We’re in the mood for a bit of fun today in the rhyde office, so today we’ll be comparing electric scooters to petrol cars.    

Price   

Let’s start at the beginning: getting one in the first place. Brand new electric scooters will run you anywhere between EUR350 for a basic example to EUR1000+ for a high-end model. The average price of a brand new car is about EUR34.000, and for not the most exciting car either.    

We’re known for our strong attention to detail at rhyde, so we wouldn’t blame you for not noticing the minor difference between these price ranges.    This is where you have ask yourself what the purpose of you owning a car is. 

Are you in need of regularly making long commutes with passenger seats? 

If so, we understand - more power to you. But if you intend to cram yourself into a two seater every morning to drive 5km to a parking lot not even close to where the office is, you might want to give that a second thought.    

Fuel   

 Like owning a pet, if you don’t feed your mode of transportation, its not going to be as fun to have around.    

We don’t have to tell you a car is more fuel inefficient than an electric scooter.  Just look at the two. One weighs 2000 kilos and the other you could do kettlebell swings with for reps (rhyde Sustainable Kettlebells coming soon). The bulk of the energy required by either mode of transport will be used to generate movement. Considering the car weighs 24x more than the average person and the scooter weighs 5x less, a car will use the majority to move itself, and the electric scooter will use its energy to move you. If we consider powering a petrol car with equivalent of 1 kilowatt-hour of energy, and a scooter the same, the scooter would technically travel 133km. A car? 0.8km. That makes the electric scooter well over 100x more efficient than a car is. Is it worth you pumping all that gas?  

Maintenance   

Healthy relationships involve having to put a bit of work in. Healthy vehicles are not much different.    

You’re going to want to keep your electric scooter clean. Keep debris out of the crevices and tires, make sure your bearings are well-lubricated and grease it yourself every 6 months or so. The amount of work is negligible as there are fewer moving parts.   

Cars, in contrast, are a cacophony of moving parts and when one of them go wrong, even trained professionals have a hard time figuring out which it is before they can repair or replace them. Speaking of trained professionals, if you’re not one yourself, you’re going to have to hire one - and they cost more than tap water and a can of WD-40.    

While you can have an electric scooter insured, it’s not obligatory. You’re going to have to insure your car by law. All of this, in Europe, adds up to an average cost of EUR344 a month. At that rate, you could buy a new electric scooter every month (don’t do this, you’d be defeating the purposet). An electric scooter, on the other hand, won’t cost you anything.    

Manufacturing Emissions

We’ve broken down the emissions from producing electric scooters in a previous post, but our estimate provides that it is around 178.08kg of carbon equivalent per scooter. That’s nothing to scoff at, it takes 9 fully grown trees a year to offset that amount of carbon.   

But the average family car? 7000kg of carbon equivalent. If a fully grown tree offsets 21kg a year, that’s 334 trees a car needs. Fun fact, manufacturing electric cars emits an average of 8000kg of carbon equivalent, though over the course of its life it will offset this with it’s lower carbon footprint.     

We could do with better air, and we could do more trees. Fewer cars on the street, doesn’t seem like a bad idea. Zip around town, cutting through traffic, minimizing the negative effects of breathing in car fumes for extended periods of time, while adding nothing to the atmosphere yourself. 

We’re not purposely talking down cars, but when‘s the last time you heard of someone folding up their Corolla and carrying it up to their apartment?   At rhyde, we pride ourselves on selling the most sustainable micro-mobility solution. One that reaps all the benefits of an electric scooter in the city, but offsets the carbon emitted by the mass-manufactured scooter industry - all the while being more affordable. 

We’re your one-stop shop to buy, sell and learn more about sustainable electric scooters, and we’re officially open for business. About rhyde