Electric Scooter Revival (2019)

Electric Scooter Revival (2019)(adam.zeloof.xyz)

20 points by algore4prez2036 4 years ago | 30 comments

hokumguru 4 years ago |

With me working remote these past two years my wife and I have found that we don’t necessarily need to be a two car household. I bought a reasonably nice ($1200) scooter last year and have been doing all my errands on our city’s great bike trails. I have maybe 3-500 miles on it now and while it’s not as nice or as fast as driving it is a wonderful experience every time I take it out.

cjrp 4 years ago | |

Out of interest, why a scooter and not an e-bike?

decafninja 4 years ago | | |

Not the parent, but a scooter would be less vulnerable to theft since you can take it into buildings.

I wouldn't leave any e-bike...or even any half decent regular bike, out of my sight outdoors even if "securely" locked.

tintedfireglass 4 years ago |

Here in bangalore after fuel prices shot up everyone is buying electric scooters and bikes left and right. I used to only occasionally finding electric vehicles but these days I see a lot of them and none of them are cars. E-bikes, e-scooters, E-trikes, E-buses, E-minivans but no electric cars

Zigurd 4 years ago | |

Cars are difficult to electrify without the cost of the battery being very high. They have to meet all the expectations set by gas cars. The brilliance of Tesla is taking that gamble and making it work for a lot of people who would otherwise buy gas cars, mostly at the high end of the car market.

But that makes a lot less sense in sense Asian cities in warm climates that have a lot of road congestion. A scooter costs a small fraction of a car, gas or electric, and gets you there faster. I suspect that as EVs become pervasive, most of them will be scooters and ebikes.

Plus, gas scooters are very dirty. The Chinese wouldn't allow gas scooters to proliferate in cities.

gabereiser 4 years ago | |

Curious to see how this trend plays out. If gas prices ebb would the sale of pev’s go down? Would they stay the same? Or has this opened peoples eyes to the fact that, while not yet optimal, electric vehicles are pretty good at most errands. Solar charging is getting better. Batteries are getting better. Electric motors are getting better.

I don’t think we have reached the tipping point yet here in the states on electric vehicles but it seems it’s heading that way. Ford spun off their e-vehicle devision. GMC, others, and committed to making electric cars and trucks. I feel there’s this tidal wave revolution going on in transportation. Supported by the energy sector. The biggest hurtle is big oil trying to corner solar through legislation to tax the power of the sun. :( but I do think as more people have and use electric modes of transportation that more people will want to join them and thus, tipping the scales.

Where I am, people love their OneWheels and electric bikes. I myself have tasted pavement on my OneWheel pev. RadBikes and others make electric cargo bikes that are like tanks. It’s really cool to see this unfold within the last few years.

algo_trader 4 years ago | |

Can u share some (final, retail) prices of e-bikes or e-scooter.

In my (mediterranean) country, prices have been creeping UP over the last 3 years, mostly due to lack of competition and importers somehow cornering the market ;/

Prices are now more expensive than when i bought my first ebike 5 years ago.

tintedfireglass 4 years ago | | |

Here are some of the leading brands in india

Hero : https://heroelectric.in/

This is a standard motorcycle brand diversifying into electric

Aether: https://www.atherenergy.com/

This is a recently funded electric vehicle startup

rland 4 years ago |

We met some guys in San Diego who ran a (definitely illegal) business doing this with scooters. They wanted to sell us one of them for $200 (against market price of $6-700); we declined.

Basically, around about 2016 (maybe?) the number of electric scooters in San Diego exploded. We had like 6 different companies dumping them by the pallet load, I guess as an availability tactic.

I imagine what they were doing was taking them off the road and into someplace where they looked accessible on the GPS but couldn't actually be accessed, depleting the battery by winding them down, and then deconstructing them enough to get them into Tijuana, where they would be stripped and the brain of the scooter replaced. Apparently, they had a guy in TJ who could basically "de-GPS" the scooters. Then, they would ship them back up and sell them cheaply.

donquichotte 4 years ago |

Wait, is this the brother of the ingenious Sam Zeloof [1], the guy who makes semiconductors in his garage? Looks like it runs in the family!

[1] http://sam.zeloof.xyz/

patrickk 4 years ago |

Nice project! The unknown wires everywhere brought back memories. I did a similar project, hacking an escooter to add Bluetooth functionality in order to control it via a smartphone app:

https://ampedcycling.com/e-scooter-hacks-remove-the-speed-li...

It allows you to increase the top speed among other functions.

yokoprime 4 years ago |

Are electric scooters still a west coast thing in the US?

rich_sasha 4 years ago |

Crikey, 250W motor... they are handy and certainly better than everyone driving a car everywhere, but somehow the combination of power and low barrier to entry invites a particular type of road (and pavement) assholery I could really do without. At least in my locale.

stephen_g 4 years ago | |

I’ve got a Xiaomi Mi Scooter Pro 2, which is not super beefy, but it does peak up to 600W. You actually do need it for hills, I still don’t make it up some without kicking. It is speed limited to 25 km/h generally but some of these bigger ones that are much less “consumer” you see going 50-60 which is crazy (and illegal here).

masklinn 4 years ago | |

250W continuous is not that much, and very much necessary (and possibly not sufficient) to handle even middling hills.

For reference, 1HP = 735.5W. The worst 50cc you'll find are around 3HP, or above 2100W. Child-class go-karts generally start around 5hp, and the most common engines are the 6.5HP GX200 (or harbor freight's copy).

rich_sasha 4 years ago | | |

Go carts don’t go on pavements while talking on the mobile phone.

I don’t mind the power, clearly, only what stupid people do with it.

bin_bash 4 years ago | |

My Tesla has 270,000 watts including both motors. 250 watts is less than half of 1 horsepower. My lawnmower is more powerful than that.

Were you thinking 250kW maybe?

michaelt 4 years ago | | |

A tour de france stage winning cyclist might only average 219 watts over a 5-hour stage [1] although with bursts where they use more power - 20 minutes at 330w, 15 seconds at 1025 watts.

250w is quite a bit of power for something on the sidewalk or bike lane :)

(Of course, who knows how trustworthy these numbers are? I suspect scooter manufacturers know bigger numbers mean bigger sales, and choose their testing methods accordingly)

[1] https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/racing/tour-de-france/rig...

masklinn 4 years ago | | |

> 250 watts is less than half of 1 horsepower.

For a more precise fraction, it's almost exactly 1/3rd HP (33.9% compared to metric HP, 33.5% compared to imperial).

sudosysgen 4 years ago | |

250W is what a fit human can put out continuously, it's nothing.

Shadonototra 4 years ago |

offtopic:

why do people like to mess up with the scrolling on their website?

it is one of the worst UX ever, stop doing that