Rant on Electric Scooters and Electric Bikes
Electric Scooters and Electric bikes are very cool - problem is, most of them are junk. Almost all of the production of these comes out of China and the quality controls shown in most brands have proven very poor to date. Even good brands seem to have good batches and bad batches depending on where they are assembled and where the components are sourced. Good batteries, bad batteries, good controllers, bad controllers, good wiring, bad wiring - the consistency just is not there. Even with the good brands, we send many bikes/scooters back to the distributor because they do not pass our initial inspection even though they may have made it through QA at the factory. We perform routine upgrades to the connectors and wiring on brand new bikes.
At Scooter Underground™ we are very committed to the electric technologies and we are equally committed that we do not want to sell junk.
There are some things that we can say with a lot of conviction:
- If it costs less that about $1,200, you are probably buying a headache.
- Everyone says they can get replacement parts - very few can - at least not in an acceptable time frame.
- Anyone selling electric bikes or electric scooters must have an expert in these technologies on staff.
- Currently, we would be wary about buying anything used or off ebay unless you have the equipment to test the batteries, wiring, motor, and controller. A bad battery can look every bit as new as a good battery and can cost hundreds to replace - if it is available at all.
If you buy an electric bike or scooter, you are on the leading edge (just like one of the first to start using Windows Vista.)
Gas scooters will have better resale value than electrics because in the electrics, the technology is evolving much more rapidly.
At Scooter Underground, we will continue to test many brands of electric and gas scooters. We will also sell them to you based on the performance we think they are capable of in the real world based on our tests.
Statistics quoted with a 100 pound rider on flat ground and in warm weather don't translate that well to our riding conditions.
We try our scooters and electric bikes out in our local weather conditions with riders of all sizes and routes of all types. If we don't think a particular scooter meets your needs, we won't sell it to you.
Again, the electric scooter and bike technologies are very important - we only wish there was not so much junk flooding the market being peddled by people who do not know (or care) how to repair and support them.
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