what we really need is updated modern public transportion network, high speed electric trains/ efficient transportation hubs..... not bicycles and scooters LMAO !! This is a 21st century! Why are we going backwards? They make a good toy though.
I don't live in California and the amount of electric scooters I've suddenly seen out of nowhere is crazy. It might be a fad, but unlike you, I'm more like 30% thinking it is a fad vs 100%.
My reasoning:
* Batteries have gotten better than even the basic Segway days
* The scooters are portable. You can fold them and take them in to your dorm, apartment, etc, preventing theft. A lot of work places won't complain about you charging them at work either
* The entry level price is so much lower. I never saw a casual person on a Segway, but I see casual people on the electric scooter bandwagon already
* There is also a large subset of folks that had Razor scooters. I wasn't part of that, but I can understand them being more willing to adopt if they had previously used unpowered scooters.
* Running in to someone might be a problem on San Francisco sidewalks, but it isn't on, say, ISU's sidewalks.
These scooter batteries sustain intense charging and discharging cycles, I won't bet my house and life on it.
Obviously, doesn't help without removable batteries, which are more common on ebikes.
Walking is much slower, of course.
More than anything else, people actually taking public transit enables more spending on public transit, and more spending on building public transit accessible housing and workplaces, both of which will again encourage more use of public transit.
IMO the addition of birds and limes has been really nice.
Cost of living drops off as you leave metro areas. Like another responder to your comment noted: people pay for convenience. I'd say cost is a disadvantage of living in a high-density area.
So, now you need to live near HSR and your job also needs to be next to HSR in order for that trip to work.
Electrified personal transport can help with the last mile but it's of no use if you never get to the last mile without a car.
Also, it's a scooter, "change the world"? If they mean by changing it from having x scooters on the market to x+1 scooters on the market then yes.
Cars changed the world. If scooters change the way people think about public transit and distance within cities, it could very well change how people consider where to live and how to organize cities.
Scooters have been around for literally decades, even electric scooters have been around for a while. Changing people to accept a bit of physical effort to get to their job, be it cycling, walking or electric scootering, is probably a great thing, but it won't solve the underlying lack of infrastructure.
You can't organise around infrastructure that isn't there. In cities where it is there, people use it even without electric scooters and people already move to be close to good public transport.
Public transport is terrible in my city, but it's really because the population is too low to support anything better rather than because of any particular problem with the service. There's no fix, except to somehow increase population density by a factor of five.
Any proposed improvements are likely to take years or decades to complete, too. Meanwhile you can stop driving and start scooting tomorrow.
It's also worth noting that scooters are great for much more than just the last mile. I commute 20 km per day on my scooter.