Hi everyone!
Once again, I come to you all for advice. Currently, my fleet consists of my trusty acoustic bike, my Class 3 electric bike, and my own two feet. Couple this with my transit card and I've eliminated a lot of unnecessary automobile trips. Roughly, my trips fall into:
- trips within town that I can run them with my acoustic bike, or the ebike if I'm short on time. Usually sub 8 km (5 mi)
- trips to the outlying suburbs by hourly bus, getting me within 2 km of my actual destination, so I just walk
- trips into the metro core by bus + LRT, within 4 km of my destination, so I might walk or might wait 30 minutes for the bus. The ebike won't fit on the bus, and even with the acoustic bike, this bus line often fills the front bike rack.
That latter one is what I want to optimize, since I missed that bus by 1 minute and then proceeded to walk in 38 C (100 F) heat to the LRT station. That was brutal.
So I wish to consider adding an e-scooter, as a faster-than-walking solution for short distances. This would be more compact than bringing either bike, and easily brought onto the bus or train. If I were going any farther than 2-4 km, or bringing more than I could carry, then the bike is needed.
That said, I know enough people that have eaten dirt on an e-scooter, so I would easily accept a scooter that is limited to some 15 kph (9 mph) -- still faster than walking -- so long as it can climb 3-5% grades. I would also like the largest diameter wheels I can get; 10-inch would be great. Suspension would be nice, but I'll take what I can find.
I've searched locally on Craigslist for options, and predominantly see used GoTrax and Niu e-scooters, but these have 6-inch wheels and no suspension, as well as clones of the Xiaomi M365, like Maxshot. These are cheap, but still don't meet most of my criteria, and it seems these clones have a habit of failing due to poor quality construction.
As extra background, I've never ridden a skateboard, so an electric skateboard is not being considered. Nor rollerblades. I would consider a really small folding bike or ebike, but this is only marginally better than what my current fleet can offer. Hence why I'm looking to e-scooters.
EDIT 1: forgot to mention that I'm in California/USA
EDIT 2: thanks to @Showroom7561@lemmy.ca , I honed in on the Segway Ninebot Max family, and settled on a refurbished G30lp for $315+tax.
I think that generally precludes that it will be a bit too bulky to take on a busy bus, but depends on how much you weigh. But not sure as I haven't really looked at new models since I got my innokim quick 3 (quite bulky) about 8 years ago.
I wouldn't worry about getting one that's speed limited unless it's required legally where you live: as long as you're willing to ride defensively and slow down when approaching pedestrians, intersections, blind corners, driveways etc. Also some scooters have different power level settings that will limit your speed if you need to.
I'm about 70 kg (150 lbs) so that shouldn't be at the edge of rated e-scooter performance, I think. To be abundantly clear, low-speed is not mandatory for me but rather, high-speed is not desired nor do I want to pay extra for it. My preference for low speed is simply because my objective is to be faster than walking, and since that's a low bar, I don't even need to take on additional risk of bodily injury.
If a candidate e-scooter can do 40+ kph (25 mph) but can be conveniently set up for just cruising at 15 kph, I would have no problem. But if I have constantly adjust a sensitive throttle on a e-scooter that is eager to bolt away fast, then that's a usability issue for my slow-speed use-case.
Oh I see, yeah thst makes sense, yeah the ones that can do 40kph+ definitely cost a lot more so probably don't need to worry about that as long as ya looking at the more reasonably priced ones. I think your best bet is to go to a shop that sells them and lets you test drive them so you can see if it can get up a 5% hill faster than walking pace and isn't too bulky for the bus.