel Costs Based on:
Premium fuel $3.21
15,000 miles
55% city-45% highway

Annual Fuel Cost = $2534
Annual CO2 Emissions (in metric tons**) = 7.0
(Based on...15,000 miles per year or 789 gallons of fuel purchased)

So I figured how many gallons it would take to travel 15,000 miles at 70 mpg on my Vespa and I come up with 214 gallons. Gas, at the same price as above, for those 15,000 miles would cost $687.85. A savings of $1846 per year just for fuel! And that's here in the states where petrol prices are relatively cheap.

So, by extension, if you drive a scooter the same amount of miles as you would have driven in a car, the scooter pays for itself in about 3 years, just for the price of fuel alone!

Not to mention insurance.

My wife used to pay just over $1,600/yr to insure her V6 Taurus (100k/300k, UM the same, Comp/Coll, $500 deduc.)

Same coverage, same company: Triumph Bonnieville ('07) $466/yr.
Got a quote yesterday for a GT: $168/yr.

Until you pay for service + tires on the scooter, which cost a lot more than on almost any car. Unless you go carless I think you lose out unless your car is a semi. (You still pay depreciation + insurance + registration + etc on your car.)

Yeah, don't forget that you will go through about 10 rear tires and 5 front tires on a scooter than you would 4 tires on a car.

Agreed, scooter tires wear out a whole lot faster.

But if nothing else, think about those 7 metric tons of carbon the SUV will expell in exhaust each year. Even if the cost of owning each were nearly equal, the pollution alone is reason enough to move from 4 wheels to 2 wheels.

I absolutely agree. People at times forget to calculate the much higher cost of maintenance into their savings.

Why is this? Aa scooter weighs a lot less than a car.

Bob

Max, are you saying that the cost of operating a Scooter is higher than a standard car? I've learned that these little uncatalized motors operating at high revvs produce a whole lot more contamination than a regular motor car.

Yeah, I could use more of a head's-up on service for the GT/GTS. I'm gettig that tire life is in the 4-6k range for a rear, maybe half that again for a front tire, yes? So what does a set of good tires cost for a Vespa? Surely it can't be as much as for a full-on motorcycle?!

In terms of other service, what makes a scooter more expensive than a standard car? The maintenance intervals aren't more frequent than 3k miles are they?

Cars have a much larger contact patch (More actual rubber touching at any given point) from having a wide flat profile versus a narrow curved surface.

They have 4 tires touching all at one time.

The scooter only has a 10 inch wheel so there is much less overall surface area.

Not higher at all. However, a lot of people only calculate gas mileage, and not more frequent and expensive service. Also, 2-strokers, a $14 quart of oil needs to be calculated into mileage.

Tires range about $49-$100 per tire depending on brand and size. A Good set of GTS tires will run about $55 per tire plus installation which can be pricey.

Services can be as frequent as every 2000 depending on the scooter. Most shops charge $100-$150 for a scheduled service. It can be as much as $300 if it needs a valve check and belt and rollers. 3000 interval oil changes on cars usually cost $20-$60.

most of the wear on scooter tires is from them leaving the road and reconnecting. Part of this is from bumps pot holes in cities but most is a result of the engine being the swingarm. When the rear wheel hits a bump most of the weight of the engine has to be moved. As a result the rear suspension is slower to react and the tire disconnects from the road more often.

So, Max, if we make some reasonable assumptions, like:

10,000 miles per year (I'm two wheels only, my wife has a little Honda we share when weather is super-bad).

$3/gal. gas (Do most four-stroke scooters need high-test gas? Or is regular fine?)

Realistic fuel economy (I weigh ~215# plus gear, and tend to fat-fist the throttle on my Bonneville...so, what, 50mpg? 40mpg?)

and the other things you were saying about service costs and tires and such,

what would be a rough ballpark of annaul running costs for a GTS? Can I safely assume that those costs would be incrementally less for a GT?

And thanks for helping to clear up my confusion. I want a Vespa so bad I could spit, but the first reason is as inexpensive, practical transportation. And if it's not gonna be cheaper than my Triumph Bonneville, then I won't really be able to make the trade up to a Vespa for a while. And really, the only reason I'm thinking about it now is that my local dealer is doing $300 off all '07 Vespas (inc. a dark red GTS), and $600 off his three remaining '06s (an LX and two GTs).

The Aerodynamic Head you gave me a good reason to compile the numbers I've been meaning to add up.

I've had My GTS for a little over a year and a half and have over 10,000 miles on it. Here's my rough numbers from the first 10,000 miles. I've spent about $870.00 in maintenance and tires (Every 3,000 miles had the required work done). Insurance is about $300.00/ year and gas was about $460. So a total operating cost of $1,630 for 10,000 miles. Compared to My Honda Civic rough numbers: Maintenance and tires $335 insurance $800/ year and gas was about 830. So the operating cost of the Honda for 10,000 miles was $1,965.

So take it for what ever

Yea but using all the tires is helping the environment. It adds to the land fill and helps the US create recycling programs that help promote the reuse of tire products.

Plus cars are bad they take alot more resourses to create. They also take up too much room in the city.

yes, you'll need to run high test, but with a 2.5 gal tank what's 0.30 per fill up extra? 55~60 is pretty typical, but alot of factors come into play-- weight, tune, terrain, conditions, riding style; and all of these can be detrimental to mileage. no, they're about the same. also, if you cheap out on the maint. you'll just wind up paying more in the long run. i can nearly guarantee that it won't be cheaper to keep running than your bonnie. but then again, you don't buy a vespa for the practical nature or to scoot about on the cheap. you buy for lust. pure, unabashed lust.

best,
-greasy

Lust: CHECK.

I remember reading this article a while back:

http://www.wweek.com/editorial/3240/7867

The gist of it is, your automobile actually produces FEWER emissions per mile driven than a scooter!

Scooters are assumed to be environmentally freindly, mostly because of their small size and excellent fuel economy. But when you peel back the 'green' sticker and start looking underneath, there is alot going on that's not so environmentally sound...

I thought the 200 and 250 Vespas are catalized...
My 2002 BMW motorcycle has a cat converter.

A Honda or Toyota automobile is normally expected to last 200,000 miles easy. How many scooters is that?

I would think if economics were your sole motivation, the smallest Honda, Toyta or even Nissan would probably win the prize.

That is not why I ride.

Skrap did you read the comments on that article? It's basically muckraking crap and only talks about two-stroke bikes which the majority of us (here at least) don't ride and are being quickly phased out by manufacturers. The article gives barely a passing mention to the subject of four stroke scooters. The old argument is you need to not measure by PPM but by miles driven. For a gallon of gas my 2.2 liter Saturn will go about 28 miles. My 150cc LX will go 69. Tell me which one pollutes more per mile? At a basic look you could say my Saturn pollutes twice as much, maybe more if you base your tests on volume of exhaust produced.

Heh, I said '69'.

Good points, but using my neck of the woods as an example, a few hundred cars gridlocked and idling on the highway/freeway is most likely to be polluting "more" than the handful of motorbikes or scooters cruising by, lane-splitting.

Car/truck etc. vs. bike fuel savings is an easy argument. It's the pollution/emission argument that's tough to summarize. Road conditions, commuting habits, population density are all factors that complicate it.

Solution? Here it is: Click here

Environment is a word applied too narrowly these days; it's used to refer only to the relative "health" of the natural world on either a local, regional or global scale. But my environment also includes emotional, financial and political influe....AGHAGAHGAHG, My GOD, look what's happening to me!!!! I'm MELLLLTINNNNNGGG! My soul is turning to marshmallow, numbed by endless NPR-esque statistical pissing-matches. I hate myself because I read the ENTIRE thread of that Portland newspaper article. My skin is turning green from hugging so g-d--mn many trees that my desire to push up daisies is winning out over my desire to feed the flora with my tasty CO2 emissions. My antipathy for my fellow men grows moment-by-moment. I've become some bastard-child of the Wicked Witch of the West and the Incredible Hulk. (You wouldn't like me when I'm politically correct, you and your little dog, too!)

You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna get that GTS in Classic Red, and I'm gonna strap a thousand lit cigarettes to the back of it, and filter the smoke through a gallon of one part mosquito-fogger oil, one part pre-saturated charcoal briquettes, and one part hamburger grease mixed with chlorox. And I'm gonna drive to Portland, OR shooting those contributors with confetti made from used cedar chips. MWAHAHAHA!!!

Remember that when they talk about pollution or emissions they are not talking about co2 or global warming, they are talking about air quality in places like los angeles or milan or beijing. If you don't live in a place like that it is far more "responsible" to ride even a dirty two stroke scooter than a car.

Wha...? Oh, thank goodness, it was just a bad dream.

I just had this horrible nightmare where I dreamed that someone had outlawed FUN, and mandated that the only acceptable color for everything was to be gray, and that I was only going to be allowed to ride a scooter if I hated myself first. But I was lucky, cuz in my dream SUV drivers were given shock-treatment to hate themselves even more than I did. And there was this horrible over-turning of common sense, too, where human beings were less valuable than shrubs....and all the news reporters were mildly autististic and had little real grasp of what they wrote...wait...what's that you say? The part about the reporters wasn't a dream? Oh, well, at least the rest of it just a figment of my imagination.

So, hey, guys, where were we in the discussion of affordability of GTSs?
My local dealer wants to give me $300 off his one remailing '07, but Vespa of Columbia (Bob's BMW of Laurel, MD) is listing two '07 Excaliber Gray GTSs for $1,000 off! Is that realistic? Do y'all think I might have a chance at talking my dealer down somewhat?

And BTW, thanks, everybody, for the warm welcome on the boards. I gotta get riding...ya' know to stave off nightmares.

Can you make these cigarettes blink when the brakes are applied? If so, how much would this cost?

Thank you.

not so much "blink" as "drag." We could wire a small nozzle to the brake light circuit that releases a small amount of compressed oxygen onto the fag-ends...towards the cagers behind us, yeah? They'd brake THEN, wouldn't they! [Insert maniacal laughter here.]

the small diameter of the tire means more rotations to travel the same distance and thus more contact leads to excessive wear. The up/down and side-to-side wear of a motorcycle/scooter tire leaving the road surface does cause excessive wear like you said , ask anyone who ever raced a flat track moto....

I follow these topics on environmentalism, fuel efficiency et al, with great interest, however, please clarify this to me: What is more environmentally responsible, driving 3 miles to grab a bite in 25°C weather and 80% humidity, on heavily congested traffic, oftentimes having to go around the block to find a parking place on a 4,300 cc V6 from Detroit with all the pollution control systems, a new catalizer, all in place and in good working order, with energy conserving oil replaced every 3 monts or 3,000 miles; or taking my ET4 125 cc, that in 1998 made Euro 1 or 2 (I don't know, she found me in a used Vespa dealership and came with no literature)?

I look forward for your input. In the mean time, to motivate the answers to my conundrum, the barrel of Light Sweet Crude reached $81.50 per barrel today and OPEC trying to curb the sharp rise in the price of oil, promised to increase the output in some 500,000 barrels per day from November 2007 onwards with no result in the futures market!

Is penny pinching also environmentally sound?

Regards,