I am a bit of a scooter freak and run a forum dedicated to the subject. The only 150 scooter that I would recommend for freeway hops and I mean short ones is the Qlink Pegasus. A liquid cooled 150 that is a well built high quality machine. Maybe $2400 at a dealer if you argue. Out of the box the one we reviewed did 69 mph (GPS verified) with under 300 miles on it so it was not broken in. Most air cooled 150cc scooters use the same GY6 engine and depending on the weight of the scoot are good for 53-60 mph flat out. Any incline at all and the speed drops proportionate to riders weight and incline. You can upgrade a 150 to run pretty fast but by the time you do that you should have bought the 250. There is no substitute for a good local dealer even if it costs you more. In the end it will be worth the expense. If you do not have a good dealer (or any) in your area be very careful who you buy from. There are 3 online vendors that we recommend. All have proven to be reliable and support the scoot after the sale. Jim from Bandit Motorsports
www.bandit-motorsports.com John at Valley Scooters
www.scootersus.com and Mike from Scootertronics
www.scootertronics.com Of those three Bandit imports their own brand (manufactured by Taizou Zhongneng a very good privately held Chinese company they make many Baron Models as well). Jim also test runs each scoot before he ships it but you still have to put the wheel on and mirrors or for not much more it comes fully assembled test ridden and custom crated. He is starting to offer factory upgrades as well including cylinder kits as well. If you can afford a bit more scoot Dennis from CBXMAN Motorcycles
www.cbxmanmotorcycles.com offers Kymco, Daelim, Qlink, and some others online but only to areas not served by a dealer of that particular brand. His scoots are shipped fully assembled and test ridden only... full dealer prep. Costs a little more but Dennis is amazing at after the sale service. I did see the Qlink Pegasus available on
www.brandshut.com for under $1900 but in the crate no prep no support. You said you're handy so maybe this appeals to you. The V3 and V5 you mentioned are fabulous machines. The Qlink has their own people there when CFMOTO does the production runs of the Qlink. All those clones are made by CFMOTO. There is a full review of a V3 on our homepage at
www.scootdawg.com by Jacine Smith a very talented and knowledgeable young lady.
Whew! To much typing... So as a guy who's last bike before the scoots was an 84 V-65 Sabre 1100 V4 big touring brother to your very nice 500 I can tell you I felt the same as you do now. But buy the 250 or in a week you'll wish you had. Check the UC-250Z on Bandit 80-85mph liquid cooled 257cc Linhai engine. The so called 250cc scoots from most dealers are the 244cc Helix Clone engine and while mechanically good they are still having more cooling and fuel problems with them than the Linhai engines. Even if you don't buy talk to Jim from Bandit he is a wealth of information about scooters and engines.
Aaron