Recently in Motorcycles/scooters Category

Advanced Battery Technologies, Inc. andWuxi Angell Autocycle Co., Ltd, will debut three hybrid motorcycles at Dealer Expo 2009 from February 13 to February 16, 2009 in Indianapolis, IN.

All three models are equipped with a lithium-ion battery pack (48V rated voltage and 15 amp hour rated capacity) developed by the Company. The computerized control puts the motorcycle on pure-electric drive at low speed, and switches to the gasoline engine at high speed while recharging the batteries. The new design greatly increases total driving distance and optimizes the use of electric power to achieve 35% pollution reduction and a 20% increase in fuel efficiency, compared to comparable gasoline motorcycle engines. msnbc.msn.com

During the Great Depression, the Miles Bank in Delta, Pennsylvania collapsed and closed. People lost their jobs. Times were lean. The bank had been in existence since 1890.

The building again saw jobs and prosperity as an early "tech center".

Operators working for The Delta Telephone Exchange and later under the York Telephone and Telegraph Company were busy switching calls for the thriving quarry industry in the area.

Delta was famous for it's decorative green marble and hard slate that lasted on roofs for a century.

Manually placed calls and people pushing jacks into a control board gave way to the rotary dial and eventually the push button phone with computerized central switching. Jobs were lost and an industry changed.

The inventive minds that created technology that gave new life to the building also took it away.

Today, ReConnect, a cafe', gallery & spa, calls the building home. It's a place where locals and curious visitors can experience an independent Main Street eatery with healthy food and good conversation for the same price as a burger combo at a chain store.

The old bank building tells an ongoing story of transition between success, devastation and rebirth.

Businesses like ReConnect hold a key to rebuilding the U.S. economy.

Small Main Street businesses, with faces that you can see in your community that you can make a judgment to trust or not to trust; giving you a service you can see, invest in, nurture, care about and watch your money work in your community.

The consumer is given the opportunity to endorse a Main Street business based on first hand knowledge of their practices and not be held hostage by a huge monopoly that fixes prices and then needs taxpayer bailout money because it has become so large it's failure will doom our existence.

Globalism, monopolies and people without morals grabbing money will always be part of a free market landscape and so will consumers with the potential to change that landscape with the choices they make.

ReConnect is on my short list for a motorcycle ride through the rolling farmland of southern York County.

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Last week I went into Action Motorsports, in York, for a new pair of winter riding gloves. I asked John, the owner, how the economy was affecting him and he said, when people can't do anything about the economy, they ride. It seemed to be better advice than murdering yourself and six family members as a California man did yesterday over his financial problems.

I was sitting in this big, uncomfortable chair in the Adirondack Park yesterday on a random motorcycle ride north and I came to a conclusion about the economy. Maybe it has to all come apart and return to local economies where people know each other and know who they are doing business with, paying and sustaining each other with work, responsibility and respect.

Globalization and monopolies seem to be killing each other and the base they feed off of. We live in a broken economy that operates on credit, and we are attempting to repair it with more credit.

An illusion that cannot be sustained.

I decided to dump my credit cards as much as possible. I have never used them for credit. I just use the dividend cards and I don't like change. I am considered a "deadbeat" customer by the credit card industry because I don't get into debt.

Today, the average family owes roughly $8,000 on their credit cards. This debt has helped generate record profits for the credit card industry -- last year, more than $30 billion before taxes. pbs.org

Adding to that, I am giving my local merchants a 2..3..%? stimulus in a weak economy on every purchase that credit card companies charge them for the service on my credit card purchases.

I feel free. None of my purchasing history is tracked. As the change piles up, I take it to a self checkout at a local retailer and dump it in.

Going back to cash has been a rewarding exercise of simplicity in a complicated economic environment.

I headed out on motorcycle trip with a buddy and currently I'm sitting in Rome, New York. (about 300 miles north of York, Pa.)

I usually store all my electronics in Ziplock bags. The Dell Mini 9 fits comfortably in a gallon Ziplock bag with room to spare.

Long distance motorcycle traveling appears to have dropped off across the northeast, perhaps it's because night temperatures in the mountains have dipping into the low 30's.

My neighbor dog Juno has a passion for rides. Any open car door is fair game. Frightened of the scooter at first, he is now ready for a ride.

Chuck parked his full-sized Chevy truck (11 mpg) over the Summer and has commuted to work with a 100+ mpg Honda Elite 80 Scooter.

For most of the past month, Chuck has been using old lawn mower/boat gas to power the Honda. The gas went unused this summer when I started mowing three lawns on my block with an electric lawn mower.

For 2009, Harley-Davidson is offering the Trike, or the Tri Glide Ultra Classic that was developed from the wheels up in combination with Lehman Trikes of South Dakota.

Harley-Davidson Open House Sept 25-Sept 27

The Tri Glide is powered by a Twin Cam 103 V-Twin engine with Electronic Sequential Port Fuel Injection, rated at 101 ft. lbs. of torque. It retains the 6-speed Cruise Drive transmission used on Harley-Davidson Touring motorcycles, but adds an optional electric reverse.

Harley-Davidson designed a new rear-axle assembly for the Tri Glide utilizing an aluminum center section with steel axle tubes. A belt final drive, and a rear suspension features dual air-adjustable rear shock absorbers. It's a wide stance touring Harley with a trunk.

Born out of the depression and in production until the early 1970's, Harley built another trike called the Servi-Car. It was used by mechanics, postal workers and police agencies; people who wanted a small functional working machine.

This trike has a solid axle to deal with 1930's road conditions.

The Servi-Car has an innovative hitch (see picture at right) on the front designed to mate with car bumpers of the time for car delivery and retrieval.

I can't resist an event where a company lets me ride their motorcycles on an 11 mile real world ride for free and you have to love Harley for this once a year not to miss event.

Harley-Davidson Open House Sept 25-Sept 27

A cut-a-way of the new Buell / Rotax liquid cooled 1125cc Helicon V-Twin caught my eye at the Cycle World International Motorcycle Show in Washington D.C last winter.

Buell is the sport bike division of Harley-Davidson marketed to riders who aren't into the chrome and mystique, but would like to buy something American made that isn't a clone of anything.

Buell went to Austrian engine manufacturer Rotax to help them design a V-twin engine that utilizes three counter-balancers that smooth out the power monster. Rotax also makes the parallel 800 cc twin in my BMW 800 ST.

I love the quirky, one of a kind Buell designs, the low maintenance lifetime drive belt (BMW take notes here) with a tensioner that makes it feel like a drive shaft that only pulls in one direction - straight . However, I have never been a fan of a bike that the mirrors vibrate so badly you can't see what's behind you at a stop light. Previous Buells are based on HD engines.

The new Helicon® V-Twin is a symphony of motorcycle ecstasy. Lots of torque, a subtle trashy mechanical sound, and an assertive exhaust that lets you know it's a stealth rocket without sounding noisy.

The engine uses a "Hydraulic Vacuum Assist (HVA) Slipper-Action clutch that eases clutch pull and limits back-torque during hard downshifts". The result is one silky clutch/transmission combination.

Now if they would put this engine in the Buell Ulysses series (I'm more of an upright rider)... and trim down the cc to about 800 (I want to get 60+ mpg) .. that would be about perfect for me.

Sitting in the woods seven miles east of Morgantown, West Virginia.

Worker productivity is up while labor costs are down for the second quarter of this year; that combined with a use or lose week of vacation meant it was time for a motorcycle trip.

My riding buddy only has the weekend off starting Friday at 5 p.m. and this is the weekend Hurricane Hannah decided to take a whirlwind tour up the east coast.

Some of my most interesting adventures on a motorcycle have been weather related. You really don't care about weather in a car, but on a bike you are at the mercy of what the sky offers.

It can be the most miserable and the most inspiring of moments. The agony of bone chilling cold with rain driving into your crevices followed by the sweetest scents of spring blasting though your smile. The extremes are memorable, a privilege lost with life inside climate controlled buildings or behind tinted windshield glass.

The direction for this trip was easy. WEST ! and FAST !

I have to smile at people who interact with motorcyclists. The guy behind the counter at Hess said to me on Friday about 5 p.m., "the clouds are closing in fast" My neighbor told me, "it's going to pour tomorrow, did you hear the forecast?" There is usually at least one story about a nephew who was skewered by a chain link fence.

I really don't have a death wish. I just like living.

So as usual we hit the road two...ok, three hours late and the clouds are getting thick. I check the radar and can see the swirls of Hannah pulling up through Maryland. I figure if we can just get over the eastern divide, we will beat the rain by heading mostly west first via the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

It's a great night for riding. A couple hundred miles of interstate, temperatures in the 60's and not one drop of rain. As it turns out, we were even lucky enough to set up tents and get to sleep before a gentle rain that ended before dawn.

Memorable motorcycle weather

Frozen early morning fog on Interstate 91 between Vermont and New Hampshire. It was Summer.

Other motorcycle stories

I was riding my bike through Harpers Ferry, West Virginia today with a friend and stopped at the site of an old textile plant.

Everyone is familiar with 19th century water wheels powering small grain mills, but what was interesting about this pre-1850 installation was that they used four efficient turbines (see picture below) to drive an entire factory through mechanical transfer.

Water was gradually constricted by narrowing water tunnels, condensing the volume of water creating more power. Think of your finger squeezing over an open garden hose.

It was said that the factory could make fabric cheaper than mills in Baltimore.

Free power harnessed by American innovation 150 years ago ran an entire factory.

No worries about a 30% increase in the cost of natural gas. No hostile foreign governments to feed with our dollars. No commodity speculators to profit by escalation of price brought on by an energy monopoly strangling the economy. No competing for oil with India and China.

Free domestic power by harnessing the flow of nature.

Tunnels that brought water to the mill.

I was mowing with my electric lawn mower last night past my neighbor's full-sized Chevy pickup that now sits there for weeks at a time getting dirt circles under the tires. Chuck actually put stabilizer in the vehicle that gets 11mpg because it rarely gets used.

The cheap plug-in electric mower I purchased at the beginning of the summer is great.

Some handle hardware kept falling apart, but that was fixed with some lock washers for $2. It's quiet, doesn't stink when it runs, requires no maintenance and I haven't bought a drop of gasoline for a mower since.

The scooter that replaced the truck for commuting two months ago now has over 1000 miles on it.

Chuck's co-workers asked him if we was going to keep using it now that gasoline has dropped more than 50 cents a gallon. His reply, "No, now it just costs me $3.50 cents to fill the tank instead of $4." He often marvels at how much more money he has in his pocket now that it isn't getting burned up on gasoline to push around a huge metal box.

So as the summer comes to a close and gas prices decline because of a reduction in demand, the question is will people go back to consuming as it becomes more affordable.

Interesting thing about riding alone on a motorcycle trip is that you are never really alone. There is a bond formed by two-wheeled travelers. Perhaps it is the shared risk or the shared responsibility for each other. It's symbolized by "the wave", a synchronized passing of open palms in opposing lanes.

I decided to take the long way down to my destination on the coastal border of North and South Carolina. The Outer Banks of North Carolina connects back to the mainland with a system of ferries.

Motorcycles are strange creatures on small ferries. Ferries bounce and roll and riders are usually advised to stay with their bike.

With the first ferry, I shot past a line of 50 cars because there is always room for a bike.

With the second ferry, I was first in line with a Harley rider named Mike. We were tucked between the lines of cars in the center of the bow.

Two hours standing guard over land loving machines on choppy water. Two hours of shared conversation spanning a lifetime

My fascination with two-wheeled journeys began freshman year in high school.

Three buddies told their parents that they were staying over each other's houses; we hit the road and bicycled through the night. The exhaustion, the moments of fear, the laughing made it memorable. I don't even remember if there was a destination. We were just going far.

It was a world shared by no one. All those people trapped in their cars going somewhere or sleeping the night away were getting nowhere. We were kings ruling our adventure kingdom.

Motorcycle trips are usually framed by weather reports and last week was scheduled to fall apart right in the middle. It really doesn't matter if the weather changes because that often creates an place to stop and you might just meet someone you wouldn't have met otherwise.

There is an unwritten law about not leaving on a trip in the rain. That's just miserable. This week turned out perfect with windows of clear riding and a rain stop just as planned in the middle.

In the 1980's and 90's, I used to slam the vacation road in a VW diesel Golf.

My concept of vacation planning was to head west and make a right at North Dakota... or wander southwest until... I needed three days to get home.

Once I was having such a good time in Pitkin, Colorado after taking on a new identity for two weeks, that I left there on a Friday evening and had to be back at work Sunday morning in York.

For the past six years, my vacation has been motivated by a motorcycle. Sure there is something wonderful about driving a few hundred miles and filling up with $10 of fuel, but with simple frugality comes a richness of experience.

Smells are richer, those you come in contact seem kinder because of your vulnerability. Fellow riders strike up a conversation without pause.

Once you loose two wheels and let the air pour though your clothes, it's hard to hide in a car during a vacation again.

Cars are for work. Cars are filled with fast food wrappers and stress.

My bike is freedom.

Next: 1259 miles of adventure in five days.

Cycle World via the International Motorcycle World website lists nine frugal fuel sipping motorcycles. I was at one of their shows in Washington D.C. last year. Great way to see almost every model available in one stop.

1. Honda CRF230L - 93 MPG
2. Honda Nighthawk - 90 MPG
3. Yamaha XT250 - 80 MPG
4. Aprilia SportCity 250 - 75 MPG
5. Kawasaki Ninja 250R - 60 MPG
6. Yamaha WR250X - 60 MPG
7. Suzuki GSX650F - 56 MPG
8. Harley-Davidson Sportster 883 - 55 MPG
9. Suzuki SV650 - 55 MPG

Interesting to note that a home grown Harley with an 883 cc engine gets the same mileage as many bikes with smaller displacement. And they forgot the Harley's Buell Blast with a 500 cc single cylinder that gets 64/73 mpg according to the Buell website. The bike falls into the same price bracket as others on the list.

I would love to see Harley market into the economy euro/japanese high fuel economy rider market. The market is ripe for a domestically made fuel squeezer.

Build it here and squeeze foreign oil. The concept makes me giddy.

Hayes Diversified Technologies, Hesperia, CA has a 667cc diesel motorcycle that gets 105 mpg. Production is delayed due to production requirements of the military.

I ride a BMW 800 ST which gets 67mpg. Hardly a frugal ride for this cheap soul, but it was the highest fuel mileage bike I could find with an engine that suited me that I wouldn't mind riding on an Interstate at 70 mph for 6 hours (and could get out of it's own way at that speed).
67 mpg motorcycle grocery getter camper (greenmesh.com 5/08)

So Chuck has been using his scooter to commute to work since June 9. His Chevy truck has been sitting in the drive collecting dirt rings around the tires for two weeks straight now.

He has logged 320 miles. Had he driven the truck for those miles it would have cost him $126 in gasoline. After burning through a free tank of gas from the dealership, the scooter has cost about $12 in fuel.

Chuck admits that he is driving the scooter more than he would had he only had the truck adding that after getting back into the truck 6 liter truck after two weeks that it felt sluggish compared to the scooter.

Scooter shopping day 1
Scooter shopping day 2
Scooter shopping day 3

It has a 100 cc engine, zips smoothly through traffic, can cruise up to 55mph, gets close to 100 mpg and has a price point under $3000. It has the support network of Harley dealerships in most every major town and people want to buy it because it's a domestically produced scooter that is designed by us to help us get ourselves out of a fuel crisis.

Ok, I know this doesn't exist and people will tell me labor costs are too high here to build something that cheap and it doesn't fit the Harley image... but Harley has made everything from golf carts to bomb casings and Holiday Rambler recreational vehicles.

A flag waving on a domestically produced, super-economy machine would bring a new found smile to many.

I tend to over think purchases. After looking at everything everywhere, we decided to purchase this new 2007 Honda Elite 80. The Elite, assembled in Mexico out of Japanese parts is about to disappear as Honda will replace it with an Indian made scooter with more storage and probably a slightly larger engine.

The Elite is a lone scooter survivor of the 1980's Scooter market and has been marketed here since.

It's somewhat 1980's-ish looking and definatley doesn't scream steal me. It has a long track record of durability, a dedicated parts network and even in a doomsday scenario there will be parts on EBay for the next 30 years because they have has such a long production run.

I had the honors of taking it home. The 80cc engine goes up and down Mount Zion hill at 35-40 mph and the scooter can hit 50mph on the flats. It as a variable speed transmission and an automatically engaging clutch. It engine breaks down long hills.

Not something you would want to take on Interstate 83 or the the Rt 30 bypass, but very serviceable for most any other road. It will out accelerate most cars and is rated at 115 miles per gallon. The one gallon fuel tank had 88 miles and 1/4 left on the gauge, so i don't doubt it will hit the mark.

We figured out that to run the truck to work five days a week costs about $56, while the scooter costs under $4. The crankcase holds about 2 cups of oil.

Also see:
67 mpg motorcycle grocery getter camper (greenmesh 05/2008)

So Chuck checked out a local East York used car dealer turned scooter franchise and presented me with some figures. The Chinese made Roketa scooters sure have a low price point.

Scooters haven't been a big sale item in the U.S until the recent gas crisis. I remember my father buying an Austrian made Puch moped in the 1970's during that gas price escalation. Today, the Motorcycle Industry Council estimates that 50% of the world's scooters originate in China. In many parts of the world, a scooter is the dominate mode of transportation. Honda actually sells more motorcycles than it does cars.

New scooters can be purchased in four ways:

---Mainline dealerships that carry familiar nameplates.
---Independent motorcycle repair shops that carry a line of scooters.
---Business entrepreneurs (often car dealerships) that offer a line of (most likely Chinese made) scooters.
---Internet purchase with drop shipment (usually Chinese made)

My neighbor Chuck drives a Chevy Pickup with a 6 liter engine that gets 11 mpg. Last week he saw my light on around midnight and came banging on my door. It seems that the money he had budgeted for gasoline has gone beyond that budget eating into food, vacations and everything else. He got the truck to pull a camper and uses it to commute to work.

"This guy at work bought a motorcycle and I was thinking, why spend $9000 to get 35mpg when I can spend $1500 on a scooter that gets over 100 mpg."

This is coming from a man who loves big Detroit iron and has a truck named Big Red. Ford was right when they said there is a structural difference occurring in the market. Yes. Basically, people can't afford to eat or go anywhere so they are rethinking life.

I have owned three motorcycles and have shopped for them endlessly even when I wasn't in the market. There are so many varieties of motorcycles and it can be confusing, but the scooter market in the Spring of 2008 is a strange combination of backyard entrepreneurship and an evolving supply and demand issue.

A wide assortment awaits the buyer from major makes in motorcycle dealerships to Chinese-built platforms that come with many different names and seem to have a lot of the same parts.

Follow along on the scooter adventure and see what we bought.

When I was looking for a new motorcycle, I tried to find the highest mileage scooter that was capable of not getting run over on the highway. You would think that mileage ratings for motorcycles would be more transparent, but there is no government mile per gallon standard that manufactures are required to publish with the sale of the motorcycle so it becomes a guessing game based on internet searching.

Ironically, most motorcycles with a usable/flexilble engine size really don't get very good mileage and many with huge over 1,000cc displacements rate below my Civic Hybrid which has about the same size gasoline engine (1,200cc). I was replacing a 919cc in-line 4cyl Honda that got in the 45-50 mpg range and before that a carburated 4cyl Honda that got about the same.

For most people buying a motorcycle, it is more an emotional experience of coolness and/or chrome and that is how they are marketed. It's about the ride and the "lifestyle" more than a statement of responsible fuel use.

It is assumed that any motorcycle will get great mileage and if you compare it to most four wheeled vehicles on the road 45-50 mpg is probably double. However, from the perspective of a car owner who normally gets 45-50 mpg in my car, I expect more from a motorcycle.

Martin Library will host an environmental panel discussion on February 21 featuring:

I was interviewed, via keybord of course, since I will be one of the moderators. Below is the text of the interview:

5. In your opinion, how does the level of environmental awareness in York County compare to that of other similar-sized communities?

York is a land of plenty. We have enjoyed low population congestion and are blessed with resources. California is tuned into air pollution because congestion and climate patterns demanded action. The desert southwest is tuned into water supply because of the lack of it. Other than the Codorus Creek, a stray landfill and an occasional bad ozone day, York County generally has not been confronted in the face with major environmental issues. High oil prices, wars and global cries that we need to act have brought these concerns home to York.

6. What do you believe the typical Yorker can do to improve the environment?

Use less to do more. Nothing will lower pollution, lower oil prices, and stretch resources more than choosing to use less through product choice and lifestyle. This concept runs contrary to our financial model that, up until now, has promoted and thrived on people using more energy.

7. As editor of Greenmesh.com, what do you see as the most promising alternative to oil-based energy?

Experimenting with many alternatives is the best was to transition away from an oil based economy. It takes time to understand the repercussions of any form of energy production. Solar collection is the lowest impacting source of alternative energy, but in places like Pennsylvania, solar isn’t practical most of the time. We have already experienced the implications of diving head first into corn-based ethanol by higher food and feed prices.

All methods of energy production have environmental implications and placing all our eggs in one basket gives power to a new monopoly and will accentuate any negative effects of pushing a single solution of energy production....

Unlike the evolution of the Humvee to Hummer, the civilian diesel motorcycle products from HDT will offer the consumer with a way to squeeze fuel.

The U.S. military wanted to streamline their fuel needs. Instead of multiple fuels for different vehicles they wanted to economize the distribution process with one fuel.

The problem is that a diesel Humvee and a motorcycle had to run on the same fuel and no domestic manufacturer wanted to produce a diesel motorcycle. A group of small manufactures bid on the project and Hayes Diversified Technologies of Hesperia, CA won.

The 4-Stroke, IDI, single cylinder, liquid cooled diesel motorcycle is rated at 96 mpg. Two models have been slated for civilian production but military demand has been so great that the civilian models have been postponed.

The civilian D650A1 Bulldog has a projected dry weight of less than 400 pounds and the motorcycle is expected to have more than 600 miles of range on a tank of diesel, achieving in excess of 100 mpg.

Biofuel Diesel Motorcycle Wins At Bonneville Speed Trials (11/01/07)

Unlike any other machine at Bonneville, HDT's diesel bike is capable of fording a 24-in. stream, and climbing or descending a 60 percent grade while operating on any version of diesel, kerosene or jet fuel. The HDT diesel bikes operated on B20 biodiesel (20 percent soybean, vegetable oil and other agricultural components; 80 percent petroleum diesel).

Ironically, consumers will have to wait for military action to wind down in the Middle East before that can conserve oil with a 100 mpg motorcycle.

I am fascinated with the Royal-Enfield Bullet diesel. The 100+ mpg one cylinder diesel motorcycle, from a 50 year old design, is still manufactured in India and is probably the sole transportation for some families there.

The Diesel Bullet reminds me of just what North American workers compete with in a global economy and just how lean the competition operates.

The Diesel Bullet is a lean machine that some in more economically evolved nations are using as a platform to innovate and satisfy their own desire for energy independence.

Riding on Salad Oil - A guy in Germany, where over 50% of the new cars registered are efficient clean diesel technology, has retrofitted an old stripped Enfield with a Yanmar L100 diesel engine (Chinese clone) engine. He runs diesel, makes biodiesel and even uses salad oil getting a (diesel/price) equivalent of 500 mpg.

Harold Benich of Albion, Pa., put his Harley-Davidson Fat Boy motorcycle on a diet by retrofitting it with a diesel and burning soy bean oil, getting over 100 mpg. americanprofile.com

A new paper-based technology lowers cost and may increase durability due to vibration.

In the past few years, motorcycles have begun to sprout catalytic converters. Around 2006, rules for emissions on motorcycles began to catch up with cars that have been forced to comply for years.

According to the EPA,

nearly one fifth of motorcycles sold in recent years in the United States (or near 100,000 per year) have been equipped with emission control devices, meaning that there are likely near 200,000 or more motorcycles with catalysts on the road today.

Under the old rules, federal motorcycle emission standard for hydrocarbon emissions was about
90 times the hydrocarbon standard of passenger cars. And, while many motorcycles actually met the 2003 California motorcycle emission standard, the California hydrocarbon standard at the time was about 20 times the 2003 federal passenger car limit. epa.gov

The new standards reduce motorcycle riders’ exposure to air toxics and particulate matter and help states achieve their air quality goals, however, the cost squeezes a manufacturer on a bike costing a couple thousand dollars.

Traditional car catalytic converters use ceramics, which wouldn't survive well with motorcycle vibration. Motorcycles use converters made from nickel and other metals that can better withstand vibrations. The weight of the devices and the high price of the metals has limited their application to larger and more expensive motorcycles.

F.C.C. Co., a manufacturer of clutches for motorcycles and cars and whose leading shareholder is Honda, has devised a catalytic converter made from paper for cleaning motorcycle exhaust. The company hopes to commercialize the product by 2010 at a price point that enables its application even on scooters. greencarcongress.com

General Motors has a prototype of their Sequel fuel cell car at the Pennsylvania Auto and Boat Show in Harrisburg. You can't see any of the guts, but they give a basic description and the specifications are interesting.

The Harley-Davidson Softtail Deluxe President Bush was revving this past Wednesday at the Harley-Davidson plant in Springettsbury Township probably gets about 42-50 mpg. (2006 figure) with it's 1584 cc twin-V air-cooled engine. The Harley-Davidson site doesn't list mileage for a 2007 model yet.