Nerdy no longer

I fess up. Yes, I"m an overgrown band geek. I played trombone during high school, on through college, and I continue to do so (very badly, actually) in a local community band. Every Thursday, driving into the rehearsal hall parking lot, I see yet another blast from the past, that preferred transportation method for us geeks and nerds: A motor scooter.

The driver, who happens to be quite the clarinetist, has driven his scooter to band practice for years, but within the past few months he"s been getting a lot more attention. During breaks we gather around his Vespa ®, admiring not so much its sleek design, but its miles per gallon: 72.

Last week, a spokesperson for the Motorcycle Industry Council told the Associated Press that U.S. scooter sales topped 131,000 in 2007, up from 24,000 just 11 years ago. As gas prices shoot over $4 a gallon, the fuel-efficient vehicles don"t look quite so geeky.

This is the biggest craze I"ve seen in the scooter business, Mike Hanners of Hanners Wholesale and Retail, Jackson, Mo., told the AP. This will continue as long as gas prices continue to rise & Right now demand is bigger than supply.

Steve Inskeep, host of NPR"s Morning Edition, referred to a driver of a Hummer in South Carolina. He says what he spends in gas in a month, his scooter-driving friend doesn"t spend in a year.

Scooters, which have enjoyed healthy popularity around the globe, are finally making a serious dent into the car-loving U.S. market. Doing a little digging, though, I found a depressing fact about the scooter business: Few, if any, are manufactured here. My clarinetist friend got his from a dealer that imports from Italy.

One scooter-maker does call the United States home, though. With headquarteres in Newport, R.I., Vectrix develops all-electric scooters that run off a nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) battery. Riders can plug into an ordinary household socket and recharge the vehicle within two and a half hours, with a range of about 60 miles. According to the company, the scooter"s throttle incorporates a kind of regenerative braking system that recharges the scooter"s battery during braking.

Last week the company got a little positive publicity when General Motors Vice Chairman Bob Lutz, who has been a champion of the electric car and recently test-drove a development version of the all-electric Chevrolet Volt, purchased a Vectrix scooter.

Vectrix opened a new manufacturing factory in January 2007. Our assembly process mirrors advanced lean manufacturing methods, Wolfgang Gohl, chief manufacturing officer, said in the company"s annual report. Component supply is pulled from an internal supermarket, [and] replenishment of parts to the line is triggered by a signal using the kanban methods. With this process, Vectrix can build a customized scooter within a few days of a customer order from the EU.

Wait, the European Union? Turns out that, while the U.S. company has engineering and test facilities in New Bedford, Mass., it manufactures in Wroclaw, Poland.

I"ve got a feeling that it won"t stay this way forever. If gas prices continue their seemingly perpetual climb, who knows? Scooter manufacturing may well find a home stateside.