Are rental scooters a SCAM?

today we're talking rental scooters [Music] hello electro heads after the much anticipated wait after nearly a year of the first rental trials hitting the uk we finally have scooters in london oh yes so today we're just going to see what's on offer and give a very candid review now it needs to be noted that rental scooters currently are the only way that you can get around on public roads legally with electric scooters privately owned unfortunately due to some really dumb law from 1853 means that you can only ride privately owned scooters currently on private land with the owners permission speaking of which actually uh at the time that these rental trials got launched in london we did notice a really big crackdown happening on privately owned electric scooters electric skateboards electric unicycles electric bikes i wonder if there's any correlation between the two it's time for myself and mojo behind the camera to experience what we have on offer today okay before we take out one of these screws i'm just going to quickly run you through some points and key facts about these it is a year-long trial they are available to ride to 18 years old plus and you have to have a driving license or a provisional driving licence currently the electric scooters are only available in canary wharf in ealing richmond fulham kensington and chelsea and hammersmith so not too many areas currently but there are three more boroughs being added to that list come july next month southwark lambuth and westminster as well as city of london of course we always advise to wear a helmet when riding an electric scooter and also when you are riding one they are limited to 12.5 miles per hour which kind of slow right let's rent one i'm going to start with dots so why dot because i haven't ridden a dot before it's not just because you like blue why do you like blue don't i i think personally as a bit of a racer i like the lowered center of gravity on the lime and the dutch style handlebars so that would be my choice you can see all the red areas are where you can't take your electric scooter so interestingly just around the corner oh a park so parks are a red zone because it's a no-go area because electric scooters shouldn't be ridden on public walkways richmond park and kensington gardens have actually banned electric scooters even though cars can go through those parts oh so i've got to do a safety quiz i've just finished the three question quiz which is uh pretty appalling actually doc come on put in my driving license eight hours later send to your face oh gotta take a picture of myself one pound to unlock and then it's 15 pence per minute so let's go for a little ride and then i think we should talk a bit more about costs [Music] it just feels too slow i feel the pressure that the bus is just creeping behind me yeah and it's just like you feel like a nuisance you don't feel safe [Music] this park wasn't on the red zone so i'm just going to ride the scooter around and just see how it handles bit of extreme maneuvering [Music] needs a bit more ground clearance yeah that had that's got power like it felt nice around there there was enough ground clearance for me to go over a ramp um definitely like wouldn't drop in on this ramp with it do you think that's fair when you do that do you think it's not double standards that you can rent one but you can't ride a private one they're legal there's the the legal under the fact that uh like a large company has got insurance on a mass for a vehicle which i've never heard of that been done before can you please regulate them activity yeah yeah i think like like the poorer portion of society who can afford 250 quid to commute covered safe and use like women can commute safely and not feel threatened because there are 15 miles an hour and they have a weapon i hope you understand the perspective that that's enabling people to live their life safely fair yeah yeah thank you thank you well i tried to get my point across there i did get a bit nervous because you didn't get the notice when you're up with the police just like that but um yeah i mean they're they say as it is that's the law that is the law um and there's nothing you can really do about that uh until you know regulation comes in but the points i made women feel safe when they ride these things because they move faster you get less covered because you're not on a bus or a train which is like really packed right now so i just hope that they can like legislate we have found the parking spot let's get rid of this thing and ride got it take a photo of the area if you haven't parked properly we may have to charge you a relocation fee that's fine send okay so my travel time interestingly 35 minutes 22 seconds to be precise total six pounds 30. i mean that's a lot of money actually so quickly i'm just going to recap on my experience with the dot scooter now i have ridden a lime scooter previously you've seen those videos like milton keynes which is popping up here the dot scooter itself is actually higher the platform suspension isn't as good actually uh so at the moment i'm more impressed with the lime scooter hi guys hello before you spend money on a scooter i was just wondering would you be able to quickly talk to me about what you think of these scooters i i have used it oh so is this your first time oh interesting no they're not trash they're they're good they're good they're good like in other countries in europe as well where they sort of exist like it's quite good and when i've used it it's fun and super convenient the cost like probably not really that much in terms of spending that versus like 300 to 100 pounds for your own one so we've just pulled up and um this is one of the reasons why maybe rental scooters aren't the best thing that we should be having right now is because just look at the mess i know it's all in the parking bay but doesn't it look awful now they say that if you do see scooters falling over but you should pick them up so moja i'm gonna pick all these scooters up [Music] you wouldn't get this if you had privately owned scooters just saying [Music] instantly being on this lime scooter in comparison to the dot it is so much better it's one pence more and i will tell you why it is worth that extra one pence the platform is way lower and it just makes it feel far more like dynamic when it's on the road and also the handlebars are bigger you feel a bit more stable on the roads and also the suspension is so good it's so cushy [Music] not working myself and this guy here we've just rocked up at the same time trying to park our lime scooters and lime isn't recognizing it as a place that we can park even though i don't if you can clearly read is not for lime scooters but that's absolutely not clear we paused just for a little stop off because the next point i want to make is a bit of a big one and who these electric scooters are really for now as you can see behind me there are lots of people eating drinking and living that kind of tourist life and i think that is what these rental scooters are aimed at the reason that these electric scooters have the parking bays is obviously because of people parking in the wrong place but actually what that does mean is that they become less convenient we just need to make these things at least be able to go into our homes or we just need to legalize privately owned electric scooters and i think it's the latter [Music] lime xiaomi lime challenge well that's your private one right yeah this is my private one all right no police trying to arrest you on that no no i know you know if they do um just keep going yeah so i have to stop for the police the thing is because like you guys are saying that one is definitely a better scooter imagine if you could take that home and use it like a privately owned scooter wouldn't that be great you'd probably make more money like that as well i guess there is a convenience of having them on every street corner you know you need to get home late night grab one of these the only thing i would say is the driver's license i don't know why you need a driver's license i mean i've been able to drive this and i've never driven a car yeah so other than that yeah i'm probably you know what i mean have rentals have privately owned i mean there's no need to make it inconvenience i'd say there probably are problems with them being privately owned but they'll be better in instead of outlawing them put money into education why these are problems [Music] okay it's happened again locking is disabled in this zone check the map to see where you can lock i i don't understand what is going on this is the second time it's happened with lime specifically lime is having some serious issues today i'm just standing here like a lemon telling lime hey when life gives you lemonade oh no when life gives you lemons you make lemonade when life gives you limes you get no time when life gives you lemons just take the lemons and fail well that is the end of our day of exploration discovery education and i think it is safe to say we need to be making a huge shift together away from car journeys for example back in 2019 80 million cars were produced globally there are more cars being produced than people we need to get away from cars we need to find better solutions scooters are better solutions these rental scooters there's quite a lot that is wrong with them as we've seen today i get why they're here i get why they're being child because the government wants to get data but surely we should just be getting an app that we can give to privately owned electric scooter riders and that they can track their data get amnesty until there is a law passed that means that we can ride scooters on the roads whether they be private or rental all right guys well that is all from us thank you so much for watching we had a great day out yep and please do make sure to like and subscribe and we'll see you soon bye [Music] you

Channel: Electroheads

Views: 36,121

Keywords: Electroheads, Electric Vehicles, EV, electric skateboards, esk8, ebikes, electric bikes, electric scooters

Id: nw7gB6mZ0V4

Length: 11min 38sec (698 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 01 2021