[alvaro84]

After these years on exclusively 2 wheels I have both now and this winter did not favor commuting on 2 wheels so I'm glad for finally having a cage. I had only 3 days since the 1st of December I risked getting in the saddle and one of them was a clear mistake (I had run into fog after a few miles and everything was covered with ice thereafter).

I have and extensive log about the costs of my vehicles and after 4.5 years I think I can save fuel with a motorcycle (my lifetime is not far from 80 mpgUS (above in the summer) with Teresa - and she's a 650, not a 125!), but money? Not necessarily. In my case maintenance+tax+insurance costs slightly exceed fuel cost, and I still don't have such data about small cars, but I suspect that their fuel:everything_else ratio leans much more towards 'fuel'. We'll see about it.

I still think one could save money by riding a cheap(er) 125cc, and riding it a lot. Because as roosterk0031 mentioned, early replacement of a vehicle is not a recipe for economy (and manufacturing something to be hardly used is a waste of resources anyway). The main thing that makes Teresa competitive cost-wise is that I've owned her for 50k+ miles (after buying second-hand) and don't plan to sell her.

About environmental footprint: I guess it's better with a motorcycle, because of the less used material, and less burnt fuel. On the other hand, older ones (without catalytic converters) are definitely much worse on non-CO2 emissions.

The very reason behind choosing a motorcycle as my primary vehicle was this smaller footprint, and the scary idea of dragging a ton of iron to get my 150-pound arse to my destination. It's a shame that motorcycles are not proportionally efficient to their weight, but they'll probably never be, 'thanks' to aerodynamics.