Category: Green Scooters

UW Engineers Get It Wrong

University of Wisconsin engineering students tackled the problem of why 50cc 4 stroke Vespas are so slow and no fun to ride. Correction, they went after trying to improve the gas mileage by designing some sort of fuel cell system to aid normal gasoline combustion. They claim a ten percent reduction of fuel used. Let me list their mistakes in no particular order of significance.

1) They are trying to improve the fuel efficiency of a 4 stroke 50cc Vespa
2) They aren’t abandoning gasoline all together to go 100% Hindenberg
3) All the dorks pictured are paying no attention to the girl on the scooter. WTF boys?!

All this points to a need to request the University of Wisconsin to stick to stem cells and shortening the lines for beer at hockey games. (I haven’t been in a decade or more, so they may have banned beer sales all together).

Finance a Vectrix

Electric scooter manufacturer Vectrix Vectrix announced yesterday that they’ll offer financing through Sparta Financial. The Vectrix VX-1 seems to be the only currently-available electric bike that can compete with over-50cc gas scooters’ speed and range (A Vectrix is holding the lead in the Cold Weather Challenge, for instance), but its price tag is daunting, apparently they’re banking on financing (and a less expensive, lower-performance VX-1E model) to make the bike more attractive to consumers.

“One of those little things that buzz by in traffic”

Just when you think you’ve seen every vintage Vespa film there is, YouTube digs up more gold. This 1961 Vespa commercial, presumably produced by ’60s East-coast distributor Vescony, makes a very clear argument for the Vespa as a commuter vehicle, then pushes their luck with exaggerated mileage promises (125mpg?) and oversimplification of the engine to “three moving parts.” (The party line has always been four, which already seems a bit oversimplified, unless you’re counting, for example, the entire transmission consisting of the gearshift linkage, gear cluster, shifting cross, and Christmas tree as “one part.”) A great find. (Thanks to Dave McCabe.)

UPDATE: VCOA historian John Gerber comments:

It’s definitely Vescony, but it’s 1964 NOT 1961. It’s a Carl Alley produced commercial. Several were produced, but Piaggio would not share in any of the costs for airing them. They were never shown nationally, but some of the larger dealers showed them locally during non-primetime. In general, they were way too expensive to be shown even at off times. I saw one only once for my local dealer during a Saturday afternoon movie re-run. If Piaggio had enough sense to underwrite serious advertising in the U.S. things might have gone a lot different for them.

Charles Karel Bouley has lots of green

I applaud you, Charles Karel Bouley. Hopefully typical Americans will take a break from job-hunting or digging for milk money in their hand-me-down couch cushions to follow in your green footsteps and buy two Piaggio MP3s. We’ll all slap some solar panels on our San-Francisco-area beach house/recording studios, too, while we’re at it. Thanks for making such a huge, inspirational sacrifice for America.

Small Displacement Hybrid Racing Revealed

MotoGPmatters.com (aka KropotinThinks) reported on the efforts of KTM (warning: poor, resource-burdening flash site) to implement a Kinetic Energy Recovery System on their 125 cc Grand Prix machines. Kropotkin cites a report by the Spanish motorcycle website Motosolo describing a system used last fall in the race at Valencia and again during testing this winter at the same circuit. The system uses a capacitor rather than a battery to store energy during braking and can reintroduce approximately 2.5 HP for use when needed. It may be surprising to find efficiency enhancing technology applied to a class of machines that is already known for being relatively more fuel efficient efficient than other forms of transport but that 2.5 HP could really come in handy when tenths of seconds count.

While exciting new hybrid and electric scooters and concept vehicles have been reported here in the past, they have their challenges and barriers to widespread implementation. One of the biggest problems for both all electric plug-ins and hybrids like the Toyota Prius is the cost, weight and disposal of large toxic chemical-laden batteries. The use of a smaller energy storage unit like a capacitor could be a strategy to not store so much energy where one could drive for extended periods of time without combustion, but to assist a motor at specific points in vehicle use. The energy that normally would be wasted as heat during braking could be harnessed to turn near useless engine applications such as a small four-stroke engine that can’t get out of it’s own way in traffic into a useful machine. Where tenths of seconds count in racing, they may be even more important when that cab driver decides his lane position is more important than your life. The increase in efficiency may allow internal combustion engines to be designed smaller and less powerful knowing that some other stored energy could be used on-demand. One could even envision a 25cc four stroke with a capacitive KERS system that could navigate urban traffic and get 150 mpg!

Vectrix And Soundspeed Scooters Point Shrink Rays At Electric Scooters

This week the Vectrix electric maxi-scooter has proven itself in the CWC and the company has announced a smaller version of the ‘zero-emissions’ (near you) scooter. Autobloggreen says the VX-2 is slightly smaller and likened performance to a 50cc scooter. Top speed is claimed at 30 mph with a range of 45-50 miles. The numbers don’t seem like anything new in the electric scooter world. Old EVT Yamaha Vino clone scooters (warning: sound on page) had similar specifications. The literal lingua franca scooter website, Scooter-Station.com, has a photo posted and reports that the scooter will weigh in at over 400 lbs. Again nothing new in the weighty world of electric scooters.

In more inspiring news, Soundspeed Scooters in Seattle is offering a Lithium polymer battery pack for the EVT 168 (linked above) and 4000e scooters. The Li polymer power plant is supposed to reduce the weight of the scooter by 100 lbs. I’d imagine the battery could also make the proposition of their Electric Vespa conversion system a bit more attractive as well.

The two developments leave a shopper for a small electric scooter with two general choices. Neither choice is an inexpensive option with the Lithium version of the EVT 168 coming in at around 4200.00 and the Vectrix VX-2 at around 5200.00. But it will come down to choosing a novel chassis design with a heavy curb weight or a slightly more svelte scooter with dated, less inspiring design approach.

“How to Fix a Flat”

New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman feels about as sorry for American automakers as most scooterists do. If they want to blame trade unions and the recession for their situation, instead of thier stubborn refusal to innovate and plan for the future, someone else will be happy to manufacture cars for us. Throwing more money at the idiots in Detroit might save some jobs, but not for long. I’m not sure Friedman’s ideas are better (even as a closet socialist, I don’t want the government running the auto industry), but it’s better than giving them free reign with giant wads of taxpayer money.

Just for fun, here’s Bob Lutz on 60 Minutes, pretending to believe that he’s excited about the Chevy Volt.