I’ll See Your 25 MPG and Raise You 60
Man oh man! Gas for $4 a gallon! Sure would be nice to get, oh, about 80 miles per gallon. Well, some people do. But you can bet they don’t do it in a Hummer.
On the other hand, take that little scooter next to that green Kawasaki in the photo below. That person is getting around 80 MPG. And probably having more fun getting to and from work than they ever have before.
Even better than that, Yamaha claims that their Vino 125 gets 96 MPG, and the Yamaha C3 is rated at 115 MPG. Now you’re talking saving real money!
Of course, there are some trade-offs. Those two little Yamahas don’t have much speed and you can’t take them on the highway. However, some bigger scooters don’t cost a lot more than those and can hit top speeds of 75 or more. It’s always a matter of trade-offs.
So, what kind of gas mileage does that Kawi guy get? On a sportbike like his (or hers, you never know) he’s surely in the 40-50 MPG range. The fact is, most motorcycles will get mileage in that approximate range, even the bigger ones. For example, I get around 45 MPG on both my Honda CB750 Custom and my Kawasaki Concours. A Honda Goldwing, one of the biggest bikes on the road, can get up to 40 MPG, although it does have six cylinders and therefore is not as efficient as the more common one-, two-, three- or four-cylinder bikes.
Another big road bike, the Harley-Davidson Road King, is rated at 54 MPG on the highway and 35 in the city. The Yamaha FJR1300A delivers around 40. Honda’s Shadow Spirit 1100 is rated at about 48 MPG on the highway and 38 in the city. (Sorry I don’t have city/highway splits for all these bikes.)
The mileage you get on a bike generally depends on the same three things that determines a car’s fuel efficiency: weight, your driving habits, and engine size. The big six-cylinder bikes eat more gas than a V-twin, but any bike with six cylinders is also a heavy bike. For a smaller bike, around 1,000 cc’s, you’ll get pretty much the same mileage with a V-twin or an inline four.
And then, as the city/highway splits show, speed matters. While I normally expect 45 MPG from my 1,000-cc Concours, riding easily on curvy mountain roads has at times given me as much as 55 MPG from the beast.
Do the math. A lot of other people already have. There are a lot more people joining us on the roads on two wheels. Welcome to the club.
Biker Quote for Today
Four wheels move the body. Two wheels move the soul.
Tags: gas mileage, motorcycles, scooters
