Charly led the pioneering efforts in the first Vetter Fuel Economy Contests of the 1980s. We are so pleased to have him back, showing us the way to a future of "Living better on less energy."

1. Bike selection. The NX250 was actually the 2nd bike we tried; I bought the used 1989 Honda locally off craigslist [for $1600] on March 12, 2011. It's light: 280 lbs, wide ratio 6 speed, high 11:1 compression, liquid cooled four stroke single. the absolutely stock bike got 86 mpg on my test loop. The engine was never touched except for 3 degrees advanced ignition timing and a thin foam air cleaner element.

2. Bike mods-- GMD ATL lowered the forks and checked geometry and alignment. A low Works shock and 16" rimed front rim was laced on. Clip ons, rearsets, TALL gearing [15/33] less restrictive air filter element, ignition timing advanced 3 degrees. The naked bike was now up to a consistent 110-115 mpg.

3. Streamlining. Our fairing was a much modified [raised and widened, headlight and turnsignals 1968 Harley XR750TT racing fairing. I followed Max around and it turned heads at the track; I knew the base race fairing was good from my 2008 vintage racing season: my CB350 would blow by all the other modified CB350s on the long straights. When the fairing was tested mileage was up to 145 mpg. Our last test run before the contest was 156 mpg.

4. Carry: We thought from that we would need a 2 bag tail but the combination of wide fairing and really narrow engine allowed room for a bag on each side. Our last 156 mpg test run was actually with grocery bags filled with styrafoam peanuts to make sure they did not burst into flame.

Max is [along with being an accomplished roadracer and hare scrambles racer] a bicycle racer: 6'1" and a fat free160 lbs. Plus, he could ride a pork chop past a wolf. He consistently recorded slightly better mileage than me, so I think weight is a factor.

Do you think Charly will offer his high mileage streamlining components to other Challengers?

I hope so. Stay tuned on his Parabellum web page

Fred had just won the Quail Challenge with much less sophisticated streamlining. This machine represents the best of the best. How could he be beat?

All we can figure is that Charly Perethian's years of experience must be responsible. I am grateful that Charly is sharing his knowledge (above).

Jack McCornack has posted his story on his Mother Earth News Blog. You will get a lot more details from him there.

The MD670 ran the same B20 Biodiesel as Fred's streamliner. Fred was heard to say:

"Dale's 119 mpg was more impressive than my 143 mpg."

The "Carol Vetter Approved", four bags of groceries, saddlebags were custom built by RT Fabrication in Hesperia, CA.

104 miles .899 gallons

$3.37 gasoline

115.91 mpg

$.0314 per mile

"For me one of my personal goals on this trip was to cross the country coast-to-coast on less gas than it would take to fill up my pick-up truck once."

Rode his electric scooter just for fun. That is the AMA's representative, Marshall Goodman behind John. Marshall helped to make everything go smoothly.

About 25 miles into the Challenge, John was going slower and slower until I passed him. "Overheating!" he yelled.

Overheating? Well, it was around 100 degrees. I had never heard that electric scooters might overheat.

This is how we learn.

Kyle's instrumentation indicated that he used 3066 watts to ride the 38 miles. His cost to recharge is estimated at 3.066 KwHr / 80% charger efficiency x $.12 /KwHr =$.4599. Therefore, Kyle's electric cost per mile was around $.012 for the first part of the ride.

Summary: Electricity Cost / Mile $.012 /Mile

Adding in $.006 / mile in taxes brings it to $.018 per mile.

Traveling the way we really drive, Kyle demonstrated a real and fair cost for an electric motorcycle.

1.8¢ per mile is about 3/4 the cost of Charly Perethian's winning 2.3¢ per mile

This is significant. But the difference is not as much as we are led to believe.

Equally significant:

I certainly did not expect an electric bike to go 104 miles in real driving conditions.

But, they did go 38 miles. This is important information.

Lithium Ion batteries don't respond well to "over charging" or "over discharging". "Theory" said that if Kraig's electric bike was properly streamlined, it could go the distance. In reality, nobody brought a completed streamlined electric bike. Nobody went the distance. This is important information.

Electric motors can overheat in normal summer Ohio driving conditions.

Did you know these things? This is how we learn.

I need to point out the fact that these plug in electric motorcycles are mainly:

Coal powered

Natural gas powered

Atomic powered

Of course, consuming petroleum is no better. 3 out of 4 gallons we use for transportation is imported, making us weak and them strong.

How hard can it be to harvest the energy we want directly from the sun?

Kraig Schultz reports that his motorcycle was already completely POWERED BY RENEWABLE ENERGY (biomass and wind turbines). Kraig, too, is totally opposed to building more coal and especially nuclear power plants.

Further, Kraig says: "We have enough solar, wave, tidal and wind energy in the United States to completely phase out polluting sources of electricity - we lack the moral courage to do it (we are too greedy and lazy). Wind energy is already at parity with coal for generation cost/KW."