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Comment by elamje | Hacker News Reader

You can get a street legal new Honda Ruckus or Yamaha Zuma 50cc for ~2500. 115mpg, no motorcycle license required, 100+ mile range, and no charging. This is a tough purchase price, when you can order direct from amazon or Alibaba for at least 50% lower.

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At least where I live (NC) mopeds are hugely looked down upon, as any one riding them is assumed to be a drunk who lost their license due to DUI.

This assumption is not exactly unwarranted.

So what would people assume about you riding a $1500 scooter on the road instead?

That you were a drunk who lost their license because of a DUI. I'm also from NC, and what the parent commenter said is accurate for any kind of scooter.

To continue with the other NC'ers (there's literally dozens of us!), I used to live in Wilmington, NC, which has a large number of scooters to the point a term I've taken from others is to refer to them as dui-scooters (read "dewey scooters").

I don't know the difference between a $1200 scooter or a dui-scooter. However, the overall opinion is if you aren't in a traditional vehicle or a crazy cyclist, you're riding the vehicle you're riding because you are not legally allowed to drive.

I don't know if the attitude you're conveying is yours, or the population, but it's really sad. That if you don't drive a car, you're crazy for riding a bike. And if you want the combined environmental and cost benefits of a bike with the speed and lack-of-work of driving, you must be a drunk.

Even if there is a grain of truth in some stereotypes, it is harmful.

It's not bikes, it's a moped.

For about the same money you'd spend on one of those scooters you can easily get a used motorcycle that will be far more comfortable and performant, it just requires a valid license.

Do they stink worse than a bus, leaving an oily trail of smoke?

I can't understand why petrol mopeds are still sold.

In the US, those two brands make high quality products that use a 4 stroke motor, so no oil mixing. They are quite popular around college campuses and do not smell.

Do they sound like a bunch of angry bees?

That's the main selling point :)

No, they aren't 2-stroke, they're 4-stroke. They sound similar to a little 250cc roadbike - quiet and puttering.

Depends on the muffler system more than the engine. Large 4-stroke engines can be louder than helicopters.

I'm just curious because often the smaller the engine, the noisier it is.

The Ruckus has a modern four-stroke fuel-injected engine. It shouldn’t smoke or make a stench.

Does it have a catalytic converter?

When I bought my house, I bought electric lawn tools as small engines are pretty terrible polluters. I read an article several years ago, by Car and Driver I think. They took a push mower, a Fiat 500 and F150 Raptor and hooked them up to some emissions testing equipment. 30 minutes of running the mower had higher emissions, other than CO2, then driving the Raptor 3000 miles.

The catalytic converter on those cars alone is almost the same cost of the lawn mower. A good chunk of the upper part of the engine bay is filled with EGR components. I doubt you could fit all the modern emissions control equipment into a pushmower.

Two strokes have long gone its all auto 4 strokes now.

And a 50cc Moped or Scooter has an insane MPG its why they are used for deliveries.

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