Tdc

TDC

Fuel economy, anyone?

Kevin Cameron

SOME PEOPLE ARE EXPECTING A BOOM in motorcycling in response to recent high fuel prices. I fear they may be disappointed. Motorcycle models and their prices have adapted to changes in our national demographics. There are fewer young people 18-25 in good industrial jobs now, so motorcycles are marketed to older people with money and a taste for features. Someone dismayed by $3.80 regular gas may rush to his nearest bike dealer but will find that motorcycles are now more like $10,000 than they are like $1000. Hmm, can you maybe show me something in a scooter? Why yes, here we have our Buck Rogers Stratosphere model, which is 12 feet long, sells for $5000 and cruises at 70 mph. Well, thanks anyway—if I were going to spend thousands I could buy a used economy car, be dry in rain and bring my friends along.

Will this be the Big Opportunity for the Chinese and Indian two-wheel industries? If they had mildly jazzy modern equivalents of the old Honda 90cc step-through ready at dealers across America now, they might do well. Ah, but for that to happen, they’d need dealer networks, wouldn’t they? I’m not so sure.

What if a line of really inexpensive scooters could be marketed for under a grand? You wouldn’t need parts warehouses and mechanics because, as with VCRs, computers and many other devices, it’s cheaper to let the production line run the few extra seconds it takes to make a new device than it is to train and employ mechanics, equip them with tools and have them even begin trying to diagnose what the problem is. In the present era, $60 an hour for mechanical work is actually the cheap end of the spectrum. Therefore it costs less to make a whole new machine than to have a mechanic get an hour or two into a repair. In the auto business, when an engine under warranty goes to the dark side, a bright new engine is put in its place. No messing about with reboring cylinders or regrinding crank journals. Today, quality is carefully engineered into the production process and has ceased to be the responsibility of master mechanics employed by dealers.

There’s another possibility. The fabulous “Fabergé eggs” were made only for the Russian czars because no one else could afford them. Do you suppose that demand for those golden and bejeweled eggs fell when there was a business recession? Certainly not-the wealth of the very well-off is a lot less dependent on business cycles than is the buying power of the rest of us. I recently drove 1000 miles down the east coast on 1-95 in my 3-year-old econobox. Literally hundreds of large SU Vs (many with the fashionable and slightly ominous-looking blackedout windows) came whistling past me, exceeding the mainstream 73 mph by the speed of a vigorously pedaled bicycle. What mileage do those big things get at 85-90-mph? I don’t know, but it was clear that their occupants weren’t worried about it. Whatever it was, they could afford it.

Go a step farther. What if it is no longer Everyman who is buying most of the motorcycles? If instead it is Topman who is buying them, we may see a “Fabergé egg effect,” causing expensive motorbikes to continue selling fairly well while little attention is given to bringing fuel-efficient bikes or scooters to market. After all, this is a business, not a green public-service initiative.

We turn to history for guidance. In Europe in the 1950s, cars and bikes dueled for the transportation buyer’s dollar. At first, motorcycle sales were huge, and NSU became the world’s largest producer. But when really economical autos like the BMC Mini and Fiat 500 reached production, it was no contest-the cars won and two-wheel sales collapsed. Motorcycles didn’t make a comeback until Soichiro Honda realized they could be sold in the U.S. as good clean fun.

Don’t motorcycles win hands-down in fuel economy? Well...sometimes. Bigger bikes record mpg numbers in the 40s and 50s, which is fair. But small sporty European turbo-diesel sedans hit the same numbers. Hmm. And because Congress has called for automakers’ fleet average fuel economy to rise to 35 mpg by 2020, similar economy will be offered here. A few scooters claim 100 mpg. Yet people I know claim only slightly smaller numbers for their Honda Insight hybrid autos. And my 1-95 trip averaged 33.9 mpg. On the other hand, I have recently seen quite a few older motorcycles emerge from a decade or more of cobwebby 1 storage. Air in the hard, slippery old tires, a fresh battery and a carb cleanout and you’re motoring. Sort of.

How about numbers? My little . car has 3 times the frontal area of a motorcycle, but its shape is a lot more streamlined and its engine is designed for economy rather than for high performance. It does use more fuel than a bike-but is it enough more to make a lot of average folks buy a bike in addition to a car? I’m not sure. Back in 1974, at the time of the first “Oil Crisis,” cars were a lot bigger and thirstier (like the song said, “I can hear his dual quads drink”), which made bikes look really good by comparison-and a lot of people bought them.

There’s no question that very economical motorbikes can be built, but who knows if doing so would be a wise business strategy or not? Selling moderate numbers of relatively pricey high-glitz bikes to people who drive 85 mph in their SU Vs may beat retooling to crank out a zillion low-margin diesel bikes. Look at Toyota. The news reports say its widely sold Prius hybrid earns a profit of only 2-5 percent after 10 years of climbing the specialized hybrid learning curve. Is that a business or is it more like a very longterm green public-relations effort?

Maybe technology means that nothing on wheels can be low-priced. To hit the emissions numbers, it needs a catalyst. To make the cat happy and long lasting, it needs fuel-injection, with all the sensors and the ECU that go with it. Up, up, price. Away slides the dream of a cheap re-issue of the Honda stepthrough. But it’s annoying to think that the only way to save money is to spend more of it. □