I found some topics covering electric scooters, but they were all about 3 years old. I suppose the quality has changed over that time. Anyone here drive one or know someone who drives one? I think it’d be handy to have for those short trips to the store or whatever. How do they charge? Is there a special place you have to go or can you just do it in your house or building?
You’d better stick baseball cards in your spokes so that they hear you coming.
Sorry I don’t know much about them it is a good idea.
I’ve seen a lot of old people with determined looks on their faces ridng electric walkers in traffic.
I watched an elder lady cruise her 4-wheel electric cart diagonally thru a busy rush-hour taffic intersection yesterday with nary a care on her face.
It was amazing that she was not smashed to bits.
Cars slowed and zoomed on by her as she did a straight line catty-whumpus from one corner to the other.
She seemed completely oblivious to the traffic mess she was causing.
And a really weird thing was…not one horn beep at her.
I have seen a number of electric Kymco scooters over the years, but they are few and will not be popular in the city, unless there is a convenient method of recharging them that doesn’t requir them being hoisted up flights of stairs to the living room to be plugged in. I might have one if I knew the battery capacity and cost of one.
i’ve taken my grandmother-in-law’s electric shopping cart thingy for a ride a couple of times (when i was too tired to walk, but my daughter wanted to go out for a ‘walk’)… it made my scooter feel like a supercharged, turboed AND nitroused hemi~
but it has near-instant acceleration to it’s top speed of slightly over walking speed…
Battery powered, two wheel scooters are available. I think their appeal is they are cheap to buy (new for around 10k) and you don’t need to buy gas. IMO, they are too slow, underpowered and limited in range to be much use to anyone.
I think Tom Hanks said something to that effect about electric cars, in that they aren’t for everyone. In fact electric cars because of their limited range, can only meet the requirements of 90 percent of the people. I think that sums it up for me. The few times that I really need the range of a petrol powered scooter these days could see me keeping one under a sheet, whilst I use an electric one most of the time.
I saw lots of electric scooters in Shanghai and Beijing the last time I was there. It was impressive that they’ve developed the industry to that point. Taiwan (or at least the big flat urban parts) could learn a thing or two from that.
The one shop I occasionally take my gas-powered bike in for maintenance lets me borrow their electric scooters for the day to go back and forth to work. It charges using a connection to a normal 120V outlet, so anywhere there’s an outlet - your home, garage, neighbor’s outside outlet, etc., you can charge them up. While they were being subsidized and promoted a few years ago, there were public charging station outlets placed at scooter parking areas for them, but they were only in select (read “rare and hard to find”) areas.
As for performance, the one I used wasn’t so bad in terms of acceleration on level ground – it could keep up in city traffic with no problem. However, take it to even a slight grade and performance takes a decent hit. And then there’s another problem that the motor (or power controller for the motor) will overheat easily, and automatically shuts down. That was only after pulling me (~70kg) up a 2-3% grade @ 60km/hr for 1.5km. Then you have to wait for a few minutes before it will cool down enough to let you be on your way again.
All in all, they’ve improved from what used to be available a few years ago, and not a bad idea for the daily commute – but still need improvement before I’d buy one.
Well suited to suburban America, where every home has an outlet in the 1st-floor garage. Here in Taipei? Forget about it.
Plus I probably wouldn’t be alive today if I hadn’t had the power to accelerate out of some dicey spots in traffic. I’ll take a Nimbus 2000, thank you very much.
Anyone heard of this E Bubu from PGO
english.pgo.com.tw/news.asp?type=1&id=43
Available now
Two batteries one can be removed and taken into your house for recharge its about the size of a regular bike battery.
Top speed: 60km/h
Range: 60km @ 30km/h
Information from a friend who is a local motoring journalist:
300 recharges before battery starts losing 100% capacity
After 800 charges the battery can still hold 70% of original charge.
Cost 70k NT subtract 20k thanks to government subsidy
OR
The roboscooter from SYM
Available 3rd quarter apparently
Info hard to come by
Weight: 70kg
Price: NT50K
Great, very interesting, thx for posting!
Thanks for that. If people can keep us updated on electric scooters, I’d be grateful! 
This is something I am very interested in as well.
The RoboScooter is a great piece of design. It’s the fruit of a collaboration between the ITRI (a Taiwanese Institute for R&D), SYM, and the MIT, in what they called the Next Consortium.
I’ve seen quite a few apparently abandoned ones around.
Given the comparitively small number on the roads, that makes me suspect they suffer from premature ageing and “not economically repairable” syndrome, perhaps partly because of short production runs and limited parts availability.
That’s just speculation, though. I’ve no personal experience of them.
There is some kind of convention in town these days. I was just going through the pics, they have several normal looking scooters with pretty nifty batteries, and my favorite: the Robo-transformer bike, which you can fold like a foldable bicycle. Oh, and an electric bus, too.
[quote=“Ducked”]I’ve seen quite a few apparently abandoned ones around.
Given the comparitively small number on the roads, that makes me suspect they suffer from premature ageing and “not economically repairable” syndrome, perhaps partly because of short production runs and limited parts availability.
That’s just speculation, though. I’ve no personal experience of them.[/quote]
Which ones and where did you see them?
One of my students used to work for ITRI which is based in Hsinchu science park, from what he told me the employees of that company are the only ones who have access to the Roboscooter for testing since they are not released for sale yet
[quote=“Dogma”][quote=“Ducked”]I’ve seen quite a few apparently abandoned ones around.
Given the comparitively small number on the roads, that makes me suspect they suffer from premature ageing and “not economically repairable” syndrome, perhaps partly because of short production runs and limited parts availability.
That’s just speculation, though. I’ve no personal experience of them.[/quote]
Which ones and where did you see them?
One of my students used to work for ITRI which is based in Hsinchu (Xinzhu) science park, from what he told me the employees of that company are the only ones who have access to the Roboscooter for testing since they are not released for sale yet[/quote]
I’ve seen a few around NCKU in Tainan. I don’t know the model but definately NOT the Roboscooter, sorry if I seemed to be implying that. These ones look pretty much like a conventional small scooter (say a 50cc Yamaha Jog) apart from the electric bits. I’ll check the model next time I pass one, though they may have been “tidied” by now.
THEY are many in shanghai,i seen it on the street any ware.but i don,t think they are reliable.
they must be a better one out there somewhere 
maybe homebuilt ones…