Super Tenere Network

sounds like somethings wrong with this test, it just doesn't make sense.

latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2011...cycle-emissions.html

If cars are fully loaded and driven correctly and also have a modern engine then yes a car is more greener than a lot of bikes.. It though depends on which bike, which car, loading, passengers, driving/riding style...etc...

Too random and small a sampling to be accurate in anything but popular TV science. If all of the bikes and cars were factory standard, properly maintained from new, same mileage and tuned for best economy, I'd imagine the results would be more believable. I bet they weren't. Mythbusters prove time and again that their experiments are flawed or based on stupid logic.

yeah while i enjoy watching mythbusters occasionally, every conclusion they make has to be taken with a grain of salt...

one question, which may sound a bit silly... isn't an internal combustion engine the same whether it's in a car or bike? how can a bike have less carbon dioxide but more hydrocarbons it its exhaust? is it because the cars catalytic converter scrubs these out?

but i do think that the green credentials of bikes are overplayed... i think four people car sharing is better for the evironment that 4 people on bikes (subject to what kyymy said of course)... one of the reasons given for allowing motorbikes in bus lanes was the environmental effects of having people on bikes instead of cars.... but of course the riders of the 50 stinky old vespas that whizz past on their way into London would be on the tube, not in cars if they weren't on their scooters, so maybe this isn't the best thing for the environment either....

You have to look at the usage of cars especially on commutes.. It tends to be just the driver so comparing it one to one the bike is more efficient especially as through traffic we tend to be a lot faster.

I remember doing the commute from Wimbledon to Heathrow one day in the pouring rain and being asked why I rode a bike and got pi$$ed wet through by a car driver stuck in traffic at a set of lights.. I just turned round and said that I'll be home 10 miles away in 20 minutes where as you'll still be stuck in this traffic for the next hour at least.. His resigned look on his face told me that he realised I was right

So in effect even though modern cars can get the same mpg a 20 mile trip through traffic may a car driver between 100-300% longer than our journey.

There's so many variables...

Great point, Kymmy.
I commute to work/everywhere on the bike since I sold my car a bit under a year ago. Amazing the number of solo drivers over here. Also amazing the number of idiots who cause traffic jambs because they don't understand the road rules. The other day, I went whizzing past a row of cars 200 metres long, caused by someone who wasn't familiar with a "left turn anytime/give way to your right" T-intersection at a poorly designed set of traffic lights. Dopey beggar didn't even wake up for another few minutes until I guess the next idiot behind him worked out what I'd done was perfectly legal and hit his horn button.
Love carving up traffic on the bike. Costs me $1.30 a litre X 30 litres X 450km range roughly, compared to a $100 tank fill in the old 6 cylinder efi/emmision controlled auto trans Ford Falcon sedan that'd last about 330kms, if I drove sensibly.
It has to be the lack of an effective catalytic exhaust system on the earlier machines that biased the test result figures so badly.

a car costs way more energy to build than it uses in all of it's life time. bikes are way cheaper (energy wise) to build, so from that starting point-bikes are greener no mater what emission they have (but 8000% seems like to big a difference).
right now most cars sold in the EU have euro 5 or euro4 pollution standard, bikes find it hard to comply with euro3.
emission wise a HONDA CBR 125 - CO1.4 whie a gold wing has only CO 0.6.

My old KLR600 was the greenest thing on the planet. Back in 1986 it was stolen in Sydney, Oz, and I collected if from the police and the speedo wasn't working after the thieves had their way with it, and this copper pulls me over and books me for speeding, and I was riding slower than the other traffic, so I ask him what's his problem and he says he hates the colour of my bike. What a pig! Told him I wouldn't pay the fine and I still haven't.
But back on topic, I stopped watching Mythbusters years ago (just got bored) - and it is California, which isn't the real world for internal combustion engines. And who believes blogs?

K88 wrote:

In the real world most cars sold today comply with EURO 5, bike manufacturers are still bitching about EURO3.

OK, Euro 5 has me snookered - anyone wanna buy my bike? And I'll try not to fart while I walk to work. But when I bail out the Eurozone, maybe you'll pay me a subsidy to buy it back.