Since around half a year, I am the owner of an e-scooter. So far I drove 1,500km with it, which comes down to an average of around 8km per day. That‘s quite a lot and I think I am ready to give you a deep dive into the ups and downs of owning an e-scooter. If you don‘t have one, yet, this may be interesting for you.
tldr; Conclusion at the end of the text.
The Choice Of The Model
The scooter of my choice was a Swiss SoFlow S04 Pro. That is important for Soflow models as many of them sound similar, but are widely different inside. I picked this model, because it has a very strong engine. In Germany, there are restriction for e-scooters. One is the top speed which is 22kph and it‘s the engine, which is not allowed to be stronger than 500W. If you want a stronger and faster model, you need another type of insurance (which costs around 20 Euro per year for mine) and have to wear a helmet.
Most scooters in the given category have weaker engines, which becomes especially important if you are a bit heavier than average and want to use it in a place with steep hills. Since I happen to be both, there was not much choice for me. The two other contestants at the time were the Vmax VX2, sold by another Swiss manufacturer (~1,000 Euros) and Trittbrett Paul, which is a German brand (~1,300 Euros). When I saw a used SoFlow offered for 450 Euro which was half the price of a new one, I immediately took it.
Am I satisfied with my purchase? Well... yes… but. If I was to answer this question three months ago, I would have said: „Don‘t buy one“. Now, on the other hand, with three more months of experience in handling and dealing with it, I‘m more inclined to specify what is good and what wrong with the model and what you have to look for, when buying one. Besides the engine and the price, there‘s a lot more to be careful about. If you get it right, you may have a lot of fun with yours.
- Make sure to have an engine set-up strong enough to carry you up the hills you want.
The Foot Board
One thing that still bugs me a lot and won‘t go away is the foot board. It simply too small for my feet. Neither can I properly put my feet next to each other, nor is it possible to offset them with one before the other without half the shoe besides the board.
That is a problem for two reasons. The first one is that it takes away stability and this on a relatively quick, but frail device with only little tolerance for mishaps. Secondly and more importantly, there is no configuration for my feet on the board that is comfortable. After around 10km my hips start hurting just from standing in an unnatural way on the board, which is made worse by the fact that you have to constantly bend your knees with the underground that you are driving on.
- The foot board has to be long and wide enough for both of your shoes to fit on the board next to and behind one another.
Indicators
By now I got used to it, but it‘s still sometimes a bit tricky to lift my arm to indicate the direction I want to go, or even just to look around and see what‘s behind me. The reason is that scooter wheels and handlebars tend to be small compared to a bike. This means that scooters have only a low degree of self-balance with the consequence that you quickly lose control when moving your body weight or let go of the handlebar on one side. With my experience, I have now a feeling for how the scooter reacts. But it took me a long time to feel comfortable looking around or removing a hand from the scooter. Sometimes, I just put my leg out, but that‘s not much of an option at night.
- Your scooter should have build-in indicators.
The Wheel Size
One unexpected problem of scooters are their small wheels. Mine has 10“ which is already big as I found out. Most scooters appear to have 8“ wheels with none in the given category that are bigger than that. The problematic aspect with such small wheels is that you cannot drive over curbs and other hurdles that are bigger than around 15% of the wheel diameter.
If you do it anyway, you will fall off the scooter and have a lot of pain. At least that is what happened to me after like two weeks of owning my scooter. Don‘t expect that you can lift up the front-wheel, so only the back wheel has to take the curb. It‘s what I tried and it worked until the rear wheel hit the curb.
That was also the time when I learned that you don‘t have much space for reacting to something unexpected when riding a scooter. I could not move for a week and I also consider me lucky, because it could have ended far worse. My accident impressed me so much that I considered selling the scooter again for the first time.
My opinion of scooters as certain death traps is not fully gone, although with more experience, I am now much more confident riding mine. If I stick with scooters, my next one will have 12$ wheels.
- The bigger the wheels of your scooter, the better.
Tires & Customer Service
Another pesky issue are the tires, at least in my case with me being above average in weight. First, there was nothing to worry about the tires, but eventually, I had to change the rear tire, because it was already half down from the previous owner. From bikes, I have very bad experience in changing tires, which is why I always go to the shop. These 20 Euro are worth it.
I tried the same with the scooter, but both bike and car shops and even a motorbike shop refused to change the tire, because they had no experience with scooters. This may be a typical German problem, but make sure that you have a place where you can go to if the scooter has an issue. Sending it via parcel is the last thing you want to have to do.
Eventually, I decided to do it myself and was positively surprised, at least for the most part. Soflow rims come in two parts which you can easily screw apart. I didn‘t know this existed, but turned the operation for a whole afternoon into something for 10 minutes. Well done, Soflow! Bike wheels should have that, too. It would make owning a bike much more popular - at least with me.
What was not so well done by Soflow was the customer service. They not only don‘t offer spare parts on their website, but also only give scares information on the specs you need for new tires. I finally found an answer on a discussion board, where I also saw how well other brands handle this. A Chinese manufacturer (forgot the name unfortunately) even had a special social media handler, who reacted immediately on every inquiry regarding his brand. That was rather impressive to see.
It didn‘t help me much and so I had to a new tire myself and then put it back on again. Everything worked, until a few days later the tire was flat. Ok, I thought, let‘s just repeat the exercise, after all, it only takes 10 minutes. I got it done, but then the same happened again a few days later. With the time spent on repairing the tire and the money for new tubes, I decided to take a honeycomb tire, which means that it doesn‘t have a tube, but is mostly solid with air bubbles inside the tire.
As of right now, after having driven with the honeycomb for some 200km, I can tell that it works. The ride became much more rough, but I personally don‘t care too much for that, because it‘s much more important to me that the scooter can‘t go flat anymore. Unfortunately, the honeycomb has one downside, which is that it isn‘t tightly fitting like a tube tire that you can blow up for optimal fit. This leads to the rim spinning in the tire with the consequence that I lost around 3km in range.
Not sure how to fix this. Some say that you can glue the tire to the rim and later remove it again with the help of acetone.
Make sure to have a repair shop not too far away where you can go if your scooter has an issue.
If you buy a scooter with honeycomb, make sure it has a suspension.
Breaks
Breaks were the first thing that I had to take care of. The reason is that I live on top of a steep hill and the town is downhill. This leads to a lot of breaking, which results in a lot of wear for the break pads. As described above, Soflow‘s customer service is abysmal, but there was this Chinese brand guy on the board who knew the problem from others and that the break pads of his brand fit on my Soflow. Yeah, that person deserves his pay.
The Soflow comes with disk break back and front, which makes replacing the pads a messy task, but none that you can‘t handle with a normal screw driver and no talent. It takes perhaps 5 minutes each for back and front and you are good to go again. Still, it‘s annoying having to do this every 500k and it‘s also costing money. At current prices, a pad is at roughly 5 Euro, inflation will do the rest.
If I think of it, the Vmax VX2 had recuperation back and front, which means there is no wear to the breaks, but you even get some energy back. If I used the scooter more often, I think just alone the break issue would make the VX2 cheaper then the S04 Pro.
- Recuperation breaks are an advantage in general, but especially, when you drive the scooter in a place with lots of hills.
The Battery
The battery is the only part that I had zero issues with so far. It works as intended. The only thing that I would wish for is to remove and replace it quickly. For one, because carrying the scooter all the way to your apartment is inconvenient, and of course also, because a 2nd battery extends the range by a lot. So far the battery went empty only once so far, before I was home. But twice (or even three times) the current range of around 25km would be a really neat thing. The size is small enough to carry one or two of them in your backpack.
- The battery of the scooter should be removable.
Seat And Speed
I‘m not sure what my top speed was so far. The display is too far down and I am not eager to meddle around when going fast. It was probably around 50kph, maybe even more, but not that much.
One strange phenomenon that I have encountered is that the faster I go with the scooter, the more I feel like I should sit down. Not sure where that comes from, maybe it‘s a Pawlow Reflex from biking. As soon as I feel that, I know that I am too fast. So, it has a good side to it.
Generally, I am not that unsatisfied with the top speed of 22 kph. Most of the time that is enough, although it‘s always a bit too slow to move along with the car traffic. It‘s only on open and straight bike lanes, where I feel the scooter is too slow. I guess, 30kph wouldn‘t be bad. But then again, maybe they tested it and realized that there‘s a death zone beginning above 22kph.
It‘s a plus, though maybe a small one, if the scooter has the possibility of adding/removing a seat.
Scooters that are easy to hack could become a relevant factor for you.
Conclusion
In two years or so, when I find a scooter that checks all of the following boxes, I will buy it. Otherwise probably not.
- Make sure to have an engine set-up strong enough to carry you up the hills you want.
- The foot board has to be long and wide enough for both of your shoes to fit on the board next to and behind one another.
- Your scooter should have build-in indicators.
- The bigger the wheels of your scooter, the better.
- Make sure to have a repair shop not too far away where you can go if your scooter has an issue.
- If you buy a scooter with honeycomb, make sure it has a suspension.
- Recuperation breaks are an advantage in general, but especially, when you drive the scooter in a place with lots of hills.
- The battery of the scooter should be removable.
- It‘s a plus, though maybe a small one, if the scooter has the possibility of adding/removing a seat.
- Scooters that are easy to hack could become a relevant factor for you.
I hope that was interesting for you. Now let me know what you think of scooters!