tandempower

You're right, "the general public" is too vague a term that could refer to too many different interest groups and corporate-consumer market trends. Specifically I am referring the fact that these dockless e-scooter shares seem to be the big news in lots of cities. There have also been dockless share-bikes and share e-bikes, but those don't seem to generate the vandalism and regulatory uproar that the scooters are getting. So while I haven't been to these cities to see what's going on first hand, I am doing the math, so to speak, and assuming that they are gaining popularity quickly, hence all the ensuing problems.

That leads to me questioning why e-scooters and not bicycles. As I said in the OP, I prefer pedaling to pushing a scooter and then waiting until my rolling speed slows down to give another push. I like shifting gears to maintain the same consistent pedaling effort while upping my speed. But I reflected on what might be better about (e)scooters and I explained my 'findings' in the OP. Now you are here debating about the premises and causing an unnecessarily tedious extra discussion within the thread instead of just accepting the premise that a lot of people seem to be more interested in dockless e-scooters than bikes, so the question is why that would be. Is it really that hard to stick the premise of the OP?