History of the Electric Scooters

At this point, in July 2021, it has become clear that the electric scooter is here to stay. I will refer to the vehicle as a 'scooter' in this post, for brevity. It seems likely that this shorter name will become more common, as the vehicle itself becomes more common relative to the lightweight moped vehicle that is already called a scooter. 

A scooter.

Initial wave

The scooter had its breakthrough in 2017. The first successful commercial application was scooter sharing. The business idea was straightforward: buy a few hundred scooters from China and place them without permission in a city one night. The user downloads an app on their phone which can be used to unlock the scooter. When finished, the user could initially park the scooter anywhere. The service quickly became popular among users. The author can't recall a single city where it flopped. Early companies were Lime and Spin in California. Copycats soon followed; Bird (California), Tier (Berlin), and Voi and Moow (Stockholm). There were many more in other cities. 

Business model

The economics were a bit unsure, however. A scooter purchased from China cost $300-$500. Initially, the price was $1 for unlocking and $0.15-$0.3 per minute of subsequent usage. Vandalism and theft of the scooters quickly became rampant. The author remembers seeing a figure that the average lifetime of a scooter was only 28 days. With an average travel times of 10 minutes, this would mean that each scooter would have to be rented about 5 times per day throughout its lifetime. The companies also had to charge the scooters. Lime did this using gig-workers called 'juicers'. According to the Lime homepage, a juicer is paid $5 for a full charge. Since a full charge was enough for about 60 minutes of usage, about 40% of the minute-fee was eaten up by the juicers. Business models diverged after a while. Lime introduced longer-range scooters, reducing the cost of juicers. Voi introduced a 30-day unlimited ridership pass in the summer of 2020, costing $60 for Stockholm and less for smaller Swedish cities. There were also scooters without the unlocking fee but with a higher per-minute fee, for short trips. 

Regulation catches up

There were many complaints from other road users. Mark Wagenbuur of BicycleDutch, a youtube channel, complained that the scooters were encroaching on space meant for bicycles in a video. Anecdotally, the scooters were used rather recklessly, particularly by teenagers. They were not only used for simple transportation, but also for urban 'sport'. Parked scooters were often in the way on sidewalks. Another common complaint was safety concerns. Most fatal accidents included collisions with motor vehicles, and were similar in kind to fatal bicycle accidents, i.e. occurring when both motor vehicle and scooter are travelling in the same direction but the motor vehicle makes a turn across the lane of the scooter. In Ontario, scooters and other similar vehicles were illegal even before the scooters appeared, due to a preexisting blanket law. In May 2021, the Toronto city council voted unanimously to uphold the ban. Stockholm, as of Spring 2020, had introduced geographic restrictions on riding, high speeds, and parking. The speed of the scooter on a plain surface was limited to about 25km/h from the beginning, due to technical constraints. It was however possible to achieve a higher speed when going downhill, but the user had to promise not to ride the scooter downhill before starting a ride (this was not followed, of course). As of Summer 2020, the scooter would automatically brake when going downhill or being kicked forward, limiting the speed to about 22km/h. The United Kingdom established public tenders for the right to do scooter sharing in several cities. In November 2020, the tender was awarded to three operators. 

Prior systems

Bikesharing had been proposed and tried several times since 1965. In European cities, the concept took hold as municipality-supported initiatives to promote less car traffic starting around 2010. These systems featured fixed locations for parking the bicycles. The cost of a seasonal pass was usually over 10x less per day than a single-day pass, implicitly subsidizing commuters at the expense of tourists. In Malmö, a day pass cost 72 SEK and a 365-day pass cost 250 SEK in 2018. This system was not a complete failure, and may very well have encouraged a few people to leave the car behind. However, it suffered from being overused on some distances, and underused in other places. The user had to worry about not being able to park their bicycle when arriving at their intended destination. There were also several private bikesharing companies, such as Donkey Republic from Copenhagen, started in 2014. This business model was identical to the later scooters, except for the vehicle being a bicycle. It was also much less successful, despite having much lower prices, with 30 minutes costing €2.2, compared to €7 for a scooter (assuming €1 for unlock and €0.2 per minutes). The un-electrified scooter had long been present on the market, under the name 'kickbike', however it was used mainly as a toy vehicle for kids, and for sport by teenagers, similar to the skateboard.

Normalization

The scooter sharing led to social normalization of riding a scooter in public. I saw the first privately owned scooters in Vienna in April 2019, ridden by geeks. As of July 2021, it is a common sight on bike lanes, and sidewalks and car lanes too. People (always teenagers) even ride their privately owned scooters inside supermarkets and the metro. I expect scooters to be banned soon from such places. This would present a problem for scooter owners, since it is not obvious how to lock the scooter when going inside a place. Special scooter parking spaces with locks may appear, and perhaps future models will feature better physical security. A standard scooter costs $300-$700, which is about the same price as a bicycle. 

Related vehicles

A recent addition to the ecosystem of vehicles is scooters with a small seat in the back part of the standing area. Another type of vehicle that has become popular is the 'fatbike', which looks like a crossbreed between a scooter and a motorcycle. It is electric and has very wide wheels. A benefit of this type of bike seems to be that it can climb sidewalk edges with comfort. The fatbike is the SUV of the bicycle world, a heavier vehicle that has the advantage in the case of a collision with a regular bike. The standard electric bicycle has also become popular in recent years, especially among the elderly. An electric bicycle costs about twice as much as a regular bike.