Friday Notes #27 — On Electric Mobility

Since the beginning of the pandemic, I’m seeing a significant rise in individuals using electric vehicles like [eBikes] or [electric scooters]. It’s a fascinating and cool transportation category. Some electric scooters are a nice piece of engineering and design. Many are quite fast, and the sound coming out of them is acoustically speaking very futuristic. It’s always surprising to see an individual in the bike lane moving as fast as, if not faster, than people using normal bikes. I’m, sometimes, thinking about getting such a scooter because of the coolness factor. I never tried one. My neighbour has two; they are Segway’s model.

I’ve been riding the same bike since 1993. It’s an old mountain bike without any fancy suspension or anything. It is getting a bit tired. I love to ride my bike, but I do it in urban areas to commute or get better physical shape. Getting an electric scooter would be cool, but here is the thing: it won’t improve my physical health. That’s one of my main concerns. Biking is a healthy habit that I wouldn’t like to stop doing. The other thing is that, in urban areas, with lots of traffic lights, I would constantly be starting and stopping, which would make the experience pretty ordinary.

For now, I might end up buying a new bike and wait when biking becomes a challenge for me as I get older.