Two Nifty New Scooters–Why Don’t Americans Like These Things?

At the Paris Motor Show this week, both BMW’s Mini subsidiary and Daimler’s Smart subsidiary showed new electric scooters, or e-scooters as some are calling them. Meanwhile, Honda is expected to introduce one in Japan later this year, and Peugeot plans one for 2011. Scooters sound like a more sensible, cheaper way into the new era of electric vehicles than cars. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the lithium ion battery for a scooter costs just $2000, while an electric car battery can run upwards of $16,000.

Judging from the pictures, the new Mini and Smart e-scooters look way cool–a kind of Jetson Vespa. You plug them into any normal AC outlet for four or so hours, which gives you enough juice to go around 60 miles–plenty of range for the kind of city driving these things are made for. No word so far on expected price.

I have never understood why scooters never caught on in major U.S. cities the way they have in Europe. Certainly a big metropolis like New York would seem as ripe for a scooter invasion as the cities of Europe, where a cluster of them precedes cars at every red light. Maybe more so, since the special indignity of the New York subway system constitutes an even more compelling argument in their favor. Maybe it’s just the greater European tolerance for two-wheel vehicles in general. You see lot more people on bicycles here too, including commuters off to work and housewives doing the daily shopping. I use a dinky little 50cc Peugeot scooter as my basic transportation in Paris–you don’t even need a license to own one– and it gets me around town much faster than any other kind of public or private transportation. A trip that takes me half an hour on the Paris metro takes ten minutes by scooter. It’s also more fun than a barrel of monkeys, as the Beach Boys pointed out some time ago in “Little Honda.” Wet Paris winters do present a challenge, however.

Source: forbes.com