Battery Powered Transportation And Fitness

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Every time you go for a walk, bike ride or run you encounter people being moved along by something using electricity. The most common of these forms of transport are the electric car, the electric bike and the electric foot scooter. People want to be more environmentally friendly in their way of getting around but they use something that has to be recharged.

Quick to Adopt

Electric bikes, foot scooters and cars are a shortcut used by plenty of people. The beauty of the three methods of transportation listed above is that they’re relatively easy to use. Charge them, and then go for a ride.

A break From Driving

A few years ago I lost my driving licence for a month so I replaced the car with a foot scooter that I had to propel myself and public transport. At the time I was happy because I was bored of driving. I was happy to be lazy for one month. That’s not the point.

The Less Strenuous Solution

The point is that we see plenty of people use electric foot scooters because manual ones require a good level of fitness. Using a scooter requires strong leg and back muscles, as well as endurance. Going downhill is easy, you just stand on the scooter and gravity does the work for you. Go the opposite way and that unpowered foot scooter becomes so tiring that you ever walk, to save energy, or work on your fitness, to get up the hill.

As Fast as an Electric Bike

Yesterday I went for a bike ride at an average of 25.9 kilometres per hour. This is a foot powered bike and I was going as fast as an electric bike, without any assistance. Electric bikes are wonderful. They are a short cut. With an electric bike you are as fast as someone who has spent years training to be fast. It provides people with a short cut to getting around on a bike, without the need for physical training.

The Need to Replace All Cars

In theory electric cars are fantastic because they pollute less, and they’re better for the air we breath. As a person who walks and cycles between villages electric cars are as threatening and dangerous as petrol powered cars. I feel that instead of electric cars, especially for short hops, with single occupancy we should think of skate boards, rollerblades, foot scooters and more.

And Finally

Now that I have sold the petrol driven scooter I am thinking of alternative solutions. In theory the most practical is the bike, but the problem with bikes is that they’re easy to steal, and in theory it’s expected. The alternative, the electric foot scooter is tempting but I worry about balance, when carrying shopping. The second concern is that by getting an electric scooter I might walk less, due to the convenience and lazy enticement of letting a machine do the work.

Electric seated scooters would be fun to drive but with a range of just 37km I’d be stuck locally. I’d like the range to get to Geneva and back, without recharging. It makes the electric scooter absurd, for my use case. A pedal bike is fine, with my level of fitness. I have demonstrated to myself several times that I can go back and forth with ease, without adding the day of work in the middle.

Conclusion

Although I was tempted by an electric bike for a long time my level of fitness increased to the point where I saw the electric bike as a luxury, rather than necessity. I could be tempted by an electric scooter, but to get to the train station in a quarter of the time that it would take to walk. It’s a twenty minute walk to the train. I don’t need an electric scooter to take me in five minutes or so.