JoeyBike

^ That is my sister. If she could figure out how to levitate her bed to work and work from the bed, eat lunch from the bed, and go to church in her bed, she would do it. Subsequently, she has a weight issue. To quote my father 50 years ago: "Your sister has lead in her @22." Wakes up at 3pm, goes to sleep at 11pm on her days off.

wolfchild

The main problem with electric powered motors is the cold....Freezing temps are very harsh on batteries and cause them to discharge very fast... that's why nobody rides e-bikes during winter time, you wouldn't get very far.

fietsbob

A Climber's headlamp goes at one end of a cord, with the battery
at the other end, near your body, for heat, just for that reason..

I-Like-To-Bike

E-bikes also have a problem with their heaters; riders outside of Florida and Southern California will notice that flaw in the winter time.

jon c. 

Even half the state of Florida is too cold for most folks to commute by bike in the winter. I understand there are a hearty group of commuters in many parts of the country who ride in subfreezing temps, but you're not going to convince your average Floridian to ride to work on two wheels when its 45 degrees. I wouldn't do it. If the rain doesn't hit, I'm going riding this morning. Once it gets up to 65.

tandempower

I'm sure there's a way to develop better low-temp batteries.

KraneXL

You could build a car that would be perfectly safe in a crash but then it would cost a million dollars. The challenge is to make it marketable to the general public.

jon c. 

If we have another generational leap in battery technology, it will significantly alter transportation in many ways. As well as the generation, distribution and usage of power in general. It would impact e-bikes and scooters, but I suspect would lead to further development and dramatically reduced costs for all manner of small electric transport vehicles. I'm skeptical that scooters will remain any part of the long term picture, but I do expect that picture will include electric transport vehicles that we're not thinking about at the moment.

tandempower

You have to determine what the chemical makeup of the battery and its structure would be before you can estimate the cost of developing and mass-producing it.

tandempower

Escooters are basically moving sidewalks without having to make the entire sidewalk into a conveyor belt.

cooker

I walk on them because I want to get home.

tandempower

As a kid, those things are fun in different ways. You can run on them and feel like you're going super-fast relative to the fixed surroundings. You can run in the opposite direction of motion and see if you can make it from the end to the beginning; i.e. if no one is on them to block you. You can also do that on escalators if the mall security doesn't stop you.

I wonder what kind of crazy tricks people will come up with for escooters. I think the guys who made Jackass are still around somewhere, though they are probably too rich and old not to want to break bones riding escooters down escalators into subway stations and that sort of insanity.

JoeyBike

Amen. It's battery technology that's holding us back. I only wish that manufacturing and disposing of the things wasn't so terrible environmentally. Maybe shoot the dead ones to Mars using what little power they have left for propulsion through space? I guess the Moon would suffice. Nobody will be moving to either place any time soon. By then we might figure out how to recycle them into something useful again.

350htrr

That IS 1/2 of the "problem", other than oil, coal companies... Anyways Solar panels are the next part of the puzzle… Once they reach , oh, lets say 46% efficiency, wham, a huge step forwards... IMO. We/the world could dispense with practically every other form of energy, (dirty energy)... 30% or so ICE engines provide would end up a fail, at basically any price point...

Homebrew01

MOD NOTE TO ALL....Please do not include politics in the discussion of scooters v. bikes

fietsbob

DIY ; taking an old steel roller skate and nailing it on the bottom of a 2 by 4

with a handle , of broom stick, on an uptight, also made of wood ,

is probably paleolithic for most of you..

TheLibrarian

I'm sure someones already said that people are just plain lazy and the scooters are electric.

daoswald

Anecdotally, I can say that I have used the scooter-share services, and have not used the bike-share services. The primary reason for the preference has nothing to do with the equipment, but rather, convenience.

With a scooter, I can pick it up wherever I find it, and leave it wherever I'm done with it. With the bike-share in my city, they are not "dockless", so I have to leave it at specific locations, and I never know if there will be a dock near my destination.

So if they solve that issue (and why wouldn't they?) then I would have a preference toward bikes.

tandempower

I missed this entire conversation about temperature.

The solution to energy-waste in all kinds of situations is to reduce the volume of heated/cooled areas. If you follow that logic to its maximum, you arrive at the conclusion that warmer clothing in winter and cooler clothing in summer are key.

Now take a look at the status quo culture where people mostly don't like to approach clothing in a functional way. They want to wear summer clothes in winter and surround themselves with hot air; or to wear suits and ties in summer and surround themselves with artificial cold air. No one likes sitting in a small enclosed area, so they make rooms, buildings, and cars bigger and fill them with energy to deviate from the natural seasonal temps.

So will this issue ever be solved or are humans just doomed to always waste energy on these cultural hangups that cause energy and other resources and opportunities to be wasted, such as the opportunity to ride bikes and/or scooters in the winter?

tandempower

I agree with your bike preference. The only real advantage I see with scooters is that they are smaller and thus you can put more of them around a city using less parking space.

Still, I don't think either scooter- or bike- sharing has reached the highest levels of spatial-efficiency with their parking designs. Scooters, for example, could be stacked so the decks fit on top of each other and the handlebar stems clip together. You could have a single pole with 10 or 20 scooters stacked up on it.

With bikes, folding handlebars and pedals are key. They exist but I don't think any bike shares make use of them. If you could stack five bikes in a space of five feet, you could have little five-foot wide racks of share bikes all over a city. That can't accommodate as many users as scooters stacked 10-20 high on a pole, but it's still pretty dense, imo; certainly a lot more spatially efficient than cars.

350htrr

It has been solved, and it is the lowest common denominator solution the will win, EVERY time... Except for maybe rich people...

tandempower

What is the lowest common denominator solution in this case? And why do you think it always will win?

350htrr

People do not like to use public transportation and wait for scheduled rides... win for the car.
People don't like inclement weather so they like enclosed transport... win for the car.
People don't want to sweat riding bicycles... win for the car.
people like to show their wealth… win for the car.
and so on and so on...

Rollfast

But buy a bike (or a scooter), no rental fees. You are paying somebody to do stuff for you. Meh.

Rollfast

My Hornet came before the Harrison/GM AC was standard.