#scooters

Who would’ve thought the Scooter category would be the one to tear apart our once happy and cohesive team, leaving it in tattered shreds of its former glory. Sometimes it’s up to the youngest and brightest to stand up to the old guard to bring to light what is honest and true. [Easy there, Sparky. —Ed.] And that, in this case, is bestowing the 2020 Vespa GTS 300 HPE platform with Motorcycle.com’s Scooter of the Year award.

Admit it: hooning around on little motorcycles and scooters is fun. At least Ryan and I think so, anyway. And so it was; the two young pups at MO (well, Ryan anyway) went about dreaming up things to do outside our usual testing regimen. Because, you know, even though we have great jobs, the daily grind gets a little routine at times. After a little internet browsing we discovered the glorious sight of Vespa scooters tackling the Dakar. Yes, that Dakar. Thus, the wheels were set in motion.

Honda has released a new, smaller version of its X-ADV scooter for the Indonesian market. The new 2020 Honda ADV 150 is styled after the 745cc X-ADV, and while it may not be as capable off-road as its larger sibling, Honda says it’s very able to the diverse terrain and road conditions of Indonesia.

BMW introduced a new generation of scooters when it debuted the C650GT and C600 Sport (since renamed the C650 Sport) back in 2012. Today, BMW’s “urban mobility” line has grown to include the C400X, C400GT and the electric C Evolution. What gets forgotten, sometimes, is that BMW used to have another scooter introduced in 2000 called the C1.

At EICMA last fall, Yamaha introduced the Niken GT, a sport-touring motorcycle with the company’s leaning-multi-wheel (LMW) technology. But the Niken GT wasn’t the only three-wheeler shown at EICMA; Yamaha also revealed a 300cc LMW scooter prototype called the 3CT.

The Electric Wasp. We were turned loose, a silent swarm of nocuous moto-journos descending upon the city, sneaking up on the unsuspecting fashion-forward folk of Milan, only to be seen as a flash of silver and blue as we sped by. An exaggeration? Possibly, but nevertheless, we were there to test Vespa’s 2019 Elettrica, and we wouldn’t stop until we had fully exhausted the scooter’s battery and our fellow commuter’s patience.

Yamaha’s new XMAX scooter appeared in the US last year with little fanfare – possibly because Yamaha didn’t want to call attention to the fact that its long-running and updated-for-2017 TMAX maxi-scooter came up missing about the same time.

Harley-Davidson smartly used the Consumer Electronics Show 2019 as its launch point for the 2020 LiveWire. No, the LiveWire isn’t much of a secret anymore, but at least we’re finally getting more details about the machine H-D is putting a lot of faith into – price and range being the major talking points people want to know about. Of course, no sooner did this information come out that critics and early adopters alike took to the internet to spew their love or hate.

Along side the new 2019 LiveWire, Harley-Davidson revealed two electric urban mobility concepts at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The two as-yet-unnamed concepts, a mountain bike-style vehicle and a scooterish looking model, give us the first looks at a selection of “lightweight urban” electric models that Harley-Davidson says will go into production in 2021 and 2022.

BMW introduced a new addition to its scooter lineup in the new C400GT. It joins the C400X introduced last year as a second mid-sized scooter, slotting in below the C650GT, C650 Sport and the electric C Evolution. The 2019 BMW C400GT shares much with the C400X, but with more of a focus on comfort and touring.

We’ve seen all sorts of futuristic-styled electric scooters hit the market, and while there’s nothing wrong with looking like some kind of space-age time traveler, the Vespa Elettrica’s classic scooter styling comes as a breath of fresh air in the electric two-wheeled landscape.

What starts out on four legs in the morning, walks on two in midday and three in the evening? Wait, that’s the riddle of the Sphinx and has nothing to do with this. Or does it? Lots of us (at one time anyway) started off on cheap little scooters, graduated to bigger, faster motorcycles – and may return again to the scooter in our, ahhh, golden years. Not that there’s anything wrong with riding a scooter at any life stage in between. Today we are tasked with listing the advantages of each, motorcycle and scooter.

Last fall at EICMA, BMW announced its first middleweight scooter,  the C400X. But, following a trend in recent years set by the G310R, G310GS, F750GS and F850GS models, we’ve had to wait longer than we would like before seeing the C400X land in North America.

Once upon a time, electric motorcycles had such short range and high MSRPs that only the most devoted of early adopters had a reason to consider owning one. Well, in the past couple years, improvements in range have resulted in electrics now being a viable option for riders who are looking for a greener alternative to internal combustion engine (ICE) motorcycles, which are relatively dirty compared to four-wheeled road users. So, we’ve taken the 2018 BMW C Evolution scooter and the 2018 Zero DSR as representatives of two different approaches to urban electric motorcycles to see how they stack up for everyday use. Note: This is not our typical comparison where we try to determine the best motorcycle out of a pairing. Rather, we are looking at two different electric bikes to determine their viability as urban transport.

When it comes to two-wheeled practicality in an urban environment, it’s hard to beat a scooter. Perhaps that is why, in much of the world, you’ll see cities crawling with them. Scooters are easy to maneuver, easy to park, and most offer some cargo carrying capacity. They’re perfect for commuting or running out to pick up some groceries.