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that would so totally take the fun out of riding!
Like really, imho a horrible idea, lol!

First it's so much more expensive than a CVT, second it's not going to work fluently, and a derailleur needs maintenance.

No, if you really want a chain for min losses, and the ease of shifting, they should invent some kind of throttle on the left hand, where you could switch between 3 modes.

Performance mode, Fast acceleration, low speed (good for city riding)
Normal mode
Eco mode, low acceleration, high MPG, high top speed (good for highway).

You could switch on the fly between modes, or keep it steady at one mode, and not worry about shifting. That's probably about as close as you can get.

on a 50cc it's possible to have performance mode go upto 25MPH, normal mode upto 35MPH, and eco mode upto 45MPH, but acceleration from a dead stop in that kind of eco gearing would probably be slower than a bicycle rider.

As you may notice I am actually for chinese scoots. I agree with what you say, but I don't try to say chinese products are bad. But it is true that the quality of the product is inferior to Korean, Japanese, and US products.

That being said, I have several chinese scoots mopeds, and motorcycles, and only 2 non-chinese forms of transportation, being my Honda Shadow VT750, and my car.

And I only have those because they're not yet selling $6k chinese cars in USA.
Despite them being inferior, they're more than safe enough for travel, when riding safely. If you plan on riding a chinese car on the highway at 100MPH (provided it could do that), you might be asking for trouble if you lose control of the wheel.

In fact I wanted to buy a chevy Sonic, but they didn't have them with the 1.4l turbo engine yet. if I now had to buy a car, it would be a Sonic with 1,4l turbo engine.
Instead I went with the Chevy cruze, which had that same 1,4l ecotec engine with turbo, but only had a larger body (of 3300 LBS dry weight).
The 1.4 liter pulls the car so much better than any toyota I've tried, in fact, I sat in a 2009 matrix last week, and almost fell asleep, as the engine and transmission where fighting the floored pedal, slow acceleration.
I was surprised that that tiny car, with 1.8 liter (400cc more displacement) had such a hard time keeping up.
Good thing about the Sonic, Cruze, and the Spark as well, is that the engine housing is made out of steel, rather than aluminum. The engineers said that the steel only gave a minor weight increase, because they could make it more thin walled than with aluminum, and at the same time the engine should last almost 200k miles, compared to 120k miles on the aluminum small displacement engine.

anyway, off topic, but Chinese products are great for the money!
Even if they are a bit inferior to the Japanese models (just like I found the Japanese models to be inferior to modern US cars)

Another topic that Sanmar touched, is performance.

Quite often we need to compare different displacement for same performance, meaning acceleration or top speed.
On the 50cc plane, Chinese and Japanese bikes perform much the same.
But Korean or Japanese 125cc bikes often perform similar to chinese 150cc, or
200cc bikes compare to chinese 250cc bikes...

On those bikes you got to do a sprocket change, to get better MPG, and better top speed.
What's the rear sprocket tooth count?

Most of the time they got great torque, but you need to rev them really high for it to gain somewhat useable speed; like in 4th gear, 2k RPM, you're probably only going 10-15MPH.
To get the best gear ratio, you should rev 4k RPM @ 40MPH.
You could do 55MPH with a bike like that, with the right sprocket change.

Chinese materials ARE inferior to Japanese materials.
Not by much, but they are. There are lots more impurities found in Chinese manufactured aluminum than in aluminum manufactured in older manufacturing plants outside of China. But it's still aluminum.
Especially the same with Steel! There are several grades of steel, depending on how it's manufactured.
The best steel was originally manufactured in the 1950's in Belgium, where steel factories created the 'perfect chemical balance' between iron and carbon. Many of their products can still be found today, as in fork lifts, reach trucks, and guns. That steel was the hardest steel, that you could ever get; especially if the alloy is mixed with Chrome and Vanadium.
The Chinese use a spinoff method,that still makes steel, but the steel is no longer hard. It's just iron and carbon, and the carbon particles are just poured into a liquid bowl of molten iron, and not really mixed very well, resulting in steel that has particles of carbon in it, kind of like pebbles in sand or clay. The steel bends much like lead, aluminum, or iron, by a lower force than what good grade steel can withstand, and is not bouncing back to it's original state.
The chinese do this, because the process is quicker, and saves them a few dollars per pound of steel.

The only thing chinese are manufacturing really BAD, is chrome. It seems for some reason that their 'chrome' and 'inox steel' or 'stainless steel' always gets rusted.
In fact most of the chrome I've seen on chinese bikes rust and is just polished steel. I'm glad the chinese are learning, and dealers are picking out less and less bikes showing chrome, due to the quick formation of rust; and in most of their 2013 model bikes they get rid of a lot of chrome, especially on the muffler.

I remember a time when in my home country, you could place an Inox steel knife in the sink for days, weeks or months, and it won't rust.
I've seen Chinese knives form rust in a matter of 2 days.


Another example on lower grade materials, my TaoTao ATM50 for instance, the rear trunk holder should support only 10LBS according to the chinese. It does support upto 20LBS, and on occasion I pulled up the rear end of the scoot with it, but putting a little more force on it (like 40-50LBS), makes it bend.
Clearly an inferior steel compared to the Japanese, because should a Japanese bike have an exactly the same trunk holder like that, it could carry a 225LBS person! I was surprised I could actually bend the trunk holder with one arm!

So the chinese use lower quality steel too, it's easier to manufacture, but bends easier too...
When I look at my Honda VT750, it's made out of glass hard steel and chrome, and gives me the impression I could frontal hit a wall at 40MPH, and apart of the fairings, and cosmetics, the bike would still ride after that.

When I look at my chinese bikes, and I would be able to do a front wheelie by braking, and would hit a small pothole while doing so, I have the impression that the front fork would collapse and the front wheel would hit the engine.

Just small ideas about inferior qualities of the Chinese. Does that make them bad? No. Just not as good. But the reality is that the Chinese DEFINITELY use inferior quality material in their products!

And that not only in steel. Facts are known that chinese imported plastics for food, contain over 25% of non-food grade plastics, as they buy the leftover plastics of plastic manufacturing plants over the world, and sort out the plastics, by sniffing and smelling the fumes from a pellet, and by the smell grade the plastic.
Think it's unreal?
One of the companies doing this is called Ravago; I got intel from a friend who actually works there, and sees and knows the process.
Me, working in a plastic factory, know how hard we work to keep food grade plastic separate from other plastics, but ravago takes transition plastics and mixes it all into one pot of luck!

They could be mixing food grade plastic with plastics that contain cancerous substances, and melt it in one batch.
Granted, the cancerous substances are in such a small quantity present within the plastics, that a person might eat his whole life with Chinese plastic spoons, forks and knives, and never get cancer.
However, all that has to happen is one cancerous substance particle that detaches from the utensil, and affect one cell in the body, that becomes a tumor, and turns into a cancer cell.

Just saying...

I'm 160, and on level ground need a 75-110cc minimum to travel around normally.
It all depends on how the bike is geared, and how steep the hills are. A 125cc should be able to get you uphill at about 40MPH (if the hills are as steep as bridges). However riding 3 miles uphill is more than likely gonna cause a lot of wear on the engine.
My TaoTao EVO150 runs just fine uphill, and actually has too much torque for me. It might be right for you. I also would suggest a 150. Although Japanese 125cc's have about the same performance as chinese 150's.

That's what you get when you do upgrades. Last time I checked my TaoTao ATM50's belt was around 4000km (~3000 miles), and it was as good as new.