motorcycle myth tested on mythbusters

[Rob MacLennan]

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Simple, the bikes tested did not have a cat. All the cars did.

Well, yes and no: http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/mythbusters-bike-vs-car-aftershow-2.html

The final bike, that they used in the bubble, had the full California emissions setup; Cat, evap canister, etc.. It still had its butt kicked by the cars, in things like CO and particulates. Motorcycles tend to use open loop injection systems, while cars use closed loop.

 

[GayManLoveIsOK]

lol, i find that this is a complete misrepresentation of bikes...what was the reason bikes came into existence...what is the percentage of people that worked on their bike versus cars back in the day...nowadays, a bike is just a hobby, sure i can use mine to get to the office, but my car can do it 365 days a year in this climate and requires a fraction of the maintenance, and the car was less than twice the price of my bike...as for the environment, well, my bike is the same as my car for gas mileage, the only difference being i can have a crap load of fun on the bike, can't do the same in the car without sacrificing a lot of fuel...as for the effects on the environment, yeah, bike is pretty horrendous...

 

[Rob MacLennan]

Though it should be considered that a bike takes a fraction of the material and energy to manufacture, that a car does. A well taken care of bike can do 100K+ Kms, without a major rebuild. There might well be a case for them there, if they were made to be fully recyclable.

 

[Riceburner]

Lets see...an example I know of....an 11 year old cage is worth 1/90th of it's original price....a loss of around $44,000. A 15 year old bike is worth 1/6th of it's original price....a loss of about $4-6,000. hmmmm.

Another example, my cage has under 130K on the clock and my bike just under 81k....the bike is in better condition and worth more. Another year or so and the bike should have more mileage than the cage, if the cage lasts that long. :lmao:

 

[EngineerJoe]

In Ontario, there are 8 million drivers with a G license and 570K with an M license. If the numbers are just as skewed for # of cars vs. # of motorcycles, no wonder motorcycles remain somewhat uncontrolled w.r.t. emissions. You should also consider that motorcycles often don't run the full year.

Though it should be considered that a bike takes a fraction of the material and energy to manufacture, that a car does. A well taken care of bike can do 100K+ Kms, without a major rebuild. There might well be a case for them there, if they were made to be fully recyclable.

Over the lifetime of any given product, energy is consumed over 4 different stages; Production, Manufacturing, Use, and Disposal. For cars (and presumably bikes as well) the energy consumed during the "Use" stage totals ~90% of the energy consumed over its life. That means that the energy that goes into the Production, Manufacturing and Disposal is only 10%. So it doesn't matter that bikes require less energy in the 10% stages of it's life, it's a small impact on its overall energy consumption and emissions emitted. And now consider that the emissions per unit energy during production, manufacturing and disposal is the same for both bike and cars, yet is much higher in the "use" stage for bikes than it is for cars.

And to answer another person's question (can't find it at the moment), carpooling is the cheapest, simplest, and most effective solution to reducing emissions. A minivan with 6 people will get better fuel economy (per person) than any Hybrid with one person... although I still hate minivans.

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