Modern Vespa

http://www.veoh.com/videos/v16334454jrZXw7Xn

Ye old 2 stroke yeah but the modern vespas no way.

Scooters, 2006 and newer have catalytic converters and other emission devices just like cars whcih reduce emission.

Wayne B

I'm pretty sure all modern vespas are better than SUVs, even those before 2006. And of course, they use less gas, which is also an environmental plus.

Why did they interview that EPA woman right next to the fountains? You can barely hear her! DUH!

When you take in the bigger picture, classic twostrokes don't Pollute more but one will last many lifetimes unlike modern scooters that will end up in the dump in a few years and when you get another, that one will be made in some dirty coal burning factory somewhere in china.

Sooo........guessing you have a vintage scooter?

1) politicians try anything to make you spend more $ on energy

2) none of the american auto makers make any scooters

3) most people cannot handle 2 wheels

4) harley will never make small motorcycles

5) EPA? they said ground zero's air condition was safe

6) haters

Yep.

As for the EPA and others I'm worried that a lot of there policy decisions on the whole green house thing will have more effect on our freedoms (higher taxes, fines, prison, etc) then the climate of the planet.

+1

Yes, they do pollute more in parts per million.

fact. even 4-strokes.

that's only about half the story. There are about a billion threads where everyone argues and eventually gets sore in the rear about this, in particular when they're sold on the notion that riding a scooter is green cos of the gas mileage.

http://www.idahostatesman.com/newsupdates/story/463709.html
http://ecomodder.com/blog/2008/09/01/motorcycles-scooters-great-environment-wrong/
http://www.wheels.ca/article/334875

blah blah blah.

It's just a fact. Better gas mileage is not the whole story, and neither's talking about the degree of polluting. But it's irrefutable that scooters put out more hydrocarbons.

Fair summary. I would just like to somehow get the whole of at least one story! It's really hard to get accurate info for cradle to grave energy use for a given product.

One thing is for sure, there is no getting around stoichiometry. Carbon in = Carbon out. It all just depends on where you look.

So, if my SUV gets 20 mpg, and my Vespa gets 70 mpg....

And I have to transport myself and my 4 family members 70 miles, do I use more gas making one trip in the SUV, or 4 trips back and forth on the Vespa?

heh, you ask a lot.

no company selling goods is going to tell you about the downside of their products.

no reactive pro-x or movement oriented organization is going to focus on the good things for a product..

I guess that's why god invented the intarwebz: research.

and porn. research and porn.

Nope. False.

Right; until you do the Evap hose 'adjustment,' rejetting the carb on your 2006 or newer, or install an aftermarket exhaust.

There are no how to articles on any of those topics anywhere on the interwebs.

Lets just continue to kid ourselves about how environmentally friendly scooters are - it is much easier that way. OK?

If my scooter puts 2X the parts/million in the air than my car, my car only needs to get 25MPG to be PPM neutral, then the only difference is my fuel budget is 2X.... Hmmmm can't take the $$ with me, and won't live long enough to see the environment wrecked much more than it already is.

I dub thee Dream Crusher!

I completly agree with you, I some how feel that people here will disagree. I've seen these threads in the past

Seconded!

Srsly - I was thinking, "Oh here we go again," when I saw the title.

Hey I fly in a piston driven small airplane up to 10,000 ft and then jump out for 40 seconds of freefall and a 3 min canopy ride and repeat this over and over again every weekend. I wonder how much that pollutes???
haha

What about the Harley Topper?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harley-Davidson_Topper

Didn't I read somewhere that HD just bought a scooter company or is going to start selling scoots?

They bought MV Augusta, which makes megabuck litre+ sportbikes. Not really scooters.

No. But you may have seen this pic of my Harley dealer who is now selling Vespa and Piaggio scooters.

Harley's been our vespa dealer for years The red headed stepchild syndrome To bad they don't have good mechanics. However i doubt a just vespa shop could make it so i guess it gets some out there. JRSJR our's looks just like yours. Must be the "look" they're going for these days. Where's it at in richmond?

if you're in an area where lanesplitting is legal, scooters spend far less time sitting in traffic burning petrol uselessly. just another variable to add to the equation

Still worse than a cage.

i dunno. i'm sure it varies considerably with length of time spent sitting in traffic... and even if it doesn't completely offset the greater ppm put out by a scooter, surely it makes more economic and environmental sense burning fuel to actually get somewhere, as opposed to idling in a traffic queue.

Are you more worried about 'pollution' which is commonly thought of as smog, or global warming, which is mainly a function of CO2 release (the amount of fuel used)?



Regards
Harvey

Parts per million of what? Hydrocarbons... Hmm... so not CO2, right? So it's still the case that the lower your gas mileage, the less CO2 you're emitting - pretty basic, right?

Furthermore, the particulate emissions present in vintage 2-stroke smoke are beneficial for global dimming - thereby helping to stave off global warming while we work on getting cleaner energy sources online. Vintage riders, you're doing a heckuva job! Be proud.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming

Bet you didn't know that, Fox 7 "Energy Team"!!

I'm not, but then again I am one of those that does not follow the line that human produced CO2 is causing "global climate change." Look at Mars. NASA has showed that the ice cap on Mars is melting a similar rate as our own. As far as I know humans have no CO2 emissions on Mars, but who knows. There is also this article:

There may be many reasons why you might want to ride a motorcycle or scooter, but clearer air should not be among them.

Despite their reputation as being more earth-friendly than other motorized forms of transport, two-wheelers are actually some of the biggest polluters on the road.

"The cleanest motorcycle engine is far dirtier than the dirtiest car," says Warren Milner, Honda Canada's senior motorcycle manager.

In fact, two-wheelers appear to be so dirty that Wheels was unable to convince a local dealer to run a Drive Clean test on them because the emissions could seriously damage the testing machines.

This might be news to advocates of two-wheelers as a more earth-friendly means of commuting in congested urban areas like the GTA.

The confusion seems to arise because motorcycles and scooters burn far less fuel than even the most fuel-efficient car or truck. Carbon dioxide emissions are directly proportional to the amount of gas you burn, meaning two-wheelers contribute fewer greenhouse gas emissions per kilometre than their four-wheeled cousins.

But that's only one part of the air quality equation. When it comes to emissions of nitrogen oxide and hydrocarbons - so-called smog-forming pollutants - motorcycles and scooters emit many times more per kilometre than cars and trucks.

In the lead up to tougher emissions rules in 2005 - the first in 27 years - the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found the standards for motorcycles and scooters to be 90 times dirtier than those for cars. One of its comparisons was a Yamaha YZR R6, which emitted 4.19 grams/mile of hydrocarbons compared to a Dodge Durango with 4WD, which emitted .073 gm/mile.

A widely cited Swiss study from 2005 of eight different types of scooters and motorcycles found that despite the proportionately smaller number of two-wheelers on the road, they accounted for about one-fifth of nitrous oxide emissions of the cars.

Those nitrous oxides lead to smog, and the Ontario Medical Association says smog-related illnesses lead to the premature deaths of 5,800 Ontario residents a year - a toll expected to double in the next 20 years.

If scooters and motorcycles are not as clean as cars, it's simply because the standards in place haven't required them to be, says Honda's Milner.

"If we were to force the same levels of emissions onto scooters as are on automobiles, they'd be bigger, heavier and more expensive by a fair bit," he says.

That said, regulators have been toughening emissions rules in recent years, and the regulations will only get tighter in future. Canada, for example, imposed tougher scooter and motorcycle emissions regulations in 2006.

"All our standards are in line with the EPA, which are recognized as being the most stringent national standards in the world for on-road vehicles," says Ed Crupi, chief of the Regulatory Development Section of Environment Canada's Transportation Division.

The new regulations limit smog-forming pollutants to 1.4 g/km, But that is still more than 10 times the 0.1 g/km limit imposed on passenger cars.

Crupi's department has a monitoring program in place, based on self-certification by the companies. They test a range of vehicles to make sure the manufacturers are complying, but they don't have the resources to test every vehicle.

with two-wheelers, measuring emissions can be tricky. When Wheels wanted to set up a test of emissions from a 2008 Harley Davidson Dyna Low Rider and a 2008 Kymco People S 125, we got a flat refusal.

Ken Shaw Toyota Lexus was reluctant to test either bike on its Drive Clean testing equipment. The dealership also cautioned that the dirty air from their engines could clog the machine's filters, resulting in a repair bill of as much as $5,000.

Apart from clogging the filters, it's doubtful the lower-powered scooter could even turn the tension on the dynamometers.

The province's DriveClean program has wrestled with what to do about two-wheelers. A test on a two-wheeler would be problematic, says Peter Campbell, program advisor with the provincial Ministry of Environment's Drive Clean program.

"We looked at it, but testing was going to be so horrendously expensive to try to capture all the different varieties available and find environmental standards for them," he says.

"It would be quite expensive for vehicles that are driven four months a year and usually just on weekends."

Though some jurisdictions use a test that measures emissions while idle, nitrous oxide emissions only happen when the motor is under load.

The Swiss study from 2005 actually did hook up eight motorcycles to a dynamometer and measured the output. The results were not encouraging.

More than half the two-wheelers tested (from a Yamaha YN 50 cc two-stroke to a BMW 1150GS four-stroke) failed the statutory test for motorcycle emissions, leading the authors to call for more periodic maintenance and inspection of two-wheelers.

Despite the lower mileage and fewer numbers than cars, the study found that the motorcycles in Switzerland produce higher CO emissions by a factor of 2.7 and higher hydrocarbon emissions by a factor of 16 in urban conditions.

These facts are not new to the motorcycle industry, which has cut the emissions on its motorcycles considerably in order to match current rules - and the tougher ones still to come. And the bikes they produce not only need to meet the rules when they are new, but for the next five years as they age.

Honda's Milner points out that his firm, like many that manufacture two-wheelers, sells only cleaner-burning four-strokes with pollutant-reducing equipment similar to catalytic converters in cars (see sidebar).

The EPA itself says in its report that the 2003 Yamaha YZF-R6 has only one-quarter the emissions produced by the 2002 model, due largely to technology advancements from the manufacturer.

The Canadian Scooter Corporation, which sells Piaggio and the iconic Vespa scooters, recently acknowledged air quality concerns surrounding its products by introducing a campaign in which it would buy carbon credits from the privately owned Carbon Reduction Fund for each Vespa it sold until the end of 2008.

The company would buy carbon credits equal to the carbon footprint a Vespa scooter is estimated to produce over the next three years, based on fuel consumption and emissions data.

So for each $5,400 Vespa S sold, the company will give $14 to the fund, and another $2 to the Environmental Defence.

It says something about the current environment that a company whose scooters sales are up more than 15 per cent over the same period last year would feel the need to launch such a campaign.

"We didn't think that by introducing this program we were going to sell a whole bunch more bikes," says Jeremy Logan, vice-president of sales and marketing for the Canadian Scooter Corporation. "We wanted to highlight the fact that driving a Vespa is a good thing to do."

Aside from the marketing angle, Vespa may also be taking a more concrete solution. Rumours abound about a gas-electric hybrid version of the Vespa LX, of which Logan rode a prototype a couple of years ago.

"I've heard they may be rolling it out at the big motorcycle show in Milan in November," says Logan. "If they do, we could get it here sometime in 2009."

Though hybrid scooters seem like an obvious - and welcome - step towards a cleaner two-wheeler, in the short-term, the saving grace may be that there are only just over 400,000 motorcycles and scooters on the road in Canada, compared with 14 million cars and light duty trucks.

"Of all on-road vehicles, motorcycles account for less than 1.5 per cent of emission of smog-forming pollutants," says Environment Canada's Crupi.

But if gas keeps going up in price and people cast about looking for fuel-sipping alternatives like scooters or motorcycles, the days of hiding in plain sight may be coming to a close.

Snipping to bring up one point; I hate this type of article. They cite some 'fact' that's five years out of date to support their supposition. The original EPA report was an attempt to pollution regulate boats, and highway going motorcycles in 2002.

From Scooter The Polluter Scooter pollution article
Is your scooter a polluter?
Scooters and Motorcycles Pollute 10x more than SUVs, Article


Regards
Harvey

I see your point, but what I'm getting at is I don't believe in climate change being human caused. That being said I am working on my masters of science in earth, environmental, and physical sciences, I would also like to add that I am in the minority of my opinion among my peers. I just haven't seen anything that conclusively links human industrialization to climate change. Where I have seen evidence of climate change other planets that mirror our own.

I am not saying I'm right you're wrong. It's just I've never been shown proof.

This is the point where I'm just kicking a dead horse.

zzz...

+1

I think the conventional wisdom championed by that world-renowned scientist, Al Gore, is being challenged more frequently with each passing day - or so it seems. What's important to understand is that there are all sorts of pseudo factions with an agenda hoping to promote them. One even discourages the consumption of meat because farts from the animals we eat are doing serious detriment to the environment. Gimme a break!

Wish you'd included a link to the article.

I'll have to look around but I used to have one from the 70's where scientist were determined that we were on our way into an ice age and they had plans coat the poles with black powders (coal if I remember right) in order to absorb more heat so as to stop the ice age and melt the poles in the process. Genius I tell you! I'll have to look for it later though as I am going to sleep.

7) [disclaimer got this from a new-ager] "The universe is heating up and the Earth's internal humming is going at much faster rate than in the past. All of which are a sign that the Mayan 2012 predictions are coming true."
So, in this person's view "the global warming debate is being contrived by companies to sell new and different products, and by the environmental groups to make us feel hopeful and by the governments to control us."

I don't lose any sleep over my Vespa (or my SUV, for that matter) not being "green". I'm more than amused by those who do. I ride it 'cause it's cheap transportation and it's fun and/or both!

I'm hoping 'climate change' is human caused, because I need it to warm up our Minnesota winters soon so that I can ride year round with my Corazzo Shop on and nothing else as waiting on nature will just take too long.

Well, I may be wrong (and it DOES seem to be the case). But I frankly don't give a damn.

I ride two-strokes myself so I never thought I was being green in the emissions sense. Seems I'd overestimated the 4-strokes most others here ride. Guess I'm too busy enjoying my scoots to do any such math

Believe me, nobody has crushed any of my dreams here

Useful to learn (though I'm not quite sure where it will come up in my daily routine, but I like learning)