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Scoot Electric
Scoot Electric
The electric
scooter could one day become as common a
sight as the bicycle, if only there were
better batteries.
By Jeffrey the
Barak in Los Angeles.
Originally published in the-vu in July 2000
Revised December 2000 and again in August
2003
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2000
Phat Flyer by Currie Technologies
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We live in a world where it is perfectly
acceptable for a free adult to go wherever
he or she wants to go, at any time that
suits them. That’s a good thing! Unfortunately,
more often than not, an individual will
do this in a large passenger vehicle such
as a car.
In the seventies, Americans drove big American
cars that used gallons of fuel, just to
drive a few miles. When the fuel crisis
began the evolution to smaller cars, there
began a latent urge to get back into the
giant beasts of yore. The same people who
said terrible things about the land yachts
of the seventies are now driving solo to
the local coffee house in giant fuel-thirsty
Sport Utility Vehicles. So what’s the
difference Suburban Drivers? Enjoy it while
you can, planet killers, because the human
race is reproducing at an ever-increasing
rate, and the elderly are living, and driving
longer.
In the not too distant future, there will
have to be restrictions on car driving in
order to avoid total gridlock and air toxicity.
Enter the concept of the small electric
car. In the early days of automobiles, electric
cars outnumbered gasoline powered cars.
Sure, they were terrible, but so were the
fuel cars! When battery development hit
the technological wall that it’s still
pressed against today, the internal combustion
engine became the champion of the highways,
the railroads, the oceans and later the
skies.
General Motors, Honda, Toyota and other
manufacturers have brought electric power
back into focus, but the fact remains, it’s
impossible to equal the convenience and
range of the fuel car. With gasoline, you
can drive hundreds of miles in one direction;
refuel in three minutes, and then keep on
going without delay. Electric cars go a
little way, and then they’re useless
until re-charged.
But where are you going? Are you going
from Saint Louis to New Orleans, or are
you going from the beach in Los Angeles
to your apartment near the beach? Do you
really need four tires, four doors, six
seats, a roof, a trunk, a windshield and
an engine? Or are you just trying to avoid
that slow process known as walking?
You might not know it yet, but in the future
you are going to be one of the millions
of people in the world who rides an electric
scooter on a daily basis!
If you have ever tried using a bicycle
as your means of conveyance, you know what
the main problem is. What do you do with
it when you get to your destination. It
requires parking. Making matters worse,
you arrive tired and sweaty and with a sore
or numb butt. I’m all for exercise
and fitness, but a man in a suit and tie,
or a lady in make-up and hose is better
off without that bicycle ride. They can
always work up a sweat later at the gym.
Lets maintain the separation of transportation
and exercise here!
Picture this, you unfold your scooter,
step on, push off once and hold the switch
and steer. You say good morning to the people
and dogs as you glide almost silently past
them at a reasonable speed. You arrive,
step off and fold it down.
Electric scooters are clean, quiet, small,
light and fun. They’re a lot of fun.
Like the electric car, the range is disappointing
to some, but it’s getting better. Oddly
enough, the acceptance of electric scooters
got a boost from the phenomenal success
of the toy known as an in-line scooter in
1999. The original was the Razor, but there
are as many knock-offs as there are bumps
in the sidewalk. The main advantage of the
in-line scooter is it’s ultra light
weight and portability. You can stuff it
in your shoulder bag and forget it’s
there when you finish your ride. These vehicles
are made of aluminum and the wheels are
like the wheels on your in-line skates.
You can steer with the handlebars and the
skill required is minimal. Unlike skateboards,
they are not difficult to master.
Riding any human powered scooter might
seem at first glance to require a large
input of energy, and compared to bicycle
riding, this is true. But if you pass a
pedestrian at the start of your journey,
you will shortly glance back and see that
pedestrian as a mere dot in the distance.
That is the key to human-powered scooting,
4X walking speed and zero input on the downhill
sections.
I have known about this for years. I’ve
ridden a human powered scooter in England,
Hawaii and Los Angeles. Scooting at low
speed is effortless enough to make walking
seem like an exhausting chore. But electric
scooting is heaven. On a hot day you don’t
get any hotter when you ride, because you
are not using your own energy to propel
yourself.
Our disabled friends sit upon a subset
of electric scooters. These are basically
electric wheelchairs and they cost up to
$3,000. The principle is the same though;
batteries, a motor, a switch or potentiometer
to go, and brakes to stop. With the modern
explosion of electric scooters, the variety
has been astounding. Just as in the early
days of cars and airplanes, individual manufacturers
have launched wildly different designs,
and the consumers have steered the evolution
of the class with their buying choices.
The undisputed winner in the electric scooter
in the early days was the Zappy. A similar
design is still a popular seller today in
the guise of the Tomb Raider.
My first electric scooter was a blue Zappy
which I rode for over one year. I loved
it. Bicycles passed me and I didn't care
because I wasn't in a hurry. I just stood
there and held the switch as I silently
got where I wanted to go. I went fast enough
to feel the wind in my face on a windless
day, and slow enough to notice every little
thing on my route. At first I wore a bicycle
helmet, but soon abandoned it. At 7MPH I
could step off and run if I ever had to.
It was safer than a bicycle. I got to my
destination and plugged it in to top up
the charge.
I only ran out of charge once, even though
my range was less than four miles. It was
always enough. However battery technology
has endured one of the slowest rates of
development in the industrial age. Our batteries
today aren't much more efficient than the
batteries which powered the electric cars
before the gasoline era!
For a long time I never saw anyone else
riding an electric scooter, then actor Kevin
Spacey rode a Zappy to the 2000 Academy
Award Nominations, and then they began popping
up all over the place.
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Then in November 2000 I upgraded
to a Phat Flyer. Made by Currie Technologies
in California, this was a truly practical
electric scooter. Based on inaccurate
specifications at the time, I imagined
I was going 15MPH with a range of
15 miles.
The larger wheels meant you didn't
have to scan the road ahead for every
stick, stone and crack. The wide handlebars,
low center of gravity and general
strength of the tube frame provided
a ride that felt stable, safe and
completely controllable. It was wobble-fee.
I got one of the first Phat Flyers
released, courtesy of Scott at EVdeals.com.
Following some bicycle-style safety
checks with a wrench set and a delay
of 40 hours owing to work and darkness,
I finally planted the yellow monster
on the pavement at daybreak and pushed
down my right thumb.
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My
first generation Phat Flyer photographed
in 2000
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This is what electric scooters were meant
to be! Okay, so the chain drive was a little
noisy in all of that silence, but believe
me, all you can hear after a second or two
is wind blasting against your helmet. (At
these speeds, you'd better get out your
old helmet again!)
Motorcycles have hydraulic brakes, as do
cars, so you have to remember that the Phat
Flyer has bicycle style brakes, because
those stop signs loom up pretty fast. When
it comes to lower speeds, this type of scooter
beats the Zappy simply because it can free-wheel.
Okay, it doesn't have the minimal resistance
of a Xootr kick scooter or even a Razor,
but there are times when you don't want
to be blasting past everything at 10MPH
and it's nice to put your foot down and
scoot now and again. As with a kick scooter,
downhill gradients are a free ride on the
Flyer.
Laws pertaining to electric scooters vary
from city to state to country. In some places
in the world you are free to do anything
you like on your electric scooter. Usually
however, the electric scooter rider is subject
to the same laws as the bicycle rider. This
means keeping off the sidewalk, dismounting
on a crosswalk, and obeying the rules of
the road, including stop signs. Almost every
policeman in the world has no idea what
is legal for an electric scooter, so most
will leave you alone unless you are naked
and covered in strawberry ice cream.
However, some law enforcement officials
will stop you and attempt to think of ways
to punish you for having so much fun. The
punishments do not include ice-cream and
nudity, and some e-scoot riders have wound
up arguing over tickets in the courtroom.
Insight and advice pertaining to such legal
situations can be found on-line at the Zappy
eGroup.
It’s still another three days until
my permit to drive my old gasoline car is
active again. I only get one day every two
weeks now. Telecommuting from my home office
in my bedroom has made me stir crazy, so
I’m off to the local café for some
good coffee. I smile and wave at a hundred
or so fellow electric scooter riders as
I glide over the cracks in the boulevard.
Plugging in at the café, I remember with
amusement how it used to require a seven-seater
four-wheel-drive sport-utility-vehicle with
air conditioning and mud tires for my ninety
pound girlfriend to acquire a cappuccino
from the café three blocks from her house.
A young mother on skates glides by behind
her self-propelled electric baby carriage.
The restaurant next door receives a delivery
from an electric road barge. The streets
are so quiet, you would have been able to
hear chirping and birdsong, if only the
birds had survived the gasoline era.
Links to electric scooter related web-sites
have been removed from this article because
they keep changing! I suggest a Google search
for the latest choices.
EVdeals.com is just
about the only scooter-dealer website that
has been honest enough to conduct performance
tests and publish the results. Every scooter
you see for sale in the stores, or online
seems to have the range and speed of an
imaginary twin, but EVdeals has published
the truth. The following figures are from
EVdeals in August 2003.
Taking a dozen of
the most widely available electric scooters,
they have revealed that average speed on
level asphalt is between 9.8MPH and 12.7MPH.
Duration or run time, in my view the most
important figure, is between 28.6 minutes
and 37.5 minutes. Hardly enough for an afternoon
out and about!
Maximum speed is between
13.3MPH and 22MPH, the latter being attained
by a heavier class of vehicle similar to
a road-going moped, and range is between
5.7 and 8.6 miles. How many of us have bought
scooters and then imagined we had ridden
for 15 miles because the box said we could?
True, there are other
scooters out there that look like Vespas
and claim to go for 35 miles, but these
have not been tested in the same honest
and true fashion, so buyer beware. Let's
face it, those electric cars of the early
20th century had the same battery technology
that we are using a century later. Is
there anything else so important in our
technological world that has evolved as
little as the battery in over 100 years?
No wonder there are so many conspiracy theories
about various oil companies suppressing
battery breakthroughs.
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Scoot Electric
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