E Scooters soon to be allowed on UK roads?

[808 Estate]

Amateurish said:

12mph is too slow. I have an escooter with this limit and it is annoyingly slow, even more so on any hill when it struggles to hit 8mph. 15mph is the limit for ebikes so why not have the same?

That actually does make some sense. Provided the scooter has some half decent brakes and wheels big enough to not launch you over the bars if it hits a mars bar.

Edited by 808 Estate on Sunday 26th May 20:42

[Toltec]

OutInTheShed said:

It's £3k or whatever, for legal, 24mph, 25 mile range urban transport.
It's an alternative to a petrol twist'n'go.

Personally, for three grand, I expect a 100mph estate car.
But if you're 16 and want to get across town, things look a bit different.

Three grand doesn't go far in fashionable e-bikes which are slower, harder to store etc.

Three grand is a lot of hours on minimum wage though.
When I was 17, I got an unskilled holiday job for 5 weeks, did some crazy amount of overtime and saved enough to buy a brand new100cc Suzuki, although in the end I bought a used one and a boat.
65mph flat out wasn't enough though....

not a GP100 by any chance? That was my first, £300 in 1984 iirc. Top speed sounds about right, but not in top gear, knock it into top and all it could manage was 55mph.

[andburg]

808 Estate said:

Amateurish said:

12mph is too slow. I have an escooter with this limit and it is annoyingly slow, even more so on any hill when it struggles to hit 8mph. 15mph is the limit for ebikes so why not have the same?

That actually does make some sense. Provided the scooter has some half decent brakes and wheels big enough to not launch you over the bars if it hits a mars bar.

Edited by 808 Estate on Sunday 26th May 20:42

That’s sort of the point though, wheel sizes are far less suitable to 15mph. If they did say 15th the scooter would have to have better brakes, bigger tyres and then it wouldn’t be as portable as people want.

Portable enough to carry on the train or to your desk probably means not good enough to use at any speed you’d consider truly worthwhile

[OutInTheShed]

Toltec said:

OutInTheShed said:

It's £3k or whatever, for legal, 24mph, 25 mile range urban transport.
It's an alternative to a petrol twist'n'go.

Personally, for three grand, I expect a 100mph estate car.
But if you're 16 and want to get across town, things look a bit different.

Three grand doesn't go far in fashionable e-bikes which are slower, harder to store etc.

Three grand is a lot of hours on minimum wage though.
When I was 17, I got an unskilled holiday job for 5 weeks, did some crazy amount of overtime and saved enough to buy a brand new100cc Suzuki, although in the end I bought a used one and a boat.
65mph flat out wasn't enough though....

not a GP100 by any chance? That was my first, £300 in 1984 iirc. Top speed sounds about right, but not in top gear, knock it into top and all it could manage was 55mph.

The GP100 was the shiny new option, I looked at a trail bike which might have been an ER? TS100ER? a couple of years old but I ended up buying a Suzuki A100, horrible thing really but I did a lot of miles on it in a couple of years, then sold it for a good price.
That was around the time learners were restricted to 125cc but 100cc was much cheaper insurance, like £30 a year instead of £100 in my vague memory. The A100 only had 4 gears and as I recall, not very good brakes!

[OutInTheShed]

nordboy said:

£3k, plus insurance, if you can find an insurance company who'll insure it? MOT when it needs it (not sure how it will pass that), and you must have a D/L with at least the AM category and have passed a CBT. So it'll be quite a bit more in the end.

That's actually similaror less in real terms to a £400 moped in the early 80s.
Beer was 40p a pint then.

It's the price of independent mobility that you don't have to pedal.

[monthou]

OutInTheShed said:

nordboy said:

£3k, plus insurance, if you can find an insurance company who'll insure it? MOT when it needs it (not sure how it will pass that), and you must have a D/L with at least the AM category and have passed a CBT. So it'll be quite a bit more in the end.

That's actually similaror less in real terms to a £400 moped in the early 80s.
Beer was 40p a pint then.

It's the price of independent mobility that you don't have to pedal.

You think they'll sell like hot cakes then? Really?

[Graveworm]

808 Estate said:

That actually does make some sense. Provided the scooter has some half decent brakes and wheels big enough to not launch you over the bars if it hits a mars bar.

Edited by 808 Estate on Sunday 26th May 20:42

It was 25 kmh (about 15mph) across most of the EU and they are reducing it to 20kmh (12mph) to try and address the issues they encountered. In some cities they are taking it down further to 10kmh.
Finland did a controlled study and found that at 25kmh serious injuries were 19 per 100,000 km Which is way more than ebikes or bikes and after reducing it to 20 it fell to 9.

[Hugo Stiglitz]

And as soon as they are legal here people will be jail breaking them and maxing them out..

Then they'll be surprised when they are hitting things.

[OutInTheShed]

monthou said:

OutInTheShed said:

nordboy said:

£3k, plus insurance, if you can find an insurance company who'll insure it? MOT when it needs it (not sure how it will pass that), and you must have a D/L with at least the AM category and have passed a CBT. So it'll be quite a bit more in the end.

That's actually similaror less in real terms to a £400 moped in the early 80s.
Beer was 40p a pint then.

It's the price of independent mobility that you don't have to pedal.

You think they'll sell like hot cakes then? Really?

I think they could sell, if there was good marketing behind the product, and maybe if they could be leased/rented/'on a contract' like a mobile phone.
If it had a Ducati badge, fat old blokes would be all over it.

It may not look like good value to you or me, but a lot of people spend a lot of money on worse tat.
The flip side is perhaps 'how many would you have to sell to get the price down significantly'?

Also I suspect one thing which hampers sales of something like this is the way people are getting away with illegal e-bikes etc with similar performance and less hassle.

[monthou]

OutInTheShed said:

I think they could sell, if there was good marketing behind the product, and maybe if they could be leased/rented/'on a contract' like a mobile phone.
If it had a Ducati badge, fat old blokes would be all over it.

It may not look like good value to you or me, but a lot of people spend a lot of money on worse tat.
The flip side is perhaps 'how many would you have to sell to get the price down significantly'?

Also I suspect one thing which hampers sales of something like this is the way people are getting away with illegal e-bikes etc with similar performance and less hassle.

Maybe you're right. At £3K, all the rigmarole that goes with being a motor vehicle and probably hard to insure I'd see a 125 bike being much more appealing. It's certainly not in the same market as a lightweight fold-up scooter.