Originally Posted by
Happy Feet
Perhaps you should rethink your PR if you imagine yourself an advocate for LCF because suggesting people need to begin accepting dystopian wage and working conditions in communist China as prerequisite is going to be a hard sell (and completely untrue). Sounds more like an anti - advocate message.
It's not a question of dystopianism or communism or anything like that. It's just that scooters are small, simple vehicles and you can't justify charging lots for them the way you can a car where everything from the windshield-wiper motors to the automatic door locks are complex parts. Simplicity is a good thing for the consumer and investors, who then don't have to deal with so many suppliers, etc. that drive up costs. But when people start vandalizing them because they see the potential for lost automotive business in them, things do start getting a little dystopian.
And since when are unregulated dockless scooters a needed component in LCF? To me they seem to be high tech toys for people to play around on for whimsy. The current business model actually caters to that in the sense of use and lose, no responsibility access by both the company and users (user for disposable scooter, company by creating no real infrastructure). Responsibly, companies could identify corridors where such devices would be useful, create a series of maintained docks, and encourage responsible use therein. If they (the scooters) are truly beneficial that would be a long term viable business model.
An electric scooter is simply the smallest-possible iteration of a personal motor vehicles. The regulations and laws are very biased in favor of passenger vehicles with a lot of weight, crash-protection, etc. so it is difficult to whittle down the size and complexity of personal motor-vehicles to something that requires less lane-width, less materials, is more cost/energy-efficient, etc.
I lived car free until I was 30 in 4 different cities. The basics are still the same: density, good mass transport infrastructure, bicycle friendly corridors/roads, security and a decent bike. If you have those it's pretty easy to be at least, car lite.
It's good to have options for LCF where all those various conditions aren't met. Otherwise, the people who live in places that don't meet those conditions end up driving-dependent.