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Comment by Symbiote | Hacker News Reader

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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