Tag Archive for 'motorscooter news'

GAS PRICES ON THE RISE

Published
by
Tom
on May 11, 2009
in Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

GAS PRICES: Gasoline and crude oil reach highest prices in six months
STAFF REPORT • MAY 11, 2009

After several weeks of virtually unchanged prices at the pump, this week gas prices jumped 12 cents (6 percent) over last week. The average U.S. retail price for regular grade gasoline reached $2.17 on Friday, marking the sixth consecutive week and the sixth time since November 17 gasoline has been above $2.00 per gallon. Although this is a significant one-week increase, the price is still 47 percent below the record price of $4.114 set on July 11, 2008.

After remaining relatively stable for several weeks, crude oil saw significant increases in trading this week as prices flirted with $60 per barrel, trading as high as $58.57 a barrel Thursday. Crude oil settled at $58.63 at the close of trading Friday, the highest settlement since November 14, yet still nearly 50 percent below a year ago. Oil prices have risen more than 10 percent in two weeks and more than 70 percent, due in part to evidence that the global recession is easing, which would lead to a rebound in world oil consumption. Crude oil has gained more than 70 percent since hitting $33.55 in February.

Supply continues to outpace demand. This week the Department of Energy (DOE) reported that U.S. oil inventories grew less than expected, 600,000 barrels rather than the expected 2.2 million barrels, suggesting crude oil demand may be stabilizing. U.S. inventories are at 19-year high of 375.3 million barrels.
quoted from Del Marva Media Group

This is a great perspective on Scooting

Published
by
Tom
on April 27, 2009
in Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

Check out this article:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Save-gas-save-parking-charges-and-have-fun-on-a-/

I’ve reprinted part of it here:

One of the most fun things you can do to reduce your fuel consumption is ride a scooter instead of taking a car.
Motorcycles are also great, but harder to learn to ride, and less maneuverable in congested urban areas. (Motorcycles typically are standard, so you have to shift gears, whereas most scooters have continuous variable transmission i.e. automatic)

Consider:
Most new scooters have very high mileage — 100 MPG is not uncommon, and some are even better. I found a link here to a source of more detailed data: http://www.greenconsumerguide.com/scoot.php

In some cities (like mine, Toronto), scooters park free on city street parking. Even the cheapest vehicle parking costs me about $15 just to get in and out of one client meeting; if I park underground, it quickly rises to $25. There are lots of convenient places to park the scoot. Last summer I estimated that I saved about $300 on parking, which is a pretty good rate of return on the investment, considering I only ride it 6 months of the year.

Newer scooters have low emissions. Those built to European standards are very low, as they only permit 4-stroke engines. A newspaper here reported this startling statistic:
If Americans used scooters for just 35 per cent of their weekly driving, they could, in aggregate, reduce fuel consumption by 53 million litres a day, ICR found, citing U.S. Department of Energy data. They could also reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 147.2 million kg a day.

Plus it’s fun to scoot, you meet a lot of nice people, and if you want, you can join a scooter group and attend rallies and go on group rides.

This is really barely an instructable, but I wanted to add this perspective to the green contest.