Electric Scooters...pick a winner?

October 20, 2007 10:32 AM

Electric scooters---no, not rascals. Help me pick one!

So I've got some money saved up, and I'm intrigued by projects like this one, but I'm having a difficult time finding QUALITY scooters for ~$1500. I've got a 750cc motorcycle, and a car, but I only live about 2.5 miles from work. Unfortunately, it's seriously 2.5 miles downhill, probably a drop of about a thousand feet, which is basically steep hills separated by plateus. The hills are quite steep.

I'm a 180Lb male, and yes it does get snowy here, so I realize riding it every day may not work out. Does anyone have any recommendations for a high quality, powerful scooter and /or a place to get it?

I found a place online one day, but I can't find it again. Let me know your experiences, things to avoid, etc.

posted by TomMelee to travel & transportation (3 answers total)

Oh, crud. I forgot to add that I'd like to be able to reach at least 40mpg and ideally go fairly far on a charge (30-50 miles.) I don't care about panniers and luggage racks, etc.
posted by TomMelee at 10:33 AM on October 20, 2007

I'm guessing that since you're talking electric, you meant 40mph, and not 40 mpg.

How handy are you with your motorcycle? If you wanted an electric alternative, you could certainly try your hand at building an El Ninja.

If you're more excited about the scooter aspect of it, it'd be pretty easy to do - you could apply the aspects of El Ninja to a scooter body. Buy an old junker (craigslist or scoot.net), buy a battery pack, a dc controller, and a motor, and mount it all on the scooter. You're dealing with a lot less weight, so you should be able to do a decent distance at a decent speed on about the right number of batteries that would fit on a scooter. I spent a while looking at all of it, and I'm pretty sure that you could build your own for less than $1K, depending on how cheaply you got the old junker scoot.

If you wanted to buy something, I was going to recommend Skooter Commuter , but it appears that they closed a few weeks ago. There are still some good links on their webpage, though. There's also 2 different models of scooter available at Electric Motorsport. They're both about $2500, though.
posted by god hates math at 10:46 AM on October 20, 2007

Oops, yea, 40mph. That looks like a pretty fun build there @ El Ninja, I'm going to look into that further. Thanks! Looking for more suggestions!
posted by TomMelee at 11:08 AM on October 20, 2007