Modern Vespa

https://www.insella.it/news/yamaha-tmax-nuova-versione-per-progetto-ibrido-157100

Yamaha Tmax, new plans for a hybrid version?

Yamaha returns to the hybrid with a new project that is very different from what has been seen so far in the motorcycle field. The scooter, which looks like a Tmax, is actually a "pure" electric but uses a small single-cylinder petrol engine only to recharge the batteries and thus increase autonomy.

Yamaha Hybrid

Now almost "normal" in cars, hybrid technology will soon land on scooters and motorcycles as well. Yamaha was among the first to propose "hybrid" concepts, thanks also to its close relationship with Toyota, among the first in the automotive field to have focused on this technology. Just remember the Gen-Ryu, a decidedly futuristic concept presented in 2005 and equipped with the four-cylinder of an R6 "combined" with an electric unit. So far, Piaggio's MP3 Hybrid and Honda's PCX Hybrid (not imported into Europe) have reached series production, while Kawasaki and BMW have also proposed some concepts. The Iwata company - we see it in the projects disseminated by colleagues at bennetts.uk - would seem to be working to develop a new hybrid technology applied to a scooter that looks like the Tmax, in this patent the petrol engine would have the only task of recharging the battery pack. The bike would therefore be a "pure" electric one, with the electric motor (in the patents indicated with the number 51) powered by the battery located under the saddle and connected to the rear wheel via a final chain (or belt) transmission. The petrol engine - a small single-cylinder mounted in front of the main engine and connected to the generator (indicated with the number 42) for recharging the battery - does not seem to have any role in the actual movement of the scooter. The idea is to have a "range extender", that is a system that allows you to increase autonomy by recharging the batteries even on the move. For the moment in any case, it should be remembered, it is only a patent and therefore it is difficult to say if and when it will become a reality.

Attila,

In Italy, what is the cost of 1 liter of gasoline (benzina)?

Bob Copeland
Minnesota

Attila,

Sorry, I forgot you can simply look it up on the internet.

The movement to electric vehicles will be very good for the environment.
It seems when we innovate, there are unintended consequences.

Here is the paradigm: "Numbers do fluctuate"

Gallon of Gas Minnesota $1.99
Gallon of Gas Italy $5.96 3.785 Liters

Essentially, Italians pay three times as much for Gas. A whole lot of the difference is taxes. If the economy moves to all electric, the Government
loses allot of revenue. I am not a Macro-Economist. I expect Italians and
Minnesotans are taxed quite differently.

Another example of improved technology. The USA mandated vehicles to have higher gas mileage and burn cleaner. We funded our highway/bridge infrastructure with gasoline taxes. Cars/trucks performed more efficiently resulting in a large short fall in funds to keep up our roads. To the point, much of our infrastructure is crumbling.

In Minnesota, the tax price on cigarettes went extremely high to discourage
smoking. Side result, the State of Minnesota lost a huge revenue source to
fund social programs.

So, help out your fellow citizens and guzzle gas and smoke yourself to death.

I am currently in a cigar smoke filled room doing my best to fund social programs.



Bob Copeland
Frost Bite Falls Minnesota

Bob, thats an interesting angle for gas price tax. I researched gas prices and gas mileage years ago when gas prices were way up from now. the research told me gas mileage average was about 25mpg in the 80s. and about 27mpg average in 2010 thirty years later. and what was clearly frustrating was there was/is technology not be used that made cars get 100mpg and better. the politics and greed keeping technology suppressed.

there was an article in hot rod vw's many years back. 80s or 90s. a dude had his 1600cc vw bug getting like 65mpg not using any suppressed technology. he added 10 a ten pound ring to the flywheel and then replaced the single throat carb with two two barrels. lowered axle ratio. upped compression. leaned the fuel mixture. then flowed the head and exhausts system for free flow. the setup made far more power while nearly tripling the gas mileage. no sacrifice in reliability.

now we struggle with global warming from the greed.

jerryd,

I am not a conspiracy theorist, but I think you are absolutely correct. The automotive industry had the ability to efficiently build high mileage cars.
Some combination of lobbying from the oil industry and the car industries desire to continue to build vehicles the same way with better profit margins.

Good input,

Bob Copeland

I am conspiracy theorist. and dont mind being called one.

Euro 1,429 gasoline

Euro 1,249 diesel

Euro 0,529 LPG

My car is a Fiat 500 X 1.6 cc gasoline originally then converted to LPG and with EUR 18 and LPG i drive for 300 km.
My scooter consumes between 35km liter and 43km liter.

Bob ... I've never smoked, my health and economic ruin has always been eating and women ...
I never got married, how did I do it? There's always been plenty and you know how it is here ... you've been there.
In summary, I was over fifty years old and the river did not run out (allegory) and if it hadn't been for the pandemic I would still be hunting out there (perhaps with a sling but always something in proportion).

Thanks Attila,

I actually saw Italians driving the Jeep Grand Cherokee when I was last
in beautiful Italia. This Jeep has a 24.6 Gallon Gas Tank.

If I filled the Jeep up in Rome it would cost $196.80
If I filled the Jeep up in Minnesota it would cost $$48.95

The vehicle has a range of 467 miles on one tank (19 miles per gallon) or 751 Kilometers.

This is why we continue to drive non-ecofriendly gas guzzlers in the USA.

Obviously, the price of gas and value of the Euro to the US Dollar varies over time. If my calculations from Attila are accurate, our gas is 1/4th the cost of Italia.

That is the news from Frost Bite Falls Minnesota

Bob Copeland

With modern LPG fuel systems, the engines run very well, the power loss is about 4% and pollute much less.

Here in New Jersey, the price of a gallon of gas has been low for the last few years (hovering around US$2.00-2.40/gal). Roads were a mess when we moved here from Gotham. Along comes a proposition to raise the gas tax to about ¢26/gal (roughly...might be a few cents less). I voted for it. Enough people agreed, and it passed, with a proviso that the funds only get used for roads/bridge/rail infrastructure. And, guess what? Our roads suddenly (okay, a tad longer than "suddenly") got a lot better! Yes, we had to endure various and sundry detours/delays/de-this/de-that, but now, even most of the damned New Jersey Turnpike is actually navigable. And most folks look at this and say wow, my tax dollars finally did something I could see and experience. (Well, they've done that before, but you get my point.) What the increased popularity of EVs does to this equation will be interesting, but for now, New Jersey is the "Crater-Free Highway State."J

Something for youse to look forward to.

amarteriat,

Fixing the road infrastructure with dedicated taxes is the spot on way to do it.
In Minnesota, we have done a relatively good job of maintain high quality roads.

The tax process falls apart when legislatures (City Councils) are unable to keep their hands off the funds and start spending the road tax money on other social programs. Perfect example, the major Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St Paul have horrible in city roads. The amazingly beautiful parkways that weave between lakes and parks are a mess of potholes and patches. AmeriVespa
is scheduled in the Twin Cities for 2021. The pot holes are so bad they are dangerous. Again, these city councils, in their fever to fund social programs,
significantly underfunded road maintenance. Further, the same cities do a equally horrible job of plowing snow. The good roads in Minneapolis and St Paul are the State and Federal expressways that cut through them.

So, the suburbs and the rest of the State of Minnesota have super roads.
The State of Minnesota passed a law the gas tax for roads had to be dedicated and could not be used for anything else.

Back to a scooter topic. If you ride your scoot through the Twin Cities, you need to be an accomplished Down Hill Grand Salomon Skier so you can weave left and right around holes in the road.

Bob Copeland
Frost Bite Falls Minnsota

You make me laugh, sorry ... But I am also amazed by the efficiency in the US.
When you come to Italy on holiday with those agencies that take you on perfect routes with a rented Vespa, if I take you to see beautiful things off the beaten path and you use a Vespa you will need to be familiar with off-road routes and you will risk making bumps on the Vespa for hire as long as you did not crash before due to the damaged asphalt (this is the real Italy!).
Sorry for the sincerity.
PS: Bob, maybe not with the Burgman ... it has bigger wheels, well but maybe a driving course in the pins would be useful ...
But with three wheels you take more holes but it is a little more difficult to fall ... well ... not always.
Renting a Tricity next time might make you feel safer ... maybe.
Surely in a few years you will find more efficient electric vehicles for hire for long-range tourism and who knows what you can do with an electric Vespa.

I used to visit Kuwait in business, long time ago.
Although all those who have been there easily understand the equation, it never failed to 'amuze' me, an European, how drinking water could be more expensive than gas.

Mayby less amuzed by the fact, that Kuwait has long been (mayby still is?) one of the largest consumers of fresh water per capita.... which, again, was not a surprise having seen all those magnificent, cultivated flower beds in the middle of, well, desert.

Apparently the situation have not changed much:a gallon of gas there is now 1.423 USD

...but yeah, we, as many other European countries do get significant tax money from cars - from taxing the actual car purchases to taxing the fuel. At the moment the CO2 hunt is boosted by setting taxes of the new cars according to CO2 emissions. It is clear and already discussed publicly, that once the number of non gasoline/diesel cars will get high, the whole tax system needs to be revised. The most likely version is either 'manual' or data based taxing of the actual car usage....also to avoid the ongoing phenomenom of e.g. Finns just importing old, just a bit less old than what they are driving now, cars from other countries instead of buying new, still expensive electric/plug-in hybrids🙄

Hybrid scooters.... hmmm....I can see the practical point, but somehow I have a feeling those will not be favoured at least by European governments.

This not a new issue. As soon as EVs began to appear in numbers in the US, various states began to enact some kind of highway tax or registration surcharge on EV's to make up for the highway maintenance funds lost by those vehicles not using gasoline or diesel.

Conspiracy theories about companies and the govt. keeping products that make cars get amazing gas mileage have been around forever. During the OPEC Oil Embargo, one went around about a carburetor that made cars get 100 mpg, another one that made cars run on water, and the technology was either bought up by the car or oil companies and withheld from the market, or something nefarious happened to the inventor. The problem with all these conspiracies is the same now as it was then. The world is not the US, and there are a lot of countries where, were this technology available, it would be in use. What do you think a developing nation where the cost or availability of fuel is a major issue would do if they had access to this technology? Why don't you hear about these amazing products coming from countries where gas is $7 a gallon? Because they would come to market if they were real.
that Jeep Cherokee Bob mentioned probably runs on diesel, not gas. And if it does run on gas, either the owner is paying a big surcharge to drive a freaking Jeep, or it has a sub 2,000cc engine that is not available in the US. If you see a lot of them, it's the later.
You can find cars from Ford and GM all over the world that have much better fuel economy than the models sold in the US. But again, they are all diesels or have smaller engines, and are much slower than the US market will accept. Imagine the sheer joy of driving a Chevy Caprice Classic Wagon with a 2 liter Ford Fiesta engine. OTOH, it would be fairly easy to work on.
There is a point to be made that electric vehicles will probably drive the demand for and cost of fuel down, but if that happens, people will buy bigger and faster gas cars, driving the cost of fuel back up. If you make a better rat trap, you get smarter rats.

I predict that eventually taxing road use will be directly related to the distance travelled, rather than taxing carbon-neutral fuels, while taxes on gasoline and LPG will rise exponentially at the same time.

Back to the subject - hybrids make a lot of sense as an interim measure before vehicles go completely carbon-neutral. A gasoline or diesel engine can be designed for maximum efficiency (constant rpm etc) rather than flexibility.

Eventually hydrogen will become the majority vehicle fuel for long distance and/or heavy vehicles - refuelling will only take slightly longer than filling with gasoline does now. Batteries are unlikely in the foreseeable future to get light (or small) enough to make fully electric long-distance trucks viable. Same for aircraft.

Well said.

I was in Sienna about a dozen years ago and there was one parked in the middle of the main town square near the cathedral. It felt like it had been beamed in by Martians, it was so out of place. But it did make me chuckle and brightened my day.

It doesn't take much time in Europe in town centers built for foot traffic, horses, and wagons for your sense of what a big car is to completely change. I had a little Ford Fiesta rental on that trip, and remember looking at a Golf and thinking "Man that's big, I'm glad I don't have to maneuver and park THAT!"

That's true, but you should try to drive a Fiat Panda 4x4 ..! It is very practical and fun, the current version has a two-cylinder, turbo, 85 hp engine with viscous central transmission joint ...

Hydrogen is best viewed as an energy storage medium rather than a fuel. It takes more energy to make it than is released by burning it or running it through fuel cells.

95% of the hydrogen produced today comes from petrochemicals.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production

Over time and progress it will be available at affordable prices .... now it's still a chimera.

Here in the Uk the government is about to announce this week the banning of all new petrol and diesel car sales from 2030. Just 9.5 years from now. Currently the ban comes in during 2040. Not soon enough to meet our carbon emissions target. The ban will allow some Hybrid vehicles to be sold up until 2035. Some european countries have already brought forward this date for a ban on ICE engines and/or are about to do it.

My bro in law bought a new Kia E-Niro a few months ago. It's a brilliant car. performance is huge, economy is amazing. With the traction control off it smokes its tyres if you are not careful and even with traction switched on it's very lively. Hits 0-60 in 7.2secs. Motor is a 204ps unit.

Now here's the thing. It costs him just £6.20 to charge it from 15% to 100% at home. When fully charged it shows, usually about 315 miles in the tank. Cruising at 70mph real world, with other speeds mixed in where necessary, it still manages between 270-285 miles per charge (down to 10% left in battery). Not bad for a medium size SUV. If driving in town and urban areas the car is capable of between 360-390 miles per charge. Service costs are on average 30% of what it costs to service the equivalent petrol car. Electric cars devalue much more slowly than petrol cars and give their full performance all the time over the life of the motor. Until I drove one I wasn't convinced about how good they were. I am now.

Folks buy them more often not just to save the planet, but because they are great cars in their own right offering so many advantages over petrol or diesel cars. The motors require no warming up, no oil changes etc and have service life of hundreds or thousands of miles. Over here high mileage business users are still the main customers for electric cars and vans because of the economics. But they have certainly proved the reliability to be good, and indeed well above average compared to petrol or diesel cars.

From what I can see the states is way behind the rest of the world in adopting green energy, so it may take you guys longer to make the switch. But you need to and will want to once you see the advantages. Europe and indeed China are way way further ahead with some fantastic cars coming out now and many planned for next year with large range batteries.

Many motor manufacturers, including one of Hydrogens biggest advocates Honda, have abandoned development of hydrogen cars after years of trying to get them right. There are too many issues to solve and electric is far better. And you don't have to look far to see why. One of those issues, and a big one is the infrastructure. Other technical issues are also complicated and make hydrogen a difficult fuel to use which ever hydrogen technology you decide to use. We were paid to develop an engine to run on Hydrogen years ago. That wasn't too hard but even so there were big issues going forward which made it untenable.

There's an irony here. Just as we get petrol engines "right", fairly clean, very economical, very very reliable etc etc...we ban them! My own car in which I have been driving 4000 miles per month on many occasions (before lock down) will give me up 70-74mpg, but a more regular 68-69mpg. That's cruising on our crowded roads at around 60mph. Yet, even that's much more expensive to run than the more powerful Kia E-Niro electric car which is faster and immeasurably more economic to run.

The cost of fuel at the pump is of course not the whole cost. While you exercise your 'right' to run your inefficient ICE vehicle at xyz dollars/pounds/Euro per gallon/litre - everyone else pays the cost from breathing air that's more polluted than it needs to be.

The medium term future is going to be electric. We just need the Grid to get smarter.

A) too high price, 90% of the population will not be able to afford it; this will also cause political problems that cannot be talked about here in the forum.
B) the cost of replacing the batteries is not considered when the merits are highlighted but there is, it is high and those who buy know it.
C) if the batteries are not standardized, making them unified and therefore instantly replaceable to allow long journeys and zero recharging times, these vehicles will remain only a few and for a select few.

There is no common strategy on a global level, as long as there is no international unification legislation these projects will be like meteors, they will pass quickly and destroy the positive sides in the eyes of ordinary people and everything will be delayed for many years.
If I were more paranoid I would say that it is a kind of conspiracy in which to overly promote electric vehicles when the main supporting technology (accumulators understood as batteries) has different forms and principles of application. Yes ... I agree with you but we must also be a little more realistic, I mean that the change does not happen by buying the low-tech electric vehicles (they are still like this, I am convinced) that are in production today; because technological trappings apart from the heart of the vehicle (the engine) is more refined to have more power and speed but this has a price in terms of energy consumption that must be supported by the batteries. They improve but not too much and too slowly, I fear that just ten years will not be enough.
In the meantime, planetary pollution worsens and other major sources of pollution are not eliminated and continue to soil ... planes, ships, industrial vehicles and much of the third world which will continue to use internal combustion engines.

The remedy would be radical but utopian ...
Reduce and control the production of fuels but it will never happen, the countries that do business with oil are many, too many and will never give a bone as long as there is meat attacked.
For this reason, I do not believe that electric traction will ever have a real future and in any case will contribute very little to reducing air pollution.

What kind of car is that? And I can only assume you are looking at an instantaneous mileage readout, not calculating for the tank. And perhaps using Imp. gallons.

While it is possible to get that kind of mileage using very light, very small, streamlined cars that in no way meet modern safety specs, even hybrids don't do that well, tank to tank.

How exactly would the government and fuel companies suppress a 'breakthrough' in mileage, especially these days with the internet? Considering that nearly all car manufacturers are strugling to meet CAFE requirements, they'd welcome with open arms a car that could get 70 mpg.

Fact is, unless you can build the engine out of materials that require no cooling system, and run with sufficient compression/expansion ratio at very low revs so the exhaust gas is barely above room temp, the maximum thermodynamic efficiency of the engine is pretty well fixed at around 30%. F1 claims a record of around 50%, but that's illusory, since they are counting the energy recovered by the turbo and regen braking. You can get into compound engines that recover some of the wasted exhaust heat, but then you pay in weight and complexity.

I'm gonna say that I doubt a 65 MPG VW.

Perhaps we should worry more about the viruses that will come, they have done a lot of damage but also lowered pollution.

Even the politically-correct are coming to admit that human population (perhaps overpopulation) is a prime cause of ecological harm. This virus probably won't address that much, but the next one might.

Surely.

The most interesting thing I saw on an electric vehicle lately was on the Rivian trucks that were used in Long Way Up. You could tow one about 15 miles and get a fairly good charge. Not something you want to do all the time, but pretty cool when they needed it.

You'll have to change jobs and sell batteries and fuses.
One way or another, progress wants its victims.

did a quick search looking for the article and found a different one. doesnt sound like car was modified. just a slippery wax job and high pressure in the tires. and driving a rather slow 42mph. yielded 66mpg and i think the 57 came with a 1200cc?

https://www.mlive.com/news/jackson/2014/03/peek_through_time_1957_volkswa.html

and then there is this modern competitions
can you believe 2500 miles per gallon?

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2011/04/110418-shell-ecomarathon-houston-winners/

https://www.shell.us/media/2019-media-releases/students-put-energy-efficient-cars-to-the-test-at-shell-eco-mara.html

in the 70s the winning vehicles were getting 650mpg

and then. wait for it. world record holder 14,573 mpg
https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/most-fuel-efficient-vehicle

so yes. maaaaybe gas mileage is politically controlled?

and for down to earth entry I would buy right now

https://hondanews.eu/gb/en/cars/media/pressreleases/57278/honda-sets-new-guinness-world-records-title-for-fuel-efficiency-averaging-10031-miles-per-gallon-in

At some point this thing's average MPG is going to start looking pretty awesome, though it'll take a while to balance out its first few minutes...

howdy, well i have always been one to tread where there aren't any angels , so here goes

in california the electricity companies are unable to provide reliable electricity at nominal voltage a great deal of the time. how can one rely on an electric vehicle when you have no way to charge it. and that's with a very low percentage of electric vehicles. think of the millions of vehicles now running on gasoline all lined up trying to suck electricity out of a dry plug. why aren't we being reminded of that while being told all vehicles must be electric. i think the solution to that is already known but so frightening that it can't be revealed to us.

my never to be humble opinion
ken

Oh, no problem. If you live in a country that can't reliably provide one of the basic utilities you just buy a power wall from your local friendly electric car dealer. Made out of batteries from your old electric car that you don't like to drive anymore because the seats are an unfashionable colour. It will help power your neighbours toaster oven and in times of grid distress.

And if the power's out, so are the local gas station's pumps.

All of those would legally be considered motorcycles. None meet safety standards, most are single passenger. None would be safe to drive in real traffic.

Sure, you can put a turbocharged moped engine in a VW, pump the tires up to 60 PSI, and measure the mileage at a constant speed and get some impressive figures, toddling along at 15 MPH.

But real cars need a 0-60 time that doesn't require a calendar. And real cars stop and start, and need to keep up with traffic. And need a stopping distance that isn;t measured in furlongs.

Actually, consumers have far more to do with disappointing mileage than governments. Modern cars have way more power than they need, because that is what consumers want. When they use that power, mileage goes down. The old VW bugs got by with 40-50 HP. Not fast, but pretty frugal. Modern economy cars can rival 60's era muscle cars for 0-60 times. If Honda or Toyota put a car in a showroom that had 50 HP, but got 70 MPG, they'd sell dozens.

Although the government safety standards have ballooned up car weights, which hasn't helped either. But I doubt any of the major manufacturers would voluntarily market a murdermobile, weighing 1500 lbs, with no crush zones, side beams, fuel tank protection, rollover protection, etc. The product liability lawyers would be trampling each other signing up customers.

It is a matter of simple numbers. A gallon of gas has a certain amount of energy. Modern IC engines waste about 2/3 of that energy. What's left needs to accelerate a car with a certain amount of mass, and maintain speed against a certain amount of aero and rolling drag. Oh, and last at least 100,000 miles, and meet emissions regs.

All the examples shown are tiny to reduce aero drag, very light, with hard, slim tires to reduce rolling drag. And usually tiny engines operating at peak efficiency. Interesting engineering exercises, but in no way applicable to real-world cars.

Some of the Solar Challenge race cars probably do even better, numerically, considering that most of their energy comes from the sun. Although, if memory serves, they start out the day with a fully-charged battery. If not for that, they'd get an infinite number of miles per gallon.