Scooters in Retrospective (where are we going)

... and indeed where am I going?

Back in 2009 I worked in an office which was a significant walk from the train station, and as it happened largely down hill (mostly gentle, mostly). I decided to buy a kick scooter to get from home to station and station to office. I wanted something with decent diameter wheels (200mm) and got this little fella for €50

it served me well and I used it for quite some time with no issues (even solved the wet and grit throw-up at the back with some duct tape)

Then just this year, I started back at an  office where I wanted to "shorten the walk" and a scooter immediately came to mind, I bought this little fella which was more or less identical and for about the same money AU$70.

but perhaps has less heavy duty "everything" because the bearings collapsed after less than a week of my usual scooter treatment. Certainly the spokes look less substantial and the PU "tyre" feels harder than I recall the other being.

Anyway, I promptly replaced the bearings, but (due to a knee ligament injury on a trampoline (don't ask)) began considering something I didn't have to kick and soon settled on the Mercane 500W single motor (although seriously considered the dual motor 1000W version, which I subsequently ended up buying...) pictured here beside my little kick scooter.

Quite a difference in so many ways (including price).

Much nicer tyres, which are a composite of foam and a pliant grippy rubber, and some suspension too to help reduce the impacts to critcal things like bearings, axles (which are hollow on electric scooters with hub motors) and perhaps even you.

I notice now that people are King Wang'ing on about "comfort" (as if these things were like luxury cars). Probably these people have never ridden a kick scooter (or have forgotten what it feels like with actually solid tyres).

I had to move my (sadly now disused) little black kick scooter and thought how small it looked. Picking it up I nearly laughed at how light it is. Quite the contrast in relation to my 1000W dual motor Mercane.

So while my little kick scoot would comfortably fit into an overhead rack on an intercity train my dual motor Mercane would certainly not (and something may well get broken were I to try shoving it up there).

Recently I've started serious investigation into buying a Zero 10x ... which is even heavier than any of these scooters. It goes like this:

• Evo = 5kg ($60)
• Mercane 500W = 19kg ($1000)
• Mercane 1000W = 23kg ($1400)
• Zero 10x = 36kg (for the 24Ah model) ($2700)

*(prices in Australian Dollars)

It was not that long ago at all when electric scooters were like this:

*(wikipedia image)

So, what else can I do with $2700 (or more), well actually I could buy a pretty decent 500cc motorcyle with low kilometers on it for less than the price of the Zero, like say one of these:

Which will do many thousands of kilometers, last for many years (my Yamaha is already 12 years old with 125,000km on it) and be able to take you out all day, tour, commute and carry a friend too.

Better yet there is another sort of safety in motorcycles; rego and insurance (which the kiddies will squeal and shriek about), which is mandatory on motorcycles and cars. While this may seem like an "unnecessary expense", it will mean that if you're in some sort of accident (it won't happen to you right, err, unless you're one of the kiddies justifying a full face MTB helmet, elbow pads, body armour and other cos play wankery, then its inevitable) then you'll probably find that the $200 per year you paid in insurance is cheaper than forking out for that multi-thousand dollar car door repair (which you'll be blamed for because the cars insurance company will sniff out you are not in a good position to defend that) or worse yet, you hurt a person and be liable for hundreds of thousands for personal injury.

Doesn't sound cheap to me (and is the reason we have laws around vehicles to prevent cheap scates from leaving people at a loss) ...

All this has me wondering where I'm going with this and if I'm trying to make the Electric Scoot into something more like a motorcycle, and indeed if it actually even is?

Myself I think the sweet spot is somewhere around the zone between Xiaomi 365 and my Mercane.

Dunno ... I'll keep you posted on what I choose to do.

PS: I found this review of a Zero 10x on Reddit, this guy seems to think like me.