The word moped came from a Swedish journalist, not motor-velocipede
In 1952 the Swedish journalist Harald Nielsen blended motor and pedaler into moped. The popular story that it comes from motor-velocipede is wrong. Early mopeds genuinely needed their pedals: they got riders moving from a standstill and helped the tiny engines up hills, a job pedals kept doing into the 1990s.
A moped is a small, cheap motorcycle, usually with lighter licensing rules and speeds only a little above a bicycle's. Traditional machines had pedals and a crankset usable with or instead of the motor. Most have engines below 120 cc, often 50 cc or less, and the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic set 50 cc as the cap in 1977. Some places even classify low-powered three- and four-wheelers, including microcars such as the Aixam, as mopeds.
The first ones were bicycles with helper motors, known as cyclemotors; the VéloSoleX drove its front tyre with a simple roller. Britain's Cyclemaster swapped in a complete powered rear wheel, based on a design by two DKW engineers. Early motorcycles such as a 1912 Douglas had pedals too, sparing riders the run-and-jump start, but better gearboxes and engines had made them unnecessary on most motorcycles by 1918.
Mopeds can top 100 miles per US gallon, yet studies found two-stroke 50 cc models emitted ten to thirty times the hydrocarbons and particulates permitted under the dated Euro 3 car standards. Tuning is widespread: a Finnish survey found only 10 percent of trade school students rode a legal machine, with average top speeds of 72 km/h against a 45 km/h limit.
Britain's 1971 Sixteener Law, brought in by transport minister John Peyton, confined 16-year-olds to 50 cc bikes. Makers answered with sports mopeds, 50 cc motorcycles with token pedals, some able to exceed 50 mph; the Yamaha FS1-E became the best known. In 1977 the government capped moped speed at 30 mph, a move that helped shrink the British motorcycle market.
Source: Moped
