Anyone here like e-scooters?
The cost keeps dropping and the specs keep getting better and better, but they seem pretty dangerous, mainly because you have to share the road with cars. Still, for the price of an ultra cheap beater car, less than $2000, you can get an electric vehicle with 50+ miles of range and 30+ mph speeds, that you can fold and carry with one arm (if you're kinda strong).
I've got a basic one and its great. My only gripe is that I don't feel comfortable locking it up on a public street due to theft, so if I want to scoot to a store, I have to bring the scooter in with me. Would be great to see this mode of travel widely adopted, with some decent infrastructure like rentable lockers and more bike paths that aren't just the shoulder of a street full of cars.
Yea its bad enough cyclists won't wear them, these things are even deadlier. I swear everyone who ride without a helmet needs to be given a solid smack to their cheek and told "that ain't nothing compared to hitting asphalt at 15mph, wear a damn helmet."
A neurosurgeon friend in LA says the rental electric scooters there have increased his workload; he sees too many brain injuries from them. It's handy when you can just pick one up on the sidewalk and go, but too scary for me.
I think people are treating escooters/ebikes like bicycles, and then riding some of them more like motorcycles; traveling at speeds one wouldn't reasonably be cruising at on a bicycle. A full-faced ECE/Snell-rated helmet should probably be what one is wearing if they intend to be traveling 30+mph on city roads.
It worries me how many people aren't properly protecting themselves on these things. My bike can hit 30mph easily, my family pokes fun at me for wearing leather and a helmet when riding it.
I am with you. My e-bike can do 30 mph, but I keep it at 20min since that’s the legal limit here. I own two Bell helmets that I cycle through. I would love to keep my face. Most people on scooters are going faster than me, with no helmet on. It’s a bit insane to me.
I do hate escooters (and bikes for that matter) blasting by me at 15mph on the sidewalk.
If you're going faster than a human can run, and are over the age of 10, get off the sidewalk. They're intended for pedestrians, not crappy alternatives to bike lanes.
I think in most places riding a bicycle on the sidewalk is technically illegal, but I have no idea how well that is enforced in different areas. The fact that ebikes can go well upwards of 30mph exacerbates this issue. One should be able to jog on the sidewalk and listen to music without worrying about getting into a de-facto motorcycle collision.
California at least has regulations that classify e-bikes by how fast their top speed is, and regulate where they can be ridden based on it, and as such a lot of them sold in the state are capped at 20 MPH. It's possible to hack the system to remove the limiter, but it's really for everyone's benefit to keep speeds lower.
Yup. Illegal but virtually 0 enforcement anywhere I've seen.
To be fair, enforcement is bad because most streets (in the US) don't have bike lanes and nobody has really succeeded in making drivers actually share the road with bikers of any sort.
Unfortunately there isn't always a better place to ride. Cars take up the vast majority of our transit real estate and every other mode of transit is delegated to the scraps. Most drivers are considerate but it only takes one road raging asshole to put you in the hospital.
The laws really need definition here. I try and ride mine on the road in bike lanes mostly but I've had California Highway Patrol at separate times tell me both to get off the road and onto the sidewalk and to get off the sidewalk and onto the road. Kind of hard to do the required when they can't make up their minds.
Cars say "get off the road", though; there's no winning here. The real issue is that bike lanes don't exist.
True, but at least legally speaking, the cars are wrong.
Legally speaking you're in the right, but physically speaking they'll send you to the morgue because they're blind fucking idiots. Guess what the #1 cause of cyclist deaths is.
I have an electric bike, the Tern HSD, that fills that same role in my life, though it trades my ability to lift it for a 375 lb. carrying capacity, which means I, my wife, and a bunch of cargo can be carried all at once. I feel you on the theft concerns, though. The HSD has a built in lock for the front wheel, and we added an extra seat lock to keep the seat/seatpost from being stolen as well as an additional lock to secure the frame. It's good enough to keep the thing in one piece. The point of security isn't to be entirely theftproof, just enough so to prevent casual attempts or maybe dissuade more skilled thieves. For everything past that, that's why I have insurance.
I use an electric skateboard as my primary means of transport. Alongside a bike if it's raining/wet (Dutch weather...) and obviously trains for inter-city travel.
It's definitely not for everyone, as they are pretty dangerous (IMO akin to a motorcycle) and I don't think it would work well in a hilly place. Still, it's been amazing for me.
I actually took it to Paris last week and zipping between traffic and going with the chaos was basically the highlight of my trip lol
What kind of skateboard is it?
An Exway Flex. It's the only one I've had so I can't compare it to others, but I've been very happy with it as well as the customer service. It had some battery issues (because I rode it in the wet a few too many times...) and I contacted them and they sent me a whole new battery without any charge on me. In the end, the old battery started working again, but they had already sent the new one so I now have two I can swap between on longer trips.
Only gripe I have is that the belts the riot version comes with seem to be a little bit too thin and both ended up breaking on me after a couple of months. But, they're standard sized and I ordered some from a different brand and I've had no issues since.
I’m on my second Ninebot e-scooter and am a big fan. I use it to get around the city without the need for a car. I mostly stick to bike lanes for safety, because accidents can and will happen. I used my first one until the battery worn out, almost everyday. As a city person, having the scooter to get around was transformative: I could take it on the subway, in buildings, wherever I had to go without having to worry about parking a car or locking up a bike. If my Ninebot died tomorrow I would go out a buy a new one immediately.
When I lived in downtown Nashville I had a Qiewa Q-mini that was a lot of fun, especially in Spring 2020 when the roads were completely empty. I used a Kryptonite bike lock and felt perfectly comfortable leaving it locked for an hour or two at a time. I also strapped a velcro speaker mount to the top so I could listen to a portable JBL speaker...riding around listening to Vaporwave and Outrun playlists.
I moved out of the downtown area into a neighborhood with steep hills, so I ended up getting rid of my scooter, but I do miss it. I thought about getting an eBike. A company out of California, Onyx, makes some cool looking bikes that seems like they could handle hilly areas.
I definitely wish this kind of transportation was more mainstream. I never felt super safe sharing roads in Nashville and had multiple close calls, including one incident that could have ended very badly had I not been a super defensive and alter rider.
I absolutely love them!
Unfortunately they really don't work for me. I live in a very hilly area and I literally have to ride up and down a valley to get to most things. Work is 30+ miles away (even though it could be easily done remote, irritatingly), and I have some medical issues that prevent me from riding most of them.
I seem to remember having one with a seat when I was a kid, but honestly it's such a blur that I can't be sure it wasn't a dream (it was a bad time in my life). It was a crappy Chinese thing with lead acid batteries that got probably one mile of range in the flat area I lived in; not even enough to get to my school!
My husband bought a decent one a while back for recreation, but he hasn't used it in a while.
Not quite a scooter, but I recently picked up an Aventon Sinch. It's rapidly become my favorite way to get around the city. Helps that I live somewhere very bike-friendly (Fort Collins). Any reason a normal bike lock wouldn't work with the scooter?
Mainly just how brazen thieves are here in Seattle, they have no fear and they will not hesitate to cut a lock in broad daylight in front of security cameras and bystanders. Only takes a couple of minutes max, and thats for the heavy expensive locks like the Kryptonite ones
I commute on a tiny 125cc motorcycle, and included full coverage for a few bucks more a month. This includes theft protection, and is far more convenient than using increasingly bulky anti-theft protections that won't work against a determined thief anyway.
Parking in front of the building you are going to can help (out of the way of wheelchair path of travel.) That's been my go-to theft deterrent strategy and has worked so far for the large city I live in.
I personally don't see much advantage over a bicycle.
I got a cheap Trek ($100) so I could practice up for eventually buying an Ebike, now I love it so much I don't even want to upgrade.
Best advantage I see over a bicycle is being able to fold it up and take it in with me. Bikes around here can not be locked up without being stolen. Being able to fold it up and take it in with me is the best part and the reason I got a scooter over an e-bike or riding my bike. Bike riding can only be for leisure personally as locking them anywhere is a huge risk these days and there is no such thing as a secure lock.
I can certainly see the appeal of something ultraportable, but fundamentally a bike is simpler than an ebike so the portability will always be better on the simpler system. Once you get into this niche I feel like there are a lot of other options as well - those one wheel skateboards, for instance.
I'm lucky to live in an area where bike theft is rare, but you can get quick releases for seats and pedals. Who's going to steal a bike with no pedals?
Tweakers will.
Along the same lines, I just recently picked up an electric skateboard, and the ability to move with the cars downtown is awesome. That being said, I definitely sympathize with your concerns with theft and portability, even with the more portable form-factor of my own board. I think given the mass density of battery technology, there is always going to be that trade-off between weight/portability and range/power
I got my first e-scooter as a kid, a CityBug E2, back when they were a novelty item. Big chunky box battery (not incorporated into the frame!), bright fluorescent plastics... not something you would take seriously at all back in 2007!
Then, I didn't use an e-scooter at all for years and years, until very recently when, on a whim, I found a listing for a broken pink Gotrax GXL for $50. I bought it, lugged it home on the bus, diagnosed the problem, replaced the throttle, and it works!
I feel like my situation is super niche, though: There is a direct bike path (separate from the road) from my apartment to my partner's college. Having a cheapo low-mileage low-speed scooter made transit to and from the college SO much easier. But, now we're moving, and I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the scooter... apart from that lucky bike path, my area is extremely hostile to non-car commuters. :(
I'm a big fan of them - unfortunately, they're not legal in downtown Toronto, but it's not enforced. I get a lot of practice on my own and use it as a "gap filling solution" between other forms of transit and driving (e.g., if parking is not plentiful or affordable where I am going, I throw it in the trunk). When I travel, because I am used to riding it at home, I can be very confident on rental scooters, such as when I go to Austin, Cleveland, Seoul, etc. Aside from safety / theft, my main concern is the illegality when it comes to insurance. Let's say I get hit by a car - a credible defense for the defendant would be that I was riding an illegal vehicle and thus should be at fault by default.
I'd love to have one, but since they're illegal in the UK it's put me off buying my own. The illegality of them doesn't seem to stop anyone else, but I worry I'd be the one to be picked on and have it confiscated. I previously bought an e-unicycle, but it absolutely killed my ankles and felt dangerous at both low and high speeds.
My partner lives in Nottingham, so we often hire the Superpedestrian ones they have, but since there's no way to know how much battery is left before you unlock one, I've had a couple of occasions where it just stops and locks you out before I've got to my destination. It's also not very convenient to carry a helmet around on the off chance you may choose to hire one. The original trial with Link scooters had helmets included, but of course they all got stolen or broken.
I just got my Apollo City Pro 2022. I only have 60km on it but so far it’s been excellent crosses fingers. Hills in my area are no problem. Will be using it for getting to work while the current temperatures allow. Will be a no stress commute.
Since i don't own a car, i had to pick the e-bike option to spend my money on.
I'd love to have an e-scooter, but they don't' really work in the winter and i need something that will haul my tired body and back bag through -20c winter storm.
I do get envious during the summer though, looks so much fun.
I don't own a car and can do everything I need to do by bicycle. Once or twice I year I may rent a a car or van if I absolutely need it to move a large item or something. I can't even justify buying an e-bike to myself, because of the external costs of battery production (rare materials, mining, labor, pollution, emissions).
If it's a choice between a privately-owned car and an e-bike/e-scooter, go for it! But if it's a choice between person-powered transportation and something with a battery, I'd encourage you to consider the greater cost.