Automotive industry surely hates motorcycles. Which cost less, burn less and require less maintenance. Similar study was published a month ago from a small university in Turkey. Very similar results.
1- 2 stroke bikes surely pollute more. But they are banned. Simple scooters from 100 cc and up are all 4 stroke. The researchers who test 2 stroke machines are wasting research money since they are disappearing anyway. 2- Bike take less space and do not cause traffic jams. My typical commute to work is almost 150 minute with car. I drive a 1.6 litre engine Nissan which gives me 7.5lt/100km. If I ride to work same commute takes 100 minutes. My Suzuki (1 litre engine with catalytic converter) gives me 5lt/100km. So everyday I am saving 4 litres. How is it possible to pollute more when burning less and I have catalytic converter on the bike as standart? 3- Small 4 stroke scooters all have catalytic converters and burn 3lt/100km. You can not out speed them. With less than 10hp it is useless. 4- You can drive the car same way, speeding and criss crosing the road. Or not having the engine well maintained. I am sure results would be much worse. The issue is to educte the driver/rider to behave on the road. 5- EU is putting strict limits to bikes. Hence most of the bikes have injection and catalytic converters today. Many bikes are not being produced because they can not meet the limits. As a biker for more than 10 years, this is not the first report with such results. I m not surprised. Of course you are consuming with a car. - Pay more for it (averaging 10.000EU more) - You burn more fuel, - You waste more time in city traffic, - You spend more for insurance, maintenance etc..... So the person may end up consuming more and producing less. Now who would benefit out of that? I would like to ask that to Swiss scientist... And finally I hope they do not research how much is waisted in car races like formula-1, Lemans endurance etc... Those machines are loud and very very thirsty. Probabily one of them during 1 race pollutes more than a typical rider can manage whole year. Regards Burak -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Keith Addison Sent: Friday, December 23, 2005 10:40 AM To: biofuel@sustainablelists.org Subject: [Biofuel] Motorbikes '16 times worse than cars for pollution' http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,1671722,00.html Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Motorbikes '16 times worse than cars for pollution' Ian Sample, science correspondent Wednesday December 21, 2005 The Guardian Motorbikes are churning out more pollution than cars, even though they make up only a small fraction of vehicles on the roads, according to a report. Tests on a selection of modern motorbikes and private cars revealed that rather than being more environmentally-friendly, motorbikes emit 16 times the amount of hydrocarbons, including greenhouse gases, three times the carbon monoxide and a "disproportionately high" amount of other pollutants, compared to cars. Ana-Marija Vasic at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research, who led the research, said the need to legislate on emissions from motorbikes has been overlooked because there are so few on the roads. The oversight has lead to a paucity of research into ways of making their engines run more cleanly. In Britain, there are 1,060,000 motorbikes on the road but more than 25m private cars. Dr Vasic's tests showed that, especially in urban traffic, when motorcyclists frequently accelerated quickly, motorbike engines burned fuel inefficiently, giving a sharp peak in emissions. The yearly hydrocarbon emissions of the average two-wheeler in urban traffic measured up to 49 times higher than that of the average car, according to the study, due to be published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology. "The importance of [motorbike] emissions has been underestimated in legislation, giving manufacturers little motivation to improve aftertreatment systems," said Dr Vasic. The tests were carried out on a variety of Yamaha, Piaggio and Honda 50cc scooters and Suzuki, Honda and BMW motorbikes with engine sizes ranging from 800cc to 1150cc. _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/ _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
