Electric scooters are the environmentally friendly choice for urban travel because they’re incredibly energy efficient. E-scooters use electric motors, which convert electrical energy into motion with much less waste compared to internal combustion engines, which lose a significant amount of energy as heat and sound. Because e-scooters are designed for short trips, they don't use a lot of energy per mile, which makes them an energy-efficient option for short trips around town.
Many e-scooters also use regenerative braking systems, which capture the energy normally lost during braking and store it in the scooter's battery for later use. This helps to improve the overall efficiency of the scooter and extends its range between charges. They also use less energy per km than a car, which makes them more cost-effective.
Efficiency is also built into the scooter’s design. Unlike cars, which can waste a lot of energy due to their size and weight, electric scooters are lightweight and highly manoeuvrable, which means less energy is required to get them moving. E-scooters also have smaller, lighter wheels than cars, which results in lower rolling resistance and less energy being lost as heat, which makes them more efficient than cars or motorcycles for short trips.
To see how different means of transportation compare in terms of energy consumption, check out this infographic from Levi Tillemann and Lassor Feasley’s Wired.com article, Let's Count the Ways E-Scooters Could Save the City. Most of a car’s energy is used to move the vehicle and one-kilowatt hour of energy carries a gasoline-powered car a little less than a mile. An electric scooter can travel more than 80 miles on the same amount of energy. That’s pretty efficient. And according to Tillemann and Feasley, “a human would burn about nine times as much energy walking and about four times as much energy bicycling the same distance.”
