(BretCahill) may have said:Today NPR jumped onto the 2 wheel bandwagon with a piece on the Eagle conversion kit.
250 mpg certainly has great appeal.
My first concern was, is this "development" going to drown out the afterburners from the local air
nat'l guard?
My cycling friendly city is starting to remind me of a land based version of the scene from the
Cold War era B movie _The Russians Are Coming_ where the Americans are floating everything they
muster to escort their Russian submariner friends out to sea. Row boats, leaky canoes, rafts, etc.
On one hand it's undeniably charming. On the other the noise is driving me crazy.
Next kid who pulls up in a motor scooter drowning out my pontifications to cycling friends is going
to get chased down and will have his spark plug confiscated.
Personally, I'm not worried too much.
First, I will note that a number of years ago, there was a brief flurry of appearance of new forms
of bicycle assist motor (largely using a rubber wheel that bore on a tire to transfer power, not too
efficiently in many cases) which was swiftly met with a flurry of restrictive legislation in many
states. Later, mopeds appeared to slip under the radar, but their popularity was very short-lived. I
fully expect the current proliferation of motorized scooters to have the same effect in the very
near future as these devices move from the realm of interesting new toy to hazard and threat to
traffic. The first thing that I hope to see will be a requirement (where one does not already exist)
that operators possess a valid driver's license, or that operators at least be of an age which would
allow them to have a driver's license.
The down side, of course, is that this will probably spill over, as it too often does, into a mania
for regulating related devices. Be on guard.
Second, however, I have seen far fewer of these scooters showing up on the streets than I had
expected. I've seen prices falling simultaneous with the units showing up for sale outside such
mobility-oriented businesses as a fortune teller, a VCR repair shop, a couple of second-hand
furniture stores, an ice house[1], and a non-chain convenience store best known for the fact that it
carries every form of magazine sold in an opaque plastic bag. This does not bespeak a product that's
in high demand; the importers seem to be dumping units to any potential outlet indiscriminately.
Third, related to the issue above, even though there seems to be a lot of sales activity, many of
the scooters apparently don't stay in use for long. One of them recently popped up in the hands of
someone down the street; it vanished from view fairly quickly. Scuttlebutt is that the beast was
about as durable as chocolate shoelaces, and had a mechanical failure for which no parts were
available. Many, if not most, of these scooters are being imported by people with neither the intent
nor the resources to provide product support of any kind; the manufacturers are typically in China,
and well out of reach for spare parts purposes. Once the word gets around that they're throwaway
units, their appeal should drop considerably. This may already be taking place; it would go a long
way toward explaining both the absurd selling practices and the presence of large numbers of
derelict, stripped units in the back of a couple of import warehouses where I get some of the stuff
that I re-sell myself. (I've been offered these scooters at some very attractive prices, by the way,
but have had no urge to get involved with them at all.)
Last but not least, in areas with EPA air quality issues, the two-cycle-engine forms may run afoul
of air pollution regulations in any event. The electrics may slip under the radar, but those tend to
be such short-duration units that I doubt they'll be any more viable than the Segway in the long
run, if for a different set of reasons.
In other words, I don't think the current scooter craze is going to take hold as strongly as might
be feared, I doubt that it will last, and the reputations of the devices themselves will serve to
bring about a loss of interest in them.
Bicycle usage, meanwhile, seems to be slowly but steadily on the rise.
[1] For those unfamiliar with the term "ice house" as used in Texas: An establishment dedicated to
facilitating the consumption of alcoholic beverages without actually selling them or having a
liquor license; they sell snacks, buckets of ice and "setups", but you bring your own booze.
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