Member Comments

What sort of price are people paying to insure their scooter? That is, if they choose to insure it at all. And with whom?
Have just put in a call to Westpac Insurance (aka Lumley) and even though we have car insurance and contents insurance with them (and have done so for years), they will only insure a brand new 49cc scooter as a Ducatti (apparently its the only "field" Lumley has in its form!) and that the only price they can do is $43/month ($500 access AND $1000 excess if it is stolen) with no discount for paying annually, storing it it in a locked garage or been ridden by two middle aged beings. And there is no such option as 3rd party insurance, only full cover!! Uggghhhh! All I can think is, why bother with insurance at all????

Fixating on petrol costs is misleading, as running costs for a scooter are negligible compared to standing costs.

The chart comparing value vs a car would be better comparing total annual ownership costs. The choice of a $2000 value car because that is what a new scooter costs is completely arbitrary. I doubt whether a $2000 car delivers the minimum annual ownership costs once the possibility of repairs are taken into account.

At 2000 km/year (which is what I average on my 125cc scooter) 1.5l/10km = 30 l = $50-60. This is negligible compared to the non-running costs.

A scooter is only likely to last say 5 years of daily use. So simplistically depreciation is ~$400/year. Registration is $90. My 3rd party insurance is $25.

Note that the proposed ACC changes to increase registration changes to $250 are a huge increase to the total annual ownership cost of a scooter. Before $400 + $90 + $60 + $25 = $575. After = $400 + $250 + $60 + $25 = $735. That is about a 30% jump!!

They've tripped themselves up doing it. Their chart has the $2000 used car getting 4.3 L/100Km. The latest Gen3 Prius can't even achieve that. A 50cc scooter will indeed regularly do 1.5L/100K.

Consumer mag should know better. The GLOBAL standard for metric fuel consumption is L/100Km not Km/L. The figures is this story are used for comparison but using a different standard makes actual comparison with other vehicles, from either the web, other magazines or manufacturers' stats, as convoluted as if they'd used mpg. Get with it.

I wonder how easily I could find a car for $2000 with 23km per litre economy. I suspect an economical $2000 would be lucky to get much more than 15km per litre. I doubt you would be looking at less than 3 X the fuel cost for a cheap car compared to a new scooter.

Of course parking alone if you work in a city would make a scooter very worthwhile. In Auckland there are quite a few choices of free parking for motorcycles & scooters.