They’re innovative,
fun and almost legal —
but are e-scooters
the future?H
over boots would be brilliant.
We seemed to be promised them
sometime in the 1970s, and I’m
still strumming my fingers in
anticipation. In the meantime,
there’s always this.
My feet are a few inches off the
ground, but motionless. I glide
along effortlessly, at speeds of
up to 15mph, accompanied only
by a faint humming noise. All
around me unenlightened people are still
walking, for Pete’s sake. There’s no licence
requirement, no insurance and no VED.
“This” is electric scootering.
The electric scooter is one of the things
— along with the iPad, streaming TV and
internet porn — that I’d like to gather up
from my adult life and take with me back to
my teenage years. I’d show it to Sir Clive
Sinclair, to reassure him that his vision of
simple electric urban mobility was spot on,
and that he’d just got the vehicle wrong.
As it is, I bought one in my fifties, a year
and a half ago, and yes, I’ve been breaking
the law. Mine’s the Xiaomi Mi Pro 2, sold to
me by Halfords on the strict understanding
that it was for use only on privately owned
land, but I don’t have any of that and riding
it up and down the kitchen really annoys
my missus. So I’ve been using it on the
road, in bicycle lanes and on the pavement.
I’ll come quietly.
But you would, wouldn’t you? Because
it’s little more than an adjunct to walking,
and very much, as has often been said of
small urban buses, hop on, hop off. It feels
like beating the system and it is, because
it’s a powered vehicle and therefore should
be registered.
But trying to police the use of electric
scooters has been recognised as a futile
endeavour: you may as well legislate against
people trying to say words when burping.
So the government is relenting. It started
with trials of rental scooters — something
that has been very successful on what we
can now go back to calling The Continent
— and it looks as though we’ll soon be able
to own them privately, personal disused
Olympic village or not, and that’s as it
should be. Policing and lawmaking are
ultimately by public consent, and we can’t
be arsed to walk.
But back to the scoot. It has three riding
modes — pedestrian, standard, sport— and a real-world range of around 20
miles. Top speed is 15.5mph (that’s 25kmh)
and there are built-in lights, a neat
side stand for parking, the inevitable
accompanying app, blah, blah, blah.
Viewed simply as “a thing”, the Pro 2
is marvellous. There is a lovely glowing
display, a simple thumb trigger to make
it go and it recharges from a regular
plug in a few hours (eight hours for a full
charge, but nobody ever does that). It’s
effectively free to use and requires no input
of effort, and I don’t think this has ever
been true before.
Off we go then: a few scoots with my
left foot to start it rolling (this is a safety
feature — it won’t go otherwise), then
I squeeze the trigger and the world is all
mine. Most importantly, I’m not having
constantly to lift each foot and place it in
front of the other in the accepted manner
of what we call “walking”; an incredibly
old-fashioned and ridiculous idea.But at this point I become slightly baffled.
It’s fun, yes. Cool in a nerdy sort of way,
and delightfully childish. It’s a scooter. But
what’s it actually for?
For patrolling a warehouse or the deck of
a supertanker, or for simply getting around
one of those vast underground particle
physics laboratories, it would be ideal.
I refer you to my idea to turn the London
Underground and other subways into bicycle
superhighways. Electric scooters would be
wonderful in there. But down on the street
with Iggy Pop I have several doubts.
First, I always ride it waiting, as a racing
driver once said, to arrive at the scene of the
accident. It feels precarious. The wheels are
very small and some of the holes are quite
big. There’s no front brake, only a bit of
regeneration from the motor mounted in
the front wheel, and the cable-operated rear
disc is snatchy. The wheelbase is obviously
short and those with an understanding of
motorcycle geometry will recognise from
the picture that there’s a bit of rake but
no trail worth talking of, so steering does
not feel as natural as it does on a bike.
A “get-off ” always feels imminent.
It’s also pretty hopeless going up any
significant incline, although very effective
coming back down again. But here’s another
thing. I know 15mph doesn’t sound like
much, but I invite you to leap from your car
at that speed and see how you feel.
Early on in my ownership of the Pro 2,
having mastered the basics (mainly how to
stand on it without looking like I’d already
had some sort of accident), I decided to take
it on a proper adventure.
Back then, my colleague Richard
Hammond was living in a riverside gin
penthouse four miles from my home, so off
I scooted on what promised to be a perfect
evening ride: a bit of riverside path, some
back streets, through a park and a bit more
pedestrianised riverside before arriving
at his door.
All very enjoyable, and at that point I was
fairly convinced. But I had to come back
home in the dark, and while the blame for
the mishap can be attributed as much to
Hendrick’s as to the maker of the scooter,
it could happen to anyone.
At some point I met a ridge or kerb that
my Brompton would have handled easily,
going at a fair lick, and for several yards I
continued the journey sans scooter andJAMES
MAY
PAUL STUART FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE, GETTY IMAGES ➤
The Sunday Times Magazine • 43