Commuting via bike is good for cars and traffic, too

[Zipper2T]

Well it's obvious isn't it. You need to get off those big gas guzzling bikes and on to something like this...http://www.honda-motorcycles.co.nz/N...-arriving-soon

[Phantom Limb]

Well it's obvious isn't it. You need to get off those big gas guzzling bikes and on to something like this...http://www.honda-motorcycles.co.nz/N...-arriving-soon

I'd rather die
Naught wrong with commuting on a 1300

[tbs]

I'd rather die
Naught wrong with commuting on a 1300

Funny thing. My wife isn't really a big fan of my motorbike, but when I asked if she'd be happier if I just rode a scooter she gave me a funny look and said she just couldn't see me on one.
Me neither. I would die a little inside every time I got on.... Not judging any scooter riders.... just how I am.

[ducatilover]

Well it's obvious isn't it. You need to get off those big gas guzzling bikes and on to something like this...http://www.honda-motorcycles.co.nz/N...-arriving-soon

Bugger that, it has no penis.

[BMWST?]

But my bikes also emit moar greenhousey gassey shits.

I do think more bikes is a great idea, perhaps it would increase the general driver's ability to see us

i dont know if that is true..the nz car fleet is still one of the oldest around

[James Deuce]

i dont know if that is true..the nz car fleet is still one of the oldest around

It is true. Bikes are appallingly bad polluters especially nitrides of oxygen, the most toxic stuff ejected from exhausts. Litres per 100km for 1000cc bikes and up are worse than 13 year old 1000cc cars. Hell, my Z750 was 2L/100km worse than our Ford Ka. The big enemies for bikes are revs and packaging. You can't get enough scrubbers in the exhaust system to make a bike as clean as a car, even a 13 year old one, and the revs issue is being addressed by bikes like the NC700. I reckon low pressure turbochargers will make a return to motorcycling soon, because a lot of people in toyland, oops, Western society, struggle with "little" bikes like the NC700 and power outputs under 100hp. Keep revs down and boost torque that way, as well as addressing noise.

[BMWST?]

It is true. Bikes are appallingly bad polluters especially nitrides of oxygen, the most toxic stuff ejected from exhausts. Litres per 100km for 1000cc bikes and up are worse than 13 year old 1000cc cars. Hell, my Z750 was 2L/100km worse than our Ford Ka. The big enemies for bikes are revs and packaging. You can't get enough scrubbers in the exhaust system to make a bike as clean as a car, even a 13 year old one, and the revs issue is being addressed by bikes like the NC700. I reckon low pressure turbochargers will make a return to motorcycling soon, because a lot of people in toyland, oops, Western society, struggle with "little" bikes like the NC700 and power outputs under 100hp. Keep revs down and boost torque that way, as well as addressing noise.

what about 13 yr old galants falcons commodores and toyota surfs

[davereid]

It is true. Bikes are appallingly bad polluters especially nitrides of oxygen, the most toxic stuff ejected from exhausts. Litres per 100km for 1000cc bikes and up are worse than 13 year old 1000cc cars. Hell, my Z750 was 2L/100km worse than our Ford Ka. The big enemies for bikes are revs and packaging. You can't get enough scrubbers in the exhaust system to make a bike as clean as a car, even a 13 year old one, and the revs issue is being addressed by bikes like the NC700. I reckon low pressure turbochargers will make a return to motorcycling soon, because a lot of people in toyland, oops, Western society, struggle with "little" bikes like the NC700 and power outputs under 100hp. Keep revs down and boost torque that way, as well as addressing noise.

Simply not true.

A modern fuel injected motorcycle with a catalytic converter has all the same tools as a car for removing emissions.

The cat converter on my V8 is only the same size as the one on my ER6F, but the engine is ten times the size, and needs ten times as much exhaust gas processed for any given rpm. Or 6 times as much for any given speed.

Around town stopped at the lights its even worse.

The converter on my car however is six years and 65000 km old. So it doesn't in all likelyhood work any more.

And even when new, it had to be hot to operate. So on an average 7km commute, it never did any work anyway.

With an average fleet age of 13.8, and an average commute of 7km, neither bikes or cars really gain any benefit from converters. They are simply 10kg of rubbish being carted around.

Compare realistic commuter vehicles - the new Honda stop start scooter with fuel injection, cat converter and 190mpg economy to a hybrid car, and consider the environmental cost of manufacture and disposal of both, and bikes are the clear winner.

Converters dont reduce greenhouse gasses by the way, they make more of them. They reduce gasses toxic to humans by converting them to greenhouse gasses.

[James Deuce]

what about 13 yr old galants falcons commodores and toyota surfs

Even those have Catalytic converters and lambda sensors and air injected into the exhaust. The Toyota Surfs would be the cleanest of the those, even with dirty injectors. Just because you can see the exhaust fumes doesn't mean it's more toxic than something apparently emitting no visible pollution. A well setup two stroke on-song is pretty efficient, but outside of it's peak efficiency is pissing raw, unburnt fuel into the atmosphere. Four stroke motorcycles used to do that too, but it wasn't visible, that's improved now, sometimes at the cost of ride-ability especially when you get the just off idle lurch when you crack the throttle.

I try to compare like with like. A 750cc bike and a 1300cc car still aren't a great match, but it highlights the disparity in motorcycle consumption and emissions with cars when you consider that the engine in the Ka first saw the light of day in 1959. By the time in went in my Ka it had fuel injection, and a Cat, put out half the hp of the Z750 and cost less to run the the Zed. The Zed's engine is a sleeved down version of the Z1000 engine that saw the light of day in 2003. You;d expect 40 years of engine tech to give it an advantage in terms of consumption and emissions. The NC700 gets us back to '60s Brit bike figures.

If you adjust consumption and emissions figures by capacity, bikes look way worse than 13 year old Commodores, Falcons and Surfs.

[davereid]

You;d expect 40 years of engine tech to give it an advantage in terms of consumption and emissions. The NC700 gets us back to '60s Brit bike figures.If you adjust consumption and emissions figures by capacity, bikes look way worse than 13 year old Commodores, Falcons and Surfs.

Well you can't adjust consumption and emission figures by engine size and then say bikes are bad.

As they are ridden with their unadjusted for engine size ie small capacity engines.

For the last 40 years we have been wealthy enough to buy motorcycles just for fun, not real transport. Manufacturers just wanted to put horsepower in.

That trend is changing, and manufacturers have just started to build motorcycles focused on economy and practical transport again.

In five years time cars will have come along way but there will be bikes that have come further still.

While some will still buy V8s and superbikes, some will choose economy and efficiency.

[Subike]

I wish there was a fuel freely available that was more user friendly to bikes.
I think that the available 91 & 95 fuels have so many additives in them, that the fuel burn in a small capacity motor can not be at its best.
If this were so then 91 & 95 would be all thats needed on the race track.

The other huge saving bikes can produce is the fact of less time commuting, less wear and tear on the roads and happier people who are less strained from fighting the mornings and evenings traffic congestion.

I took a cage to work for the first time in over a year just before Christmass, FwaerKK!! never again.

[James Deuce]

Well you can't adjust consumption and emission figures by engine size and then say bikes are bad.

As they are ridden with their unadjusted for engine size ie small capacity engines.

For the last 40 years we have been wealthy enough to buy motorcycles just for fun, not real transport. Manufacturers just wanted to put horsepower in.

That trend is changing, and manufacturers have just started to build motorcycles focused on economy and practical transport again.

In five years time cars will have come along way but there will be bikes that have come further still.

While some will still buy V8s and superbikes, some will choose economy and efficiency.

The single cat bikes get is in no way anything like the emissions controls cars get, most have 2 or 3 now, plus engine off technology when the engine isn't under load, and when the throttle is off in a car, it's off, unlike a motorcycle's, because throttle control on a bike is hugely more influential on vehicle control in a car. Infinitely variable engine maps aren't something that can be adopted on bikes, again due to the influence of the throttle on control and chassis dynamics. Motorcycle consumption figure are terrible. There is no ducking it and ONE motorcycle range from ONE manufacturer isn't a trend. Motorcycle engines are 2 decades behind car engines. The half a Honda Jazz engine isn't for every motorcyclist so I don't see it taking off as a sustainable concept, because you are NEVER going to get non-motorcyclists out of cars and onto motorcycles. A few MAY go to scooters. 99% of motorcyclists I know ride toys and aren't going to move to something like an NC700 unless there's no choice. And even then many of them will simply flag it because you can buy reasonably exciting cars that are cheaper to run than a motorcycle.

[James Deuce]

Converters dont reduce greenhouse gasses by the way, they make more of them. They reduce gasses toxic to humans by converting them to greenhouse gasses.

Yes that's right. I never said anything about greenhouse gases either. However packaging is still a huge problem on bikes. It is only very recently that cats on bikes have gotten anywhere near the collector. They need to be hot to work, and most of them go in the muffler on a motorcycle, which takes a long to time to warm up and by then the the most polluting time of an engine's existence, just after startup is well over and the toxic stuff is already in the atmosphere. I'm quite happy to concentrate on removing the stuff that causes cancer and erectile dysfunction thanks.

The "old" cat on your "old" car was vastly more efficient than the one on your ER6 will ever be.

Bear in mind that a lot of bikes get aftermarket mufflers and more recently I see them paired with cat removal kits. A lot of new bikes hit the road without ever running a cat in anger, so I still think the psycho-social aspects of the consumer toy market are the driving force in large capacity motorcycles.

[bogan]

The single cat bikes get is in no way anything like the emissions controls cars get, most have 2 or 3 now, plus engine off technology when the engine isn't under load, and when the throttle is off in a car, it's off, unlike a motorcycles, because throttle control on a bike is hugely more influential on vehicle control in a car. Infinitely variable engine maps aren't something that can be adopted on bikes, again due to the influence of the throttle on control and chassis dynamics. Motorcycle consumption figure are terrible. There is no ducking it and ONE motorcycle range from ONE manufacturer isn't a trend. Motorcycle engines are 2 decades behind car engines. The half a Honda Jazz engine isn't for every motorcyclist so I don't see it taking off as a sustainable concept, because you are NEVER going to get non-motorcyclists out of cars and onto motorcycles. A few MAY go to scooters. 99% of motorcyclists I know ride toys and aren't going to move to something like an NC700 unless there's no choice. And even then many of them will simply flag it because you can buy reasonably exciting cars that are cheaper to run than a motorcycle.

Big picture though, cars have much more mass, and much more drag. Bikes don't have to have as much engine fanciness to be comparable in efficiency, assuming similar load requirements.

[James Deuce]

Big picture though, cars have much more mass, and much more drag. Bikes don't have to have as much engine fanciness to be comparable in efficiency, assuming similar load requirements.

So why is my 1600kg Ford Ka cheaper to run than a 200kg 750cc motorcycle in a mild state of tune? Surely the only worthwhile measure of efficiency is how much fuel a vehicle uses over a given distance? Factor in an equivalency equation to cope with the engine capacity difference and the weight it tows around and the Ka starts to look bloody good. In that instance the Ka wins hands down. Couple that with shorter, more labour intensive service intervals and tyres that cost twice as much for 2 tyres than four for the Ka that last 6 times longer than those on the bike and it really becomes a very unpleasant picture. Not cheap tyres either. I have Bridgestone Re880s on it now and 4 of those cost the same as 1 Pirelli Angel rear for the XJR1300 (don't mention that consumption figures, don't mention the consumption figures), the same size tyre as would have gone on the Zed.

In terms of drag, bikes are much worse than cars. The average faired motorcycle has a cd of about 0.36. Unfaired and it's in the 0.40 range. Most cars these days are high 0.20s, low 0.30s.