The price of fuel continues to skyrocket, and therefore feeding our thirsty rides becomes more and more expensive. But, it is expensive enough for us to start looking at our fuel consumption more carefully, or even start buying our motorcycles and scooters based on MPG figures?

Cars in most countries are legally bound to display their fuel consumption figures. You can purchase your car based on verifiable figures; speeds, power and MPG. But in the motorcycle industry, this is not the case.

No laws anywhere, including the already very strict state of California, demand that the manufacturers publish their figures. You'll find on many motorcycle discussion forums threads about fuel consumption, but these are all figures recorded by individuals, and not in a harmonious way. If you ride your bike aggressively, your consumption will be way up.

So why, especially today, do manufacturers not display the MPG? Well, the answer is quite simple. There just aren't enough motorcycle and scooters around to make it interesting for the politicians to legislate them to this degree. Secondly, two wheelers get a lot better fuel consumption then their counterparts. 50 mpg is not unheard off, and even higher for lower displacement motorcycles.

But thanks to a petrol crisis this is starting to change, Yamaha recently started publishing the fuel consumption on several of their (low end) scooter. Suzuki did similar in an ad campaign for the SV650 (it's 54 mpg in case you're wondering). Harley-Davidson did similar for one of their motorcycle line-ups.

But since there's no standard protocol for measuring fuel consumption (e.g. running the bike at 60 mph, over 100 miles), the figures can not be seen as trustworthy.

There's a website out there that allows individuals to enter the fuel consumption of their motorcycles and scooters. You can enter the fuel you're consuming, and this way you can see the average for that model.

(motorcyclefuelconsumption)

But in the end, will it stop people from buying more powerful motorcycles or scooters? Will you buy your next ride based on its MPG?

What do you think? Let us know, we'll be interested in knowing.