Today was the day that I started giving the Elecscoot 1 electric scooter some proper tests. This involved my own stupidity leading me to have a half mile walk this morning that I wasn’t planning on, but more about that later.
I have been given excellent support and advice from the boys at Elecscoot the Electric scooter supplier and the best advice I have received to date is to top up your scooter’s battery between runs if you can. It is better for the battery if it is only drained significantly every few weeks and topping up is sound advice for any electric scooter or electric motorcycle.
With a quoted range of 40+ miles cruising at 30mph claimed by Elecscoot I decided to ignore their excellent advice and give the E1 some punishment in the name of a fair review. We all know that batteries can vary in performance according to load. My laptop can go between 2 and 5.5 hours away from a plug depending on how I treat it. So I decided to give the bike as much of a drain as possible and see how quickly I could get it to run out. The idea is that this will give a “real world” worst case scenario to work from. Working on being able to achieve a 25% drop on the manufacturers claimed mileage I resorted to the following dirty tricks:
- Commuting at the busiest time on a congested route. This leads to more stop-start riding. Accelerating an electric vehicle drains the battery significantly more than cruising. This is the same for petrol vehicles, hence lower MPG on the “urban cycle”.
- Turning on the main beam headlamp. This is done by some riders for safety and I use it here to put additional strain on the system. Normally I am happy with the E1′s small sidelight for daytime use.
- Loading up with all the gear I can. I took all the gear I could to work as well as the huge lock used to secure the bike at home. More weight added to supplement my 80kg self will decrease range.
- Riding as normally as possible. Some riding techniques are better for range. I rode as I normally would with no regard for battery life.
- Not topping the bike up at all. Running it on a single charge until it looses usable power.
Based on my calculations I would run out of battery on my trip home today, lock the bike up and return in my biodiesel fuelled Renault van to collect the stranded E1.
This was not to be the case and I got a heavy dose of my own medicine.
The E1 made it 29 miles before running out of usable power at Waterloo bridge within sight of my work. I pushed it over the busy bridge and slowly rode it down side streets to work peaking at just under 20mph.
In conclusion there is no doubt the E1 will go 40+ miles in normal conditions. My testing showed that in the worst possible case I could devise it will achieve 29 miles on a charge, lights blazing in awful traffic conditions.
If I have learned anything from this, and I have. It will be to top my scooter up every night and also to take the charger (which is small and light) with you as a matter of course. I am very impressed that the E1 took the worst I could throw at it and this furthers my findings that it is an excellent choice for city commutes. If your commute is under 20miles (round trip) the E1 should not let you down in even the worst situation. The E1 will be resurrected on Monday with a 3 hour charge from one of Westminster council’s “Juice Points“.
