Gas-Saving Moment of the Day: Find a Scooter

If you do a lot of city driving, buying a highly efficient scooter for warm-weather months makes a good deal of sense. Scooters can get upward of 90 mpg (sometimes well over 100), they're cheap to insure and are perfect for making short jaunts across town.

You can get your hands on a decent used model for around $1,500, and even the most expensive — which are more like small motorcycles — only cost around $6,000. Scooter sales are up 24% compared to this time last year, and the industry thinks that has to do mostly with high gas prices. This makes sense because sales of less fuel-efficient bikes, like those sold by Harley-Davidson, are down 23% this year after continuously hitting record sales year after year for two straight decades.

It's important to keep in mind that scooters usually top out around 45 mph and are ideal only for street-to-street, gridlocked city traffic. You also might find them severely lacking in safety features (the one they have is called a "helmet") and a very poor choice for winter. Still, for saving gas money on a short commute, it's hard to beat a scooter.

More Are Scooting to Save Gas (CNN)

Related:
More Gas-Saving Moments of the Day (KickingTires)

Comments

The economy as a whole has made people think before spending $8k (low end) for a motorcycle like a Harley. Twenty years of low unemployment have led to the good sales of Harley's and other leisure products like boats and motor homes. I don't see the decision riding on the fuel economy since a they range in from 30-45 in city driving and in the 50s for highway driving.

Also in most states you can ride a scooter without obtaining a motorcycle endorsement on your license. The people buying scooters aren't motorcyclists and don't want to spend the time to try and obtain a motorcycle license.

How about a bicycle or, simply use our built in transporting device??

J when was the last time you took a bicycle or walked?

I've definately started seeing people here in Chicago riding not so much trendy scooters but those horrible little Puch "chicken chaser" moped from the 70s. However, this seems more a reflection of hipsters moving away from their fixed gear bikes rather than a dedicated fuel economy thing.

The problem with these of course are that they are essentially lawnmowers and chuck out more pollution than I dare imagine. Unfortunatly the airheads who i see put putting around on them, blowing out blue smoke, don't seem to care about that...

I'm presuming proper Scooters are rather more stringent with how much air pollution they produce?

2 years ago I've got suzuki Burgman 400.
This is motorcycle-sized scooter, which is highway legal. I go to work using it every time I can. It runs 60-65mpg of mixed driving and is equipped with emission system, ect. Really it is like a car with 1 cylinder. I can drive it 70-75mph and it tops at around 100mph. But to make it more officient I don't normally go faster then 65.
Then my wife can drive our compact and minivan is parked.
So, instead of driving one 29mpg and one 19mpg vehicles we normally drive 29 and 60mpg vehicles. there is some saving there for sure. But it is to hard to calculate all pros and cons.
Pros - use less gas. Less miles (depreciation) on a car.
Cons - up front expense, weather, extra maintenance. DIY maint. helps

nameless,

Bicycle? Last week.
Walk? Everyday business in school's broad campus.

Shank's pony is still the most efficient and green method of transportation

J, yes you and I have a campus to walk around in comfortably, and mine has a good bus system in fact too, but please, the world isn't a campus: a bicycle will get you killed (and with this heat, yeah, you can go ahead and sweat) and public transportation doesn't exist...

I'd like to see if sales and usage remains robust as the weather gets colder.