The Tesla of Scooters Is Driving Asia's Two Wheel Revolution | Hacker News Reader

The Tesla of Scooters Is Driving Asia's Two Wheel Revolution

forbes.com

111 pointscraigjb71 comments

Within urban environments, electric bicycles need serious consideration. A scooter does not provide you the flexibility that an ebike does. Yes they are speed limited, however they are significantly cheaper.

My wife suffers from knee problems, so we're in the process of buying a pedal assist+throttle ebike to enable her to get around the city of Bath. A moped would not enable her to take advantage of the cycle paths in the area. She would still need to mix with HGVs on the road.

It naturally needed a basket and the right colour :) http://www.juicybike.co.uk/electric-bikes/classic-click-dutc...

Electric bikes have benefited massively from technology advancements in the last couple of years and anyone looking at an electric scooter should seriously consider an electric bicycle. It offers a lot more flexibility in where you can go with it.

> My wife suffers from knee problems, so we're in the process of buying a pedal assist+throttle ebike to enable her to get around the city of Bath.

The UK has different regulations, but beware that in the EU "proper" if it has a power-on-demand it's legally a moped or a motorbike, only pedelecs (pedal-assist only, cut off above 25km/h, under 250W maximum continuous rated power) are legally bicycles. Also of note, "S-pedelecs" branding in some jurisdictions are a marketing lie, they are not legally bicycles (except in Norway, where they are allowed on bike paths if and only if the electrical systems are shut down)

The biggest issue with electric bicycles for me is the fear of getting it stolen. My current, mid-expensive bike is stressing me like hell whenever I leave it out in the city for more than an hour, despite a big padlock. An electric bike would be a more visible target and I don't think I could ever actually leave it alone in good conscience.

Am I just paranoid or is this a real issue?

It's definitely an issue in Austin.

https://twitter.com/atxstolenbikes

http://www.statesman.com/news/news/crime-law/police-350-4000...

It's likely not an issue at the moment because electric bikes are still a novelty: highly recognizable and harder to resell. Should they get popular, then sure, it would be an issue, exactly like it is for any bike.

Btw, it's ridiculous that in 2015 we still haven't solved the problem of stolen bikes.

They're becoming less recognizable: http://www.faradaybikes.com/

$3,500 for that is so crazy.

When your bike is your car you can rationalize spending an almost unlimited amount cycling gear and gadgets under the guise of saving money. (I speak here from experience).

its not that much I am looking at a folding bike(only type allowed on train) and the light weight Brompton's are over $2k

That's still easy to look for, the front hub is huge.

There are specific techniques for locking a bike up properly, but it does need a d-lock and possibly also a cable. The idea being that your bike is the least attractive to steal. http://lifehacker.com/5942301/the-proper-way-to-lock-your-bi...

The late, great Sheldon Brown on locking your bike: http://www.sheldonbrown.com/lock-strategy.html

Well that's my point. An e-bike would be a lot more attractive to steal.

Yep; the nicer ones I've looked at are in the $2000-$4000 range, or roughly double what normal "nice" road bikes cost. I'd probably feel safer with it in a bike locker or in a coffee shop / work / train station by my side.

You definitely shouldn't be using a padlock to lock your bike... you want either a proper heavy duty chain lock from a company like Abus, or a U-lock from a company like Kryptonite.

Sorry, a U-Lock is what I use (English and all that).

If you have to lock it up outside make sure it's in a very public place with at least a decent u lock. You can cut a u lock in 30 sec with a grinder but most thieves won't do that with other people around.

If you're still worried buy a cheap Android phone off craigslist and attach it somewhere it'd be hard to remove. If someone steals it you can use GPS tracking to find it.

The real issue is that for the vast majority of people who could use them is their window of use is dramatically limited by weather.

Why I always tell friends to end the lie of "I will ride my motorcycle to work and save money".. until its too cold too wet too windy too hot I had a bad day and suddenly you have a garage queen

This is why I love my Boosted Board do much (well, among other reasons). I can just pick it up and carry it inside once I reach my destination.

http://boostedboards.com

> Yes they are speed limited, however they are significantly cheaper.

I see that as an advantage. Where I live, college kids flying around on their scooters/motorcycles in residential areas are dangerous. Electric ones are so silent, you won't even know what hit you.

I find that with well-maintained bicycles as well. Lots of people take pride in making sure nothing on their bike makes any noise at all (a topic that comes up often on the biking subreddit), and then they ride at 25mph down a bike path shared by people walking or biking significantly slower.

I'd almost rather be hit by a modern car than by a bicycle. At least the car is designed to crumple and protect the pedestrian, bikes aren't designed to protect anyone, yet they go just as fast as other city traffic.

Have you actually seen anyone getting hit by a modern car? They definitely do not protect a pedestrian.

Hence the use of the word "almost".

Uh, cars are designed to crumple and protect the car's occupants. They do this best when hitting a solid object, not a pedestrian. You'd be mowed down and likely killed or left with a traumatic brain injury.

Modern cars certainly are designed to protect pedestrians. That was part of the movement away from steel bumpers towards plastic bumpers with foam inside. I used to drive a 1998 Toyota 4Runner, and you could tell it apart from the 1999 4Runner because the '99 had what people call a 'fat lip bumper'. The bumper was enlarged to help protect pedestrians.

Here's an article from 2007 about designing cars to protect pedestrians: http://www.edmunds.com/car-safety/protecting-pedestrians-thr...

Volvo has pedestrian airbags in their newer cars, the car will detect collision with a person and pop the hood up on a cushion to keep the pedestrian safe: http://www.autoevolution.com/news/how-pedestrian-airbags-wor...

Been hit by both going at ~ 25mph. Bike every time. F • t = m • ∆v

You are far from the reality. Anyone who's been hit by a car and a bike would agree.

Does no one actually see the word "almost" in there? Or are people just not understanding what the word "almost" means? It means "I'm using this unrealistic comparison to make a point." And that point is that bikes have no safety features, yet are pitted head to head against both motor traffic and pedestrians.

Would I get this many missing-the-point replies if I said "I would almost rather die than have my hand cut off"? Would I get a bunch of people saying "you've obviously never died, I've died plenty of times and anyone would rather have their hand cut off" or start quoting physics to me about how much inertia death has versus your hand?

Because I'm pretty sure I wrote the word "almost" in my comment, and I'm also pretty sure I didn't edit it in. Seriously, I'm about 95% certain that the word "almost" was included in my original comment when I hit "reply" for the first time. So literally anyone who read the comment would have had the chance to see that I used the word "almost".

Or are people just not understanding what the word "almost" means? It means "I'm using this unrealistic comparison to make a point."

It doesn't generally mean that though, in what I would think to be the popularly understood context of what you were saying, you were claiming they were very close, not that it was an unrealistic comparison of things far apart from one another.

If you said "I would almost rather die than have my hand cut off", and seemed completely sincere about it, most people would think you were an idiot.

I'm in fine shape, but I'll never go back from my ebike, simply because pedaling from a dead stop is so easy that it gives me no reason to run stop signs. The assist also means my average speed is closer to my top speed, so getting around town (with two kids on the bike) is just as fast if not faster than a car, once you factor in parking and all the time I don't waste waiting in traffic etc.

I've had both failure modes (fried my motor somehow, rode pedal-only for a week before I could get to warranty service) also (busted my gearset somehow, got around on throttle-only til I scheduled maintenance.) I ride hard, usually pass everyone (with a wide berth, I'll hang back instead of passing rudely.)

If you are replacing your Prius then a few thousand dollars is easy to afford. The shop that built my bike: http://www.splendidcycles.com/

You should seriously just gear all the way down at a stop. It's easy to start then, and easier on the bike.

Even easier if you learn how to track-stand, which you can do on any non-coaster-brake bike (fixies are easier, but it's possible with just a freewheel and a slight incline or clever application of brakes). I usually beat cars through the intersection from a dead stop without straining.

I like the throttle for starting out with a heavy load of (maybe dancing / leaning) kids. Then I can keep my foot on / near the ground longer. Foot push + throttle seems to get me through intersections with fewer distractions than on my old bike.

> with two kids on the bike

I don't think the roads where I live are safe enough to even consider that.

I'll ride a regular bike but I don't want to go anywhere near car speed without car protection (airbags etc.)

Agree - love the colours of their electric bikes. Interesting article on the same site which reviews their design attitude to colour. http://www.juicybike.co.uk/lego-and-bike-frames

Electric scooters are becoming very popular here in Amsterdam, and I really hope this gets more of the gas-powered scooters off the market.

Scooters here are mostly either used by delivery boys or as a luxury item (since the bike lanes are so good). There is a decent amount of hostility towards scooters from bikers since (right now) they often share the same lanes; scooter riders are impatient, honk-y, often drive too fast and cause accidents, and blast those they are passing with smog. There's a movement to get them off the bike lanes and into traffic.

Scooters emit less CO2 per distance traveled than cars (and obviously much less than bike riders!) but often much more smog causing pollutants that affect air quality. Given that there is a really big push to improve air quality in European city centers, electric scooters can make a big difference. Plus gas-powered scooters are noisy as all hell, especially during peak food delivery hours (since all delivery boys love zooming around on their toys making as much noise as possible). I'm starting to see a lot of delivery companies switching to electric scooters, and I'm hoping that this trend either continues or that the government simply mandates these for commercial operations within the city.

The scooters should be on the (car) road unless otherwise indicated in nl. The noise can of course also be a nice indicator for a fast scooter approaching. A Prius sneaking up on you from behind can be quite a shock sometimes.

AFAIK 125+cc scooters should be on the road, but mopeds may be in bike lanes (although I believe Amsterdam may have recently (June 2014) gotten permission to exclude mopeds from cycle lanes specifically in the city). Mopeds are at most 49cc and limited to 50kph, and may or may not be in a scooter shape. There's a continuum between antique heavy-framed bicycles, complete with pedals, as well as a motor that may or may not be running, through to scooter-style mopeds.

Nah, scooter is a wide ranging term. More specifically we have snorscooters, bromscooters, and motorscooters. The motorscooter (actual term that exists, though not popular) is just a regular motorcycle.

The snorscooter is limited to 25 km/h, but is manufactured generally at 30, up to 45 km/h with artificial limitations on the engine which can be turned off. (guess what happens). And these are allowed on bicycle paths.

Only the bromscooter and motorscooter, must go on the road.

So yeah cyclists do end up sharing their lanes with vehicles going up to 45, while a bike in the city usually goes around 15. Particularly annoying is cycling with a friend, and having to cycle in front of each other instead of side by side every 30 seconds because something twice as fast wants to pass you by.

I quite like the electric scooters in general as a consumer, a friend of mine has one and I've tried it a few times and it's great. But generally I'm not a fan of the concept. We've come a very long way here with cycling, spending 20 minutes going to your work, 20 minutes back, 10 to the grocery store and 10 to a cafe in the evening, that's pretty much the daily required exercise you want every human being to have. It's plays a huge, mostly unintentional, part in our health. It's very safe, as we have lightweight, nimble, 15 km/h vehicles on dedicated lanes. And it gives rise to a different form of city planning, one where life is designed around a 30 minute cycling distance radius, as opposed to what I experienced in the US (living & work & entertainment are hugely separated. You have to do groceries by car, and go to work by car.) And lastly, of course, the environmental factors of not just running motorised vehicles (whether electric or fossil fuels), but also the manufacturing of them.

So while I'd love to see motors go electric, particularly cars, I'm at the same time concerned that the scooter versus the bicycle will become more popular! :)

> More specifically we have snorscooters, bromscooters ...

Not particularly on-topic but I couldn't help read this in the excited voice of Gene Wilder.

"The snorscooters drive like snorscooters!"

"Who ever heard of a snorscooter?"

"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams."

To be a little more helpful, if like me you don't know what these are, it seems the bromscooter is the same as a snorscooter but without the 25km/h speed limit (and are required to be on the roads with the driver wearing a helmet). You may recognise these as just "scooters" in your own country or "mopeds".

http://www.scooterprijs.nl/Snorscooter.jpg

> Scooters emit less CO2 per distance traveled than cars (and obviously much less than bike riders!)

I don't have time to dig up the numbers right now, but I think your "obvious" claim is probably quite badly mistaken. The faster you go, the more energy required per mile, because the power required to overcome air resistance is cubic in velocity. Muscles also have higher thermodynamic efficiency than a gas motor.

Yeah I mistyped that. I meant to say that bike riders emit much less CO2 than both cars and scooters.

Since the article didn't provide any pics of the bike : http://www.gogoro.com/

This article reads like a sales pitch, Everything about it sounds so right. By the end I was looking for the "invest now" button :D

I'm impressed by the battery replacement/recharge station, if the actual experience is as good as the marketing copy (http://movies.gogoroapp.com/easier-5_2015-01-19.mp4) it's really neat (assuming an urban environment with a sufficient density of replacement stations).

I can imagine my sister riding one of those, I guess. Not a design I'd ever consider seriously riding.

Hooray for sexism! "But daaaaaad, that's a girl's bike!"

So, you wear dresses and carry a purse? Really?

No, but I drive a Fiat 500.

Vehicles are definitely part of fashion for those who care and can afford it.

Poking around their website is quite fun, interactive demos for the personalization section were cool

The bike looks ugly, hence no pics, I think. Perfect sales pitch.

I had a really interesting conversation with a couple of guys a few months ago about cost of living. Cost of living is a really interesting entry point into thinking about economics, policies, wealth and such. I really think our decisions would be better if this was a bigger part of the economic debate rather then the very abstract macroeconomics, political theory and abstract ideological debates we have been carrying for so long. The role of technology, policy and taste/choices is a lot easier to decipher. I think it's a lot more productive way of structuring public debate/demands/protests.

Cost of living at the fat centre of the distribution for many/most households in advanced economies looks something like like this:

  - Housing + utilities (25-50% of income)
  - Transport (10-20%)
  - Groceries (7.5-15%)

Housing is the big hairy item. It's dishearteningly competitive, so high income places often have correspondingly high housing costs and the percentage remains constant.

Anyway.. Transport.

Transport is a major cost item and it's quality is important. A fundamental ingredient in most people and place's fundamental economic wellbeing equation. It's also one of the most fixable with technology.

A 90 minutes commute on crowded public transport is way worse than a 10 minute walk or drive. Transport infrastructure takes up a lot of space, affects air quality, makes noise, affects walkability and lots of other key quality of life issues. Energy. Time. Health. Money. Transport is a very big deal.

If you've seen cities that had major increases in cycling and/or electric bikes/scooters, you were probably surprised by the success. There is a lot of potential here.

10-20 mph electric bikes, given the right customs, rules and infrastructure can be awesome in dense urban areas. Potentially game-changing over time.

For the people not used to the imperial unit system:

125 cc is 125 cm³. 30 mph is around 50 km/h (the speed it reaches in 4.2 seconds). 60 mph is around 95 km/h (the max speed). 266 800 square-foot is 24 786 m². 20 miles are around 32 kilometers. 8900 square-foot is 826 m².

Is "cc" actually an imperial unit? I thought it stood for "cubic centimetres" (also equiv to ml).

Yeah, I've seen "cc" used everywhere for "cubic centimeters" back in Italy.

Correct, cubic inches would be the imperial unit. The famous Chevy big block 409 engine (from the Beach Boys song "409") is a 409 cubic inches, or about 6.7L (6700 cc, cubic centimeters).

Gogoro has been making a lot of waves in Taiwan lately. A few Gogoro stores have been showing up in Taipei and they feel very much like Apple stores!

The prospect of seeing an iconic company born out of Taiwan is exciting!

A german competitor could be UNU Motors: https://unumotors.com/product

They solve the battery swap problem by letting you bring your battery inside and charge it from normal wall outlets.

their battery system logo looks amazingly close to arduino: http://www.gogoro.com/smartscooter/Easier

Electric scooters (not fancy design ones like this but rather pedestrian-looking ones) are already completely ubiquitous in China, both for deliveries (including for 20kg water jugs, it's a bit disconcerting seeing a moped with 4 or more of those on the back) and for a very unsafe short-distance unlicensed taxi service for the last mile from the metro stop.

I know for deliveries, they are used, but the short jaunt scooter taxis I see in Beijing still seem to be mostly gas based (and of course, most all the personal scooters are electric).

That's quite interesting as I have basically never seen a non-electric scooter here in Shenzhen. Almost seems like there might be some local regulation around that, but I have no idea.

Even Amazon use electric scooters for delivery here ;)

It's quite impressive how cheap the Chinese scooters are eg this from $470

http://aima-tech.en.made-in-china.com/product/lKJQufadaRkw/C...

admittedly lead-acid batteries rather than lithium

> Riders won’t own the batteries. Instead, they’ll pay a low monthly fee to swap portable batteries as needed from a network of charging stations.

This is the key thing that electric cars need too - we need standardised batteries which can be swapped out, then the charging time is irrelevant.

Do EV/hybrid drivers thinking they're saving the planet consider the impact from manufacturing / disposing of batteries? NiMh and lithium-based batteries might not pollute locally, but mining / refining / manufacturing / shipping / disposal happens somewhere (probably in Asia), as does power generation (mostly from coal in the US).

I think a lot of the appeal of EVs / hybrids comes from the clean image, even though these vehicles still cause lots of pollution. It's the opposite problem of diesel vehicles, which, though more fuel-efficient than their equivalent gasoline-powered counterparts, emit a more opaque smoke, leading to people thinking they're worse for the environment.

The electric unicycle is the electric vehicle for the masses.

The only reason anyone buys scooters, either electric or gas, in America is they can usually be operated without a license and insurance. Otherwise they make zero financial sense. They are more expensive than 250cc gasoline motorcycles that require very little maintenance, sip gasoline, and can go 65+ mph.

You can get a perfectly good small motorcycle for $2k. Dropping some multiple of that for an electric scooter toy makes no sense.

You're right. This won't be a product for Americans. Scooters are much more viable in the dense cities of Europe and Asia. As an aside, focusing on the vehicle is missing what Gogoro is pursuing: batteries.

It does make sense when you can take them on bike paths, which are off-limits to motorcycles and mostly to gas-powered scooters (like GoPeds, which can get >100mpg). Lane-splitting is also amazing in California, where having your motorcycle license lets you use the HOV lane and filter through traffic if the lanes are wide enough to do it ~safely.

In California riding a scooter requires a motorcycle license.

Scooters can be better for commuting in work clothes I am thinking of the classic small wheel scooters like Lambrettas

Reply on news.ycombinator.com