The meaning of cc in motorcycles is a measurement of engine size

When you are out shopping for something to get you from point A to point B. There are usually a couple of different features on which you will need to do some serious research. The first thing you want to take into account is what vehicle is best for on a day-to-day basis. There are different features to take into account than if you are looking to race around town at high speeds. Cc in motorcycles is something to look into.

The same is true if you have a job far away from where you live. Of course, you are looking for something that has a good fuel economy. If you are purchasing a sports car, either because you simply like to be behind the wheel of those kinds of cars. Or because you like the power they deliver when you are driving, you are mostly going to be looking at the “horsepower” of a vehicle.

Most people believe that horsepower is that a car can go as fast as if 500 horses were pulling it. This is should their car have a 500 horsepower engine. The fact of the matter is that horsepower is actually determined using a pretty complex mathematical computation. In the end, this term merely came about because the person who wanted to be able to brag about just how fast their steam engine could go. Or, if they wanted a catchy term to slap on the computation.

When talking about motorcycles, there is a similar term that tells you just how powerful one engine is over another. This is though horsepower isn’t used here. If you purchase a motorcycle you have probably seen a label where the motorcycle has 250 cc or 500 cc or more.

Definition of cc

So what is the meaning of cc in motorcycles? Unfortunately, no one decided that the power level of these particular vehicles needed as catchy a title. CC stands for cubic centimeters and that cc is a general roadmap for the power of the engine on that cycle. The larger the cubic centimeter rating, the larger the engine and the faster and more powerful the bike. The cc rating for a road-legal motorcycle, moped, or scooter can be from 50 cc all the way up to 2000 cc.

So why use this measurement? Cubic centimeters are generally used to measure three-dimensional objects such as gas or liquids. In the case of a motorcycle, you are talking about the amount of fuel and air mixture. So, measuring that is using cubic centimeters. Fuel and air are the global standards when it comes to powering a motorcycle.

So why is cc used on the engine of these bikes?

In this particular situation, the cc is actually measuring how many cubic centimeters of that air and fuel mixture moves through the bike’s engine in one cycle. This means that if the engine moves 2000 cc through the system in one rotation, then the motorcycle has a 2000 cc engine.

When this air-fuel mixture ignites, that actually powers the motorcycle. As you might suspect, the more cc of fuel-air mixture that ignites the more power the engine can create. This is why a 2000 cc engine is going to have a ton more power than one that has a 150 cc engine.

The long and the short of it is that the meaning of cc in motorcycles is pretty much the same as horsepower. This is when talking about cars or trucks. The measurement is a road map to help you figure out which motorcycles or mopeds or scooters have the more powerful engine. By extension, they have a pretty good chance of being faster.