e-Scooters: Who Rides Them, Potential Benefits, Regulatory Concerns, and Business Considerations

With less effort to drive than an e-bike, e-scooters have lots of potential benefits, but regulators are being kept on their toes

Photo by Şahin Sezer Dinçer on Unsplash

When travelling around the city in the summer, your Ride On writers have seen increasingly more e-scooters being driven. It seems fun, fast, and in some cases a practical means of transport, especially if one is tight on time. They are also needed because a person can easily travel with one on the train if desired, so it may be a good solution to getting home or to work fairly quickly in a cheap sustainable way. With that in mind, we want to devote today’s issue of Ride On to the e-scooters.

Given that motivation, it is necessary to explain clearly what is an e-scooter and how it is obtained for usage. In that respect, Trivedi et al. (2019) defines an e-scooter thusly:

With a maximum speed of 15 mph, these short-range electric vehicles consist of a narrow platform on which the rider stands with 1 foot in front of the other and a waist-high rod with handlebars for steering; after kicking off initially with 1 foot, riders accelerate and brake the scooter using triggers activated with their thumbs.

Furthermore, one pays for an e-scooter by the minute via a smartphone application — a smartphone is also used to locate it, and riders end their ride any time, anywhere.

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