Using the Segway Ninebot ES2 to illustrate the major features of e-scooters, Derek from Ridepanda provides an overview of what electric scooters are, what their brakes are like, what acceleration is like, what top speed is, and covers range.
In the video there are examples that show what to look for when considering a scooter’s stopping capabilities, acceleration, top-speed, and hill climbing abilities.
Here Is the Video Transcript:
Hey Derek here from Ridepanda and I’m going to talk to you today about electric scooters. So what I have in front of me here is a Segway ninebot ES2 series scooter. What we’re going to cover in this lesson, is we’re going to cover what range is, what speed is, what acceleration is like, and how to use the brakes. There’s two different brakes often on a lot of different electric scooters, but not all electric scooters and the type of brakes change quite a bit.
So that might be important to you if you’re going up and down big hills, if you’re off road, or if you’re different sized. Brake stopping power is ultimately a safety issue. So we want to make sure that, you know, you’re outfitted with the right vehicle.
All right, Derek, here to talk to you about the brakes. So you have a couple of different options on these brakes. You have finger brakes, which are also known as handbrakes.
They come in cable, they come in hydraulic, and they come in by fly by wire, which is a Bluetooth setup. This unit is a mid-level / entry level electric scooter. It has an electric brake and it has a rear foot brake. That’s kind of common what you see on these scooters. And it does a really good job. You can stop in a very short distance. I’ll show you. I’ll do a couple of tests. You can see what it’s like when the electric brake first, then I’ll do the kick brake.
Then I’ll do both at the same time. All right. Here we go. Seven miles an hour applying the brake, so you see it stopped it within a few feet at seven miles an hour. That’s about half of the top speed. Now, we’ll go ahead and do it with the rear foot brake. Seven miles an hour with the rear foot brake, as you may have noticed, it really applied the front suspension. So you got to hang on if you hit that pretty hard next I’m going to do both brakes at the same time.
Alright, eight miles an hour, that’s a pretty fast stop and I didn’t even call it out. All right both brakes. Ready, apply. So as you can see if you are cruising down the road, you can stop pretty quickly.
Hey, all right. So we covered the brakes. Now, I want to talk to you about acceleration, what it’s like on an electric scooter. So obviously, it’s kind of like a car. If you hit the gas as hard as you can it’s going to take off with its full thrust, if you hit the accelerator on an electric scooter, it’s going to take off kind of with its full thrust.
But in a lot of cases they have built in technology to make sure that you’re going to go flying off this thing. It’s not just going to take off like, you know, perhaps maybe a dirt bike from the 80s would have, if you gassed it. So I will show you what it’s like. Let’s go ahead and take a look. All right.
So here we have an acceleration test, one, two miles an hour. Then push the button.
Hey, so we get a lot of people to talk to us about top speed, how fast can it get there? And also what are the top speeds? So there’s a couple of reasons why top speeds are set the way they are. There’s rules and regulations. Also, it’s for your own safety. There are some fast speed, high speed units. The fastest one that we sell goes twenty eight point eight miles per hour.
And it’s pretty fast going twenty eight point eight miles an hour on a two wheel electric scooter. So I’m going to show you what this one does at 15, I’ve got a slight hill going down, I’ll probably go about 17. So you’ll be able to see kind of what that’s like from a first person perspective. Right now we’re at 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, that’s a pretty nice hill going down. Going 17 right now, and the cruise is locked in at 17, so the OEM says 15 is the top speed, but mine for some reason goes 17 a lot.
But as you see, as they go up the hill here, it’s going to slow right down again, it’s because we’re going to go up an incline and maybe it’s going to make it, maybe not, might fizzle out before it gets there. Go, go, go. So you can see the problem with hill climbing if you have a big hill for distance, you know, you’re going to be doing some kicking along the way.
All right, so now we are going to work on the hill climb test here. Now, as I said before, it’s not an offroad vehicle and this is a gravel surface so it’s not going to get the best traction, and its not really designed for this purpose, but what you can see is the hill goes up gradually and you’ll see exactly when the scooter stops. So you can think about that as you’re commuting and going around your neighborhood as to where you can go. I’ll bring it back a little bit so I can get a running start as you would as you’re driving down the scooter path.
That’s it as far as it will go. So your hills are steeper than that, you’re going to need a different type of scooter, and I recommend looking at something with higher wattage than 350 watts. Take a look at the Segway Ninebot Max. That’s a great one to check out. It’s got a little more power as well and has a lot more range. It’s one hundred fifty dollars more than this one and you get a lot more for your buck. So take a look at that. If you have any questions, let us know.
All right. So as I’m cruising around looking for my car in this massive park, I seem to have misplaced it. It’s 62 acres or something like that. Gives me a good point to talk about the range of the vehicle. I have one bar flashing now left, which means I don’t have long and then I will be kicking it. I can turn the regeneration back on when the regeneration will give me some power as I go down the hills.
It’s kind of always on in this one and some scooters don’t even have it. So it is a nice thing to have when you’re in moments like this where, you know, you may run out of juice before you where you want to go, you can always kick it. And so you do have the option if you are going to get stuck. So that is kind of the nice thing about the electric scooter. But on this one’s range, 15 miles, I haven’t gone 15 miles today. But I have been going up and down a lot of hills, which is a lot for this thing to do.
And so it uses up a lot of juice going down these hills right now, going down the hill. So 15 miles range will be 15 miles if you’re using eco mode and you’re going at about half throttle. Other than that, you can expect to get a little less range because you’re using a motor at its full capacity. So when they rate the distance, they rate the distance at about half throttle on a flat surface. Just keep that in mind while you’re looking if range is something that’s really crucial and important to you.
