Electric Scooters Aren't Quite as Climate-Friendly as We Thought (theverge.com) 153
Electric scooter companies like to tout their green credentials, frequently reminding riders that every two-wheeled trip they take can help reduce carbon emissions and fight climate change -- but the truth is much more complicated. From a report: A new study from North Carolina State University found that shared e-scooters may be more environmentally friendly than most cars, but they can be less green than several other options, including bicycles, walking, and certain modes of public transportation. Riders tend to think they're making the right move by hopping on a scooter that's electric and thus carbon-free. But what they don't see are all of the emissions that are produced by the manufacturing, transportation, maintenance, and upkeep of dockless scooters. If you only think about the segment of the life cycle you can see, which would be standing on the scooter where there's no tailpipe, it's easy to make that assumption," said Jeremiah Johnson, corresponding author of the study and an associate professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering at NC State. "But if you take a step back, you can see all the other things that are a bit hidden in the process."
Really? (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
Dude, like, I'm from Oregon and even I can't imagine smoking that much.
It would be like The Great Smokeoff [youtube.com] by Shel Silverstein.
Re: The Three Stooges (Score:2)
Every time the "editors" post a new "story," they pass around the joint and take another toke. I'm not even joking. On Friday, it is pot potpourri where the ingestion method of personal choice is encouraged.
You can't tell stoned from stupid??
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Came here for this. And it's the first post!
Perhaps the worst part of the current scooter model is they're being treated as practically disposable.
They talk about the lifecyle, but the itemization was all about the production; did they look at how long the average unit operates, and how its disposed of?
Re:Really? (Score:5, Informative)
The cities I've been in which have scooters have apparently no marketing efforts to even claim they are green! Nobody is using them because they think they're environmentally friendly. They're using them because they're handy.
I've watched middle school kids pile on 2-3 to a scooter and bomb around. I've seen young 20-somethings riding in swarms doing pub crawls. Teens obviously headed to a sporting event with all their gear.
None of those people were riding because of the environment. None of them were even THINKING about the environment. The only people who "thought" that scooters were green were the marketing team for the scooters and the handful of local officials bribed to let them operate in the area. Nobody else was even exposed to that idea!
The only way to claim that they are environmentally friendly is to prove that they're replacing petroleum-based transportation AND are greener than that. If you can't do one of those, there can't be a claim of greeness. If you're just replacing walking with a disposable electric vehicle, that's sure as hell not green.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Informative)
They aren't replacing any petroleum-based transportation. They're adding energy consumption for people who used to be walking. It's a "well, I can walk down to the ballgame from here or I can ride that scooter". "Hey, it's one of those scooters, let's ride it around for a few minutes". "It's better than walking, come on, we'll get there much faster".
People just happen by these things as an unscripted opportunity to use electricity that they weren't using before. Nobody depends on these things for rides anywhere because there's no way to know where one will be at any particular moment. You can't depend on one being available and you can't depend on a return trip either.
It's just a little mobile box on the street for people to stick $1 bills in, which are given to a company that will be out of business in a year.
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which are given to a company that will be out of business in a year.
That's way too optimistic. These scooter companies are making tons of money. Unless they are regulated out of business, welcome to the new look of modern cities.
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Really?: 10+ people a day wind up in the local ICU due to scooter collisions
Since only a small percentage of the people who enter the ER ever end up in the ICU, are there hundreds of people coming to this hospital's ER due to scooter collisions every day?
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Yes, but 10 a day in one facility? That's pretty hard to believe. Most scooter accidents are going to be a broken bone or less -- so the vast majority of them, even if the injured party bothered to go to the ER, would never end up in the ICU.
The claim that this one facility has 10+ ICU admissions a day due to scooter accidents just doesn't pass the sniff test. That would be, for just this one facility, 3,650+ very serious injuries a year. Multiply that by many tens (assuming the facility in question is one
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Fish actually need bicycles.
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No operators on board since the system is fully automated. Air conditioning in summer, same as the buses, heated i
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You're much to optimistic about how environmentally friendly that light rail system will be. That said, it has much to be said for it. It's worth remembering that light rail needs dense urban areas to be a good choice, and that "fast distant travel for commuters" must be a different system than "local transport with lots of stops". Both are valid choices, and for a really dense urban area you should have both. Also both work best with separated grade...but that's a lot more difficult for the local trans
For fuck sake! (Score:5, Insightful)
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The question is: do most people take eletric scooter instead of bicycle/walking or instead of car?
Re:For fuck sake! (Score:5, Informative)
Hi there! I'm a sustainable transportation professional. Our research has shown that electric scooters replace bicycle and walking trips 75% of the time and transit trips about 22% of the time. 3% of trips would have otherwise been taken by automobile.
Also, the vast majority of electric scootershare trips are 1 mile in distance or shorter. That's a leisurely 20-minute walk or 5 minute bike ride.
The greatest example of showing just how ready people are to give up walking for PAID scooter rides is to look at areas where automobiles are forbidden (central college campus cores) and see how electric scooters have taken hold. Portland State University and UCLA are great examples of people existing on wonderfully walkable campuses and still being willing to shell out money to take a scooter to make a trip they'd normally walk on foot.
Re:For fuck sake! (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, the vast majority of electric scootershare trips are 1 mile in distance or shorter. That's a leisurely 20-minute walk or 5 minute bike ride.
That's my problem with this whole scooter movement (which are displacing bike-share bikes). A scooter is generally only tenable over walking distances, and I'd rather just walk those distances.
For longer distance trips, I want to use a bike, but bikes are getting hard to find - I used to ride a bike share bike the 3 miles from my bus stop to home (in the mornings there's a bus that stops a few blocks from home, so I only need to ride one way. Some of the route is on roads where I wouldn't want to ride a scooter.
The bike share was a great solution, but now there are rarely any bikes around (but scooters are common) and I don't always feel like (or have the time) to walk an hour to get home, so I generally drive to the bus stop (or all the way to work, which is faster and more convenient once I'm already in my car). I'd bike to the bus stop on my own bike in the mornings, but there's no secure bike parking and I got tired of replacing parts on my bike.
I hope the scooters are just a fad and they bring back the bikes.
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It only takes one pothole or texting driver to give you a permanent set of wheels, but I don't think that a wheelchair is what people aspire to.
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The helmet comes with the scooter as part of the "rental" in parts of the world with helmet laws.
Hire the scooter, find the needed helmet as part of the rental "price".
Return the scooter, return the helmet..
Next person finds the scooter and helmet waiting at the expected location...
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Next person finds the scooter and helmet waiting at the expected location...
What if your head doesn't fit ?
head-size: two strategy (Score:2)
i've seen two strategies deployed here around (in CH):
bicycles and e-bikes:
adjustable one-size-fit-all. A large-ish helmet that can be tighened down to small size (some even aren't a single hard body helemet, but a bunch of lamelles that come closer together when tighened and can form a smaller helmet).
e-motorscooters:
the luggage compartment is large enough and comes with two helmets of two different sizes.
in practice, I have a slightly large-ish head and don't necessarily fit inside the one-size-fits-alls
not every part of the world (Score:2)
Switzerland here:
free floating rental bicycles, e-bikes and e-motorscooters (i.e. vehicles with some luggage space) come with helmets.
But the couple of e-scooters I've seen (circ, tier and lime for short while) and at least one multi-docked bicycle (publipike) is bring your own.
on the other hand, biking is pretty popular here around, so most people already own a helmet anyway.
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Hi there! I'm a sustainable transportation professional. Our research has shown that electric scooters replace bicycle and walking trips 75% of the time and transit trips about 22% of the time. 3% of trips would have otherwise been taken by automobile.
Also, the vast majority of electric scootershare trips are 1 mile in distance or shorter. That's a leisurely 20-minute walk or 5 minute bike ride.
The greatest example of showing just how ready people are to give up walking for PAID scooter rides is to look at areas where automobiles are forbidden (central college campus cores) and see how electric scooters have taken hold. Portland State University and UCLA are great examples of people existing on wonderfully walkable campuses and still being willing to shell out money to take a scooter to make a trip they'd normally walk on foot.
Afaik walking produces an excess of CO2 while a scooter ride in theory could go to zero. I'm not at all surprised that people take scooters, it's faster and they believe they have better things to do.
I don't doubt your numbers as such, I'm just curiously asking if they are calculated on the proposition of going from A to B, or if not going from A to B and as an alternative going A to C is included? I'm asking because I find that people would rather take a car to a shopping mall outside of the city than go i
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PSU campus is in downtown Portland, has transit (bus and train) running through the middle, and the pedestrian areas are mostly open spaces with streets on the sides that are also known as "parks."
There is basically no free parking anywhere in downtown Portland. So that's the reason the scooters are popular. It isn't just about if automobiles are "forbidden," it is more complicated than that. A lot of these students drove from their home to a suburban transit "Park and Ride" with free parking, took a train
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In the PSU case, prior to scooter, transit riders and those relative few that would drive in and park at the parking garages and then switch to pedestrian travel to complete their trip have made a major switch. They've exchanged their pedestrian transportation with scooter transportation. This is evident in the sheer number of scooters found in the parking structures.
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Also, the vast majority of electric scootershare trips are 1 mile in distance or shorter.
Once you pass 3 miles, it's pretty much better to just take Uber.
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I took a taxi yesterday for a 45 minute trip to avoid a 10 minute walk to the train and another 5 minutes at the destination. (I had luggage and was sick...) If there was a reasonable (and safe) means to overcome the 10 minutes in the heat with luggage, I could have avoided the emissions of the taxi (and the extra road congestion). Point being that even a 1/2 mile trip by a scooter can help in the bigger picture.
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In fairness, it was 36C outside; the backpack works well, but I had another frontpack... for my carry-on stuff. Have walked much more than that on the difficult sidewalks of Bangkok. Normally, we do it and don’t complain. Sadly, getting to the train by car is about half the journey time as to the airport due to one way streets and traffic.
Walking not all that green or good for the planet! (Score:2, Funny)
I think you're being completely irresponsible for suggesting that people walk. Seriously, when you think of:
- The unnecessary greenhouse gasses produced to make the unsightly concrete/asphalt you are walking on
- The disgusting oil used to make your shoes that is callously pulled from Mother Earth which is then rendered in unspeakable chemical processes
- The innocent child labour that made your socks
- The amazing bugs you walk on, their early demise is going to result in fewer offspring which are food for t
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This.
What are all you people doing out of your containment pods [rampages.us] in the first place? High density urban housing is the wave of the future.
Do you see the irony in this reply? (Score:2)
I don't normally reply to ACs, but how can you have an honest debate when you don't know who the person is you're talking to?
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But it's neither greener nor faster than cycling. I get your sentiment that we shouldn't abandon something if it isn't perfect, but there are a shitload of better options available.
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I enjoy cycling and, for multiple years, it was my primary form of transportation. I used my bike to get to work, to run errands, all sorts of things. Let me tell you, however, it was a terrible mode of transportation. I used my bike quite a bit and for long trips. That meant, especially in warm weather, I needed to wear one set of clothing and then change into another set of clothing where I was going. Preferably, I would find a place to shower as I'd be all sweaty upon arrival. Let me tell you, the
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Simple trick is to bike a bit slower so you don't get sweaty, and you don't have to change clothes.
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Why make it difficult on yourself? You don't need to wear cleats on any bike trip that you would otherwise replace with a scooter. Also if you don't race like a lunatic you don't get sweaty.
I cycle every day to work. I do it in the middle of winter with snow on the road, I do it in the middle of summer, in summer I use a shower at work which is perfectly fine.
You have your bike vandalised? Do you live in South Africa?
training (Score:2)
as somebody whose also bikes to come snow or sun, let me tell you:
you're not actually getting less sweaty because you aren't racing.
you're getting less sweaty because you do it every single day, thus you get training, your body adapts to the effort.
If you took a none-biking pal on the same trip, they'd be soaked in sweat and dead tired.
Effort adaptation (Score:2)
Strange, I thought people got sweaty when they were hot.
Yup. Exactly. Totally true. (And they also "feel tired" when they overheat, too).
And people tend to get hot when they put lots of physical effort into something.
Not quite exactly.
"Put lots of physical effort"
Subjectively yes. In "The more you push yourself" definition, yes.
Objectively no. The heat you'll feel isn't a *direct* sensation of the exact number of watts you put out.
The more you practice a sport, the more your body adapts, the more the same (objective) level of effort seems (subjectively) trivial.
(e.g.: you'll build more blood vessels increasing the blood flow in and out of m
RTFS (Score:2)
I've found that a dead giveaway for someone closed to alternate viewpoints and objective discussion is that they latch on to the one aspect of a statement which seems most ridiculous, and ignore everything else that is much more reasonable.
Walking is probably not the most efficient either. The efficiency of
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I've always wondered what mode of transport actually represents the lowest overall energy consumption (for a given trip distance). So I welcome research like this.
I believe cycling is actually incredibly efficient. More efficient than walking (which is why you can cycle further than you can talk in a day).
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Let's stop with this "it's not perfect, so it's bad" shit!
Except it is bad. It's actually creating more waste, emissions than if they didn't exist at all.
This is a core issue of combating climate change. A whole lot of snakeoil being peddled as 'silver bullets' that will fix everything, but they do absolutely nothing to address the problem, and usually just add to it, not remove. So yeah, we do need to be calling out the BS, especially when the BS is making the problem even worse.
Whole lot of greedy people out there who don't care about climate change, but they
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Let's stop with this "it's not perfect, so it's bad" shit! Yes it's greener to fucking walk, but it will take you half a day to get there!
If it takes all day walking, it will take more than half the dayt on an electric scooter. They are not exactly fast... So no that is not valid comparison.
Less green than walking (Score:1)
Who could have guessed that an electric scooter was less green than walking.
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common sense...lie(spin) (Score:1)
I am shocked that anyone is surprised that using a scooter is less environmentally friendly than walking or cycling.
The lie(spin) is that scooters are polluters like cars. When it's comparing m&m's to celary or igloos to skyscrapers
Cars are the problem...and people really like their cars.
Always about the 'dockless scooter services'... (Score:2)
Still a net gain (Score:1)
Where I found scooters most useful the times I've used them, were replacing 15-20 minute walks to places. Things that would have been very walkable, but because of time or weather constraints were not practical...
Those are exactly the kind of trips that Uber and Lyft are very useful for, so in the end it meant a reduction in cars used for those short trips. On a wider scale I'm sure that has a pretty decent impact.
City buses are nice and I've done a lot of public transport, but even there sometimes you ar
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If you can walk in 15 minutes, you can do it in 5 by bike
The problem is several fold
1) Theft. I bought a nice new bike. It was stolen within a week. So now you have to find a place to lock and be willing to risk your bike. Scooters are readily packable and can be carried with you to your desk or onto public transit.
2) Clothing. Most bicycles have exposed chains which means managing long pants and jeans are uncomfortable to ride in. Scooters maintain the existing upright standing position so no clothing accommodations are required.
3) Sweat. Even electric bike
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Look for pictures of people biking in Amsterdam or Copenhagen to see how people work around all of your 4 problems.
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as opposed to the computer/phone you used to type that
it was handcrafted from your feces in your backyard
right?
Yeah, what news (Score:2)
Shitty scooters which break quickly and runs on power isn't the best for environment?!
WOW!
Still Over All better (Score:1)
Walking (Score:2)
Holyshit, something is less environmentally friendly than WALKING!? Crap... Time to give up... literally everything else ever invented.
What a stupid premise (Score:2)
Of course these things aren’t environmentally friendly. I see them all over - they’re generally not being used to replace car trips... they’re being used to replace walking.
If scooter trips replaced car trips, ok (Score:4, Informative)
Correction (Score:1)
As YOU thought.
Fear Mongering (Score:1)
We love our cars, and have built an infrastructure around them. We were sold on the idea, that we can just pop on our car, and drive anywhere in the US without any notice. A paradine of freedom!
We forget we are driving on a road filled with police who's main job is to catch us breaking any traffic law, which we will get a fine, or arrested for. (While we are on the Road our Freedom Loving nation is a police state)
While we could just getup and go anywhere. We would normally need to make sure our car is in
Religious Environmentalists must atone (Score:2)
If you're a religious environmentalist, you should know that your electric scooter is sinful. You tried to avoid environmental sins, but you can't transport yourself or anything else cleanly. You must atone for your transportation sins.
Or you could give that up and just live your life. No need to apologize for being a normal person doing normal person things. Only religious environmentalists must atone.
Compare Fair ! (Score:1)
Summary is wrong (Score:2)
The study [iop.org] didn't analyze the energy cost of walking. It just mentions it as a mode of transpiration that scooters are replacing. The transport modes it compared to rental scooters are: personal automobiles, rental bicycles, electric mopeds, buses with higher ridership, electric bicycles, pedal bicycles, and a combination of these weighted to reflect average American
Recharging and redistributing... (Score:2)
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A French company can convert an existing US truck to electric?
A US company can sell a much better gas powered truck?
Wait for the US to ramp up the design of next gen electric trucks.
My friend worked as a "juicer" (Score:2)
I don't think a lot of scooter users are aware of how the charging process works for these things. They pay people to drive all over town every night, trying to locate the scooters wherever they were last left, to pick them up in a truck or van and take a group of them back home, where they can be plugged in and recharged overnight. Then they're expected to drive them back out and drop them off before 7AM, in order to get paid.
A friend of mine did this for a while, and there's not much "Green" and eco-frien
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If these scooters were designed so they all had to be returned to one of a number of strategically placed charging docks when people were done with them
That severely reduces the utility and usability of the scooters.
Summary (Score:2)
Hidden costs (Score:2)
But what they don't see are all of the emissions that are produced by the manufacturing, transportation, maintenance, and upkeep of dockless scooters. If you only think about the segment of the life cycle you can see, which would be standing on the scooter where there's no tailpipe, it's easy to make that assumption," said Jeremiah Johnson, corresponding author of the study and an associate professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering at NC State. "But if you take a step back, you can see all the other things that are a bit hidden in the process."
Of course, when I walk I burn calories which took tractors, trucks, fertilizer, and who knows what other CO2-emitting activities to make happen. Oh, and I exhale more. I'm pretty sure walking still winds up emitting less CO2 but we gotta make sure we look at what's seen and unseen.
And the forgot about 2 other things (Score:2)
Correct "manufacturing, transportation, maintenance, and upkeep" but there is battery creation and disposal that are extremely harsh on the environment. Where to you think all those replacement batteries come from? and where do they depose of them? Did they include the diesel truck and gasoline generator they used to maintenance them? Next, much of the electricity used to charge them is produced by fossil fuels so you did really fix anything and in some cases made it worse.
There are a lot of studies coming
Who is we? (Score:1)
Gadgets (Score:2)
OK, so slap on huge carbon taxes (Score:2)
If they're such carbon emitters, how about a massive, psycho, $1000/tonne carbon tax on them then?
$1/kg.
$0.20 per scooter-kilometre.
About $0.30 per average ride.
Or in short, a huge carbon tax that nobody would seriously put forward would STILL not be enough to dissuade most people from continuing to use them. Maybe pick another carbon issue.
Public transit pollutes a lot (Score:2)
When people say public transit, the vast majority of the time it's referring to buses. The vast majority of buses are dirty diesel guzzling pollution spewers. Buses are extremely wasteful unless they're packed to the gills. Most of the time I see buses they're less than 1/4 full. They don't save any emissions compared to automobiles in those cases.
While I'm no fan of e-scooters, they do help reduce emissions to some degree. They're not zero-emissions, but neither are cars or buses. The whole manufactu
Wall-E predicted this. :) (Score:1)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
The truth (Score:2)
is always more complicated.
"Nobody knew health care could be so complicated."
"The truth hurts because the truth is all there is."
My personal scooter has killed my cycling (Score:2)
*Total* carbon footprint is the thing. (Score:1)