Motorcycles Pollute More Than SUVs???

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Mr Kleen
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Motorcycles Pollute More Than SUVs???

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Motorcycles Pollute More Than SUVs

By Chuck Squatriglia - June 10, 2008 | 7:13:13 PM

Motorcycles and scooters are an appealing alternative to shelling out big bucks filling up the family truckster, which is one reason sales are going through the roof. But riding on two wheels may not be any more environmentally responsible than riding on four.

Turns out the average motorcycle is 10 times more polluting per mile than a passenger car, light truck or SUV. It seems counter-intuitive, because motorcycles are about twice as fuel-efficient as cars and emit a lot less C02.

So what gives?

Susan Carpenter lays it all out in a Los Angeles Times column. She found that, although motorcycles and scooters comprise 3.6 percent of registered vehicles in California and 1 percent of vehicle miles traveled, they account for 10 percent of passenger vehicles' smog-forming emissions.

Motorcycle engines are twice as efficient as automobile engines, she notes, so they generally emit less carbon dioxide. But they emit large amounts of nitrogen oxides, which along with hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide are measured by state and federal air quality regulators to determine whether vehicles meet emissions rules.

Catalytic converters and other emissions control devices would clean things up, but they're often too big, too heavy or too hot to install on motorcycles. For that reason and others that Carpenter outlines in the column, the Environmental Protection Agency and California Air Resources Board are more lenient when it comes to motorcycle emissions.

"The emissions picture [for motorcycles] is pretty grim," she quotes John Swanton of the Air Resources Board saying, "but we think it's fair for where motorcycles are today."
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Re: Motorcycles Pollute More Than SUVs???

Post by complacent »

This article is very single-sided and out of date. Shame on them.

This is a place holder until I can get enough time to get my links together...

It would have been very accurate around the year 2000.

Even my bike has a cat in it.
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Re: Motorcycles Pollute More Than SUVs???

Post by zaxrex »

Like Colin said, old stuff. But saying that, over the 5 years I have been going to India, I can see direct correlations in visible air quality in the cities that are cycle and scooter havens. They are the primary polluters in the country for the reason that there are so many and that they are so much more polluting than vehicles with more wheels.
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Re: Motorcycles Pollute More Than SUVs???

Post by gsx-lex »

May pollute more, but the gas is cheaper :).

I agree with Zax. I was in Brazil a couple of weeks ago and most of the time you could smell the motorcycles coming.

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Re: Motorcycles Pollute More Than SUVs???

Post by drwrx »

I'm shocked what passes for automotive journalism these days
The board estimates as many as 20,000 all-terrain vehicles, dirt bikes and scooters are shipped into California from China each month, many of them with emissions that are at least 10 times higher than the state's requirements.
Chinese dirt bikes and Scooters? I'm sorry, but the author is taking a very small segment and blowing it way out of proportion. This is why I'm stating to HATE the press. No FACTS, just FEAR.
gsx-lex wrote:Alex <-- votes we should all use alcohol from sugar cane to power vehicles (with the exception of his evo)!
No, no your EVO is craving some of that 106 octane ethanol go juice.
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Re: Motorcycles Pollute More Than SUVs???

Post by GaToR »

drwrx wrote:I'm shocked what passes for automotive journalism these days
The board estimates as many as 20,000 all-terrain vehicles, dirt bikes and scooters are shipped into California from China each month, many of them with emissions that are at least 10 times higher than the state's requirements.
Chinese dirt bikes and Scooters? I'm sorry, but the author is taking a very small segment and blowing it way out of proportion. This is why I'm stating to HATE the press. No FACTS, just FEAR.
:plusone:

Putting catalytic converters on dirtbikes and ATV is like putting a scrubber system on a campfire.
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Re: Motorcycles Pollute More Than SUVs???

Post by snaab »

She's onto me... I've been riding a friend's Taiwanese Kymco scooter around LA for the past few months. :roll:
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Re: Motorcycles Pollute More Than SUVs???

Post by avriette »

Mr Kleen wrote: Motorcycle engines are twice as efficient as automobile engines, she notes, so they generally emit less carbon dioxide. But they emit large amounts of nitrogen oxides, which along with hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide are measured by state and federal air quality regulators to determine whether vehicles meet emissions rules.
Whoa, nelly. This is really misleading. Oxides of nitrogen are largely harmless. The reason we measure them is NOx + Hydrocarbons + sunlight creates photochemical smog (that brown stuff that hangs over Los Angeles). They don't have any other atmospheric effects.
Catalytic converters and other emissions control devices would clean things up, but they're often too big, too heavy or too hot to install on motorcycles. For that reason and others that Carpenter outlines in the column, the Environmental Protection Agency and California Air Resources Board are more lenient when it comes to motorcycle emissions.
Wow, this is just hysterical. First, almost all new bikes do have catalytic converters. Second, by switching to more powerful ECUs, and EFI from Carbs, we'd eliminate a huge quantity of hydrocarbons. Incidentally, letting bikes get hotter is a good way to reduce hydrocarbons (but of course, increases CO2 emissions). Lastly, they're more lenient because there are so goddamn few of them.

The other thing they don't mention here is that by adding shit to bikes, e.g., multistage catalysts, more complicated electronics, and suchlike, they require the bike to burn more fuel to move all that shit around. Sure, you could add emissions equipment to bikes, but you'd wind up with heavier bikes, which burned more fuel, which created more emissions, and made the roads less safe.

For fucks' sake. I really, really hate people sometimes. I can't really believe that person was just misinformed about emissions and internal combustion. It smells so much like propaganda.
"The emissions picture [for motorcycles] is pretty grim," she quotes John Swanton of the Air Resources Board saying, "but we think it's fair for where motorcycles are today."
Grim! Because we all know that bikes are the scourge of the atmosphere. The world would be much worse off if people switched to .6L vehicles from 6L vehicles. Right.
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Re: Motorcycles Pollute More Than SUVs???

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avriette wrote:Whoa, nelly. This is really misleading. Oxides of nitrogen are largely harmless. The reason we measure them is NOx + Hydrocarbons + sunlight creates photochemical smog (that brown stuff that hangs over Los Angeles). They don't have any other atmospheric effects.
Alex, methinks you should go back and review your chemistry. NOx and harmless rarely find themselves in the same sentence, especially around the Chesapeake Bay.
avriette wrote:Incidentally, letting bikes get hotter is a good way to reduce hydrocarbons (but of course, increases CO2 emissions)
Running higher combustion temperatures increase the production of NOx., which is what she was writing her article on.

The title reference of the article from Chuck Squatriglia's piece in Wired mis-summarized Susan Carpenter's article. Her subject was NOx production as a pollutant, not that bikes have more total pollution than cars.

Her focus may not have been as tight to the subject as it could have been by introducing HOC and CO2 references, but the fact remains the same: motorcycles produce more NOx emissions per fuel consumed than vehicles with more advanced injection and emissions systems.

Newer bikes are cleaner than older ones, but man are there a lot of old bikes running around.
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Re: Motorcycles Pollute More Than SUVs???

Post by avriette »

zaxrex wrote:
avriette wrote:Whoa, nelly. This is really misleading. Oxides of nitrogen are largely harmless. The reason we measure them is NOx + Hydrocarbons + sunlight creates photochemical smog (that brown stuff that hangs over Los Angeles). They don't have any other atmospheric effects.
Alex, methinks you should go back and review your chemistry. NOx and harmless rarely find themselves in the same sentence, especially around the Chesapeake Bay.
Er, yes, that was poorly phrased. I think most of the people screaming about pollution are complaining about global warming, ozone depletion, the usual boogeypersons. And as far as chemistry, you're probably right. I failed chemistry twice in college. Then I breezed by on the requirement by adding a smog tech course. And that was in 1996, even.
avriette wrote:Incidentally, letting bikes get hotter is a good way to reduce hydrocarbons (but of course, increases CO2 emissions)
Running higher combustion temperatures increase the production of NOx., which is what she was writing her article on.
Yep. Goofed.
Her focus may not have been as tight to the subject as it could have been by introducing HOC and CO2 references, but the fact remains the same: motorcycles produce more NOx emissions per fuel consumed than vehicles with more advanced injection and emissions systems.
I think this is probably true, but if we're talking emissions per unit fuel, in general bikes are going to burn a lot less fuel per human-mile.
Newer bikes are cleaner than older ones, but man are there a lot of old bikes running around.
Do you see an answer to this problem that doesn't involve saddling small motor vehicles with hundreds of pounds of emissions equipment?
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Re: Motorcycles Pollute More Than SUVs???

Post by zaxrex »

avriette wrote:Do you see an answer to this problem that doesn't involve saddling small motor vehicles with hundreds of pounds of emissions equipment?
Well not the answer that India, China, Mexico, or Brazil have come up with. More like the anti answer.

I would suggest direct injection paired with rich burn/lean burn sequential chambered engine and an integrated water or urea injection system. Hey, you asked. And that would only add 13 lbs to the emissions system.
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