Alright, guys. We can all accept that it looks incredibly dorky. But...can we have a conversation about electric scooters?
I was recently in San Francisco for a weekend, where I first witnessed this phenomenon. I've recently read this amazingly written article from The Atlantic,
Unfortunately, the Electric Scooters Are Fantastic, and the slightly less hilarious but still good NYT article
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Electric Scooters, and I'm increasingly interested in the tech.
Personally, I have a 3 mile commute to work. I
should be bicycling to work. However, as much as I know it's the right frugal/Mustachian thing to do, I keep driving. Primarily because parking/storing the bike is a big hassle. There are no exterior parking spots, and the only place to park the bike is in a bike rack in the back of the break room in the basement, which requires taking the bike on the elevator (downstairs, while everyone is going up to get to work, so it takes a long wait), through two secured doors and through a ton of seating areas and a kitchen, which is hard to navigate a bulky bike through. At home, it's stored on a rack in the garage, while I park my car out front ready to go quickly. I also personally struggle with timeliness, so I am frequently rushing out the door and skip the bike option due to the hassle involved.
Additionally, we have brutal winters, so the bicycle is a poor option for a good portion of the year, which makes it hard to maintain the habit.
The scooter option, on the other hand, seems very simple: store it by the door. When I get to work, plug it in under my desk.
The more I think about it, the more interested I get.
However, these people writing these articles and using this service in San Francisco are paying ~$3 per ride on these scooters, and many just to use them as a last-mile option to get to bus/metro stops. This seems absurd, but I understand the difficulties of traffic in very big cities. It seems obvious to me that the best option is to
buy an electric scooter, not rent them daily.
So the two questions are:
What do you think of the viability of electric scooters?and
If good, which scooter should one purchase?The latter question is complicated. Amazon shows electric scooters starting from as cheap as $122 (Razor E100), with 10 mph and a long 12 hour recharge time for 40 minutes of driving (and I imagine not a lot of power for hills), to $249 (GOTRAX Glider) for 17 mph and fast charging, to a high end Xiaomi scotter for $899, to reviewers that
say I shouldn't settle for anything worse than the $699 Zoom Stryder which is one of the cheapest with a 500w motor and all the other bells and whistles. I don't actually know what's necessary for a daily commute, and the more you spend the worse your ROI.