Fuelly stats

TVB · Post by **TVB** » Thu Dec 22, 2011 1:25 am

Disclaimer: The following survey is entirely lacking in scientific validity. It is interesting, and perhaps informative about the state of the scooter market, however.

I was poking around at Fuelly, and noticed an interesting pattern on the registrations of Buddies by model year. The Buddy 125 is the second most popular single model of "motorcycle" on the site, with nearly 200 bikes registered, and has been available since 2006, making it a the best representative on the site for the industry as a whole during that time. Here's my count of how many there are of each model year:
2012: 8
2011: 0
2010: 2
2009: 73
2008: 50
2007: 41
2006: 21

Now, before anyone guesses that this is just fewer people registering their Buddies at Fuelly the last few years, note that the 2006 and 2007 model-year figures include a substantial number of scooters registered there in 2008, 2009, 2010, even 2011... probably many of them second owners. Which suggests that the market for new scooters quite simply took a huge nosedive in 2009-2010, and is just now starting to climb back.

(The pattern for the Buddy 50 is similar, but with proportionally smaller numbers. I tried to check some other models for comparison, but most of the other scooter manufacturers have so many different models (Vespa has nearly 50) or have so few registered, that there isn't a single representative long-term model to look at.)

Post by **ericalm** » Fri Dec 23, 2011 12:42 am

Compare this with MB membership stats. I bet the curves are similar.

Skootz Kabootz · Post by **Skootz Kabootz** » Fri Dec 23, 2011 3:22 am

I'm one of the '08 50.

MWPMWP · Post by **MWPMWP** » Fri Dec 23, 2011 4:35 am

I purchased a brand new 2009 Buddy 125 earlier this year. All the models on the sales floor were 2009's. I was under the impression that Genuine jumped a couple years and went from the 2009 models to the new 2012's.

I talked to several people that thought the same thing. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it would explain the Fuelly information. The two people in 2010 could very well be mistaken of what year their scooters were manufactured.

I was aware of this, because I originally thought I was getting screwed over by the dealer wanting to sell me a two year old scooter.

Post by **ericalm** » Fri Dec 23, 2011 4:52 am

Not just Genuine! A few manufacturers skipped a year or so in there. Sales in 2009 dropped so drastically, that even now some companies still have unsold 2009s on clearance. (Genuine's are long gone.)

There were 2011 Buddys and some 2010s but not many.