There are many types of wheeled vehicles on the trails. But the one that creates the most facial expressions of joy and exuberance is the scooter. The face of every scooter rider — child and adult alike — reveals pure, rapturous bliss.
According to Google Books, scooters were invented in Germany in 1817. Per Wikipedia, kick scooters have been handmade in industrial urban areas in Europe since the 1920s or earlier, often as play items made for children to roam the streets. In the United States, scooters first enjoyed wide popularity during the Great Depression, when many children built their own scooters from recycled wood. One common home-made version is made by attaching roller skate wheelsets to a board with some kind of handle, usually an old box. A handle could also be constructed with a 2x4 and, possibly, the handlebars were made from splitting the 2x4 or a piece of pipe was strapped to the top of the board for handlebars. Riders can lean to turn or by using a second board connected by a crude pivot. The construction was all wood, with 3–4 inch wheels with steel ball bearings. An additional advantage of this construction was a loud noise, just like from a "real" vehicle. An alternative construction consists of one steel clamp on a roller skate divided into front and rear parts and attached to a wood beam.
Per Prashant Dedhia’s article”The History of Electric Scooters” on LinkedIn, records show that the first patent for an electric personal transport device, an electric motorcycle by chance, was filed in late 1895 by inventor Ogden Bolten Jr. of Ohio. His design is crude by today’s standards, but it was revolutionary at the time of its conception.
During this era in human history, one of the largest trade shows was the Stanley Cycle Show at the Royal Agricultural Hall in London, England. During the 1896 Cycle show, then bicycle manufacturer Humber made the first public display of a commercial electric bike. This ebike was powered by an array of batteries powering the rear wheel, and the invention was crudely controlled by a variable resistance device positioned on the handlebars.
In October of 1911, the still riveting Popular Mechanics ran a piece covering an electric motorcycle and reported it capable of 75 miles range in a single charge, able to reach top speeds of 35 miles per hour and able to be recharged between uses. The specifics of this device aren’t known but illustrate the era in which public awareness of electric transport begins to take form.
The Autoped was an early motor scooter or motorized scooter manufactured by the Autoped Co. of Long Island City, New York from 1915 to 1921.
The driver stood on a platform with 10-inch tires and operated the machine using only the handlebars and steering column, pushing them forward to engage the clutch, using a lever on the handlebar to control the throttle, and pulling the handlebars and column back to disengage the clutch and apply the brake. After riding, the steering column would be folded onto the platform to store the scooter more easily. The engine was an air-cooled, 4-stroke, 155 cc engine over the front wheel. The bike came with a headlamp and tail lamp, a Klaxon horn, and a toolbox. Developed during wartime and gasoline rationing, it was quite efficient, but was not widely distributed. An electric version was also available with a motor on the front wheel.
A patent for the Autoped as a "self-propelled vehicle" was applied for in July 1913 and granted in July 1916. An early description of the Autoped described it as having a hollow steering column that acted as the fuel tank. However, the production version had a fuel tank above the front mudguard. The Autoped went out of production in the United States in 1921, but was manufactured by Krupp in Germany from 1919 to 1922.
In 1936, the Limelette brothers founded an electric motorcycle company in Brussels called Socovel —Société pour l’étude et la Construction de Véhicules Electriques or company for research and manufacture of electric vehicles. They continued production during the German occupation with their permission. Due to fuel rationing, they found some degree of success. But after the war, they switched to conventional models. The electric models remained available until 1948.
Holly Hartman writes in her article “Scads of scooters: Not just for kids any more” in InfoPlease that scooters had a small surge of popularity in the 1950s and were trendy off and on until pretty much being replaced by skateboards in the 1980s.
According to Mike Hanlon’s April 18, 2005 article “The scooter — the short history of a cultural icon” in New Atlas, the scooter was invented in 1947 as a low-cost alternative to the automobile in war-ravaged Europe. It was designed as transport for the masses and caught on so quickly that it became one of the great transport phenomena to sweep the world in the 20th century. The Vespa — which means “wasp” in Italian — was the result of Enrico Piaggio’s determination to create a viable alternative to the automobile for the masses.
A motor scooter was produced, based on a small motorcycle made for parachutists. The prototype, known as the MP 5, was nicknamed “Paperino” — the Italian name for Donald Duck — because of its strange shape, but Piaggio did not like it, and he asked Corradino D’Ascanio to redesign it.
But the aeronautical designer did not like motorcycles. He found them uncomfortable and bulky, with wheels that were difficult to change after a puncture. Worse still, the drive chain made them dirty. However, his aeronautical experience found the answer to every problem. To eliminate the chain he imagined a vehicle with a stress-bearing body and direct mesh; to make it easier to ride, he put the gear lever on the handlebar; to make tire-changing easier he designed not a fork, but a supporting arm similar to an aircraft carriage. Finally, he designed a body that would protect the driver so that he would not get dirty or dishevelled. Decades before the spread of ergonomic studies, the riding position of the Vespa was designed to let you sit comfortably and safely, not balanced dangerously as on a high-wheel motorcycle.
From 1946 to 1965, the year Enrico Piaggio died, 3,350,000 Vespas were manufactured in Italy alone: one for every 50 inhabitants.
During the next several decades the technology of these electric-powered devices continued to evolve and diverge in different ways. The official recognition of Karl Kordesch’s electric motorcycle land speed record of 165 MPH is regarded as a historical landmark of when this alternative powered tech hit mainstream awareness among consumers.
The first electric scooter, available for purchase by consumers, was produced by Peugeot and made available to consumers in 1996. This revolutionary device featured a three horsepower DC motor powered by three nickel-cadmium batteries, providing a total of 18 Volts at 100Ah. This scooter weighed approximately 250 pounds and had a single-charge range of 25 miles.
Wim Ouboter, born in 1960 in Switzerland, invented the kick scooter out of laziness. He states that the way from his apartment to his favorite restaurant, Zurich’s Sternen Grill, was too far to go by foot and yet too close to use a bike. He then invented a two-wheeled scooter for those kinds of distances that could easily be folded and placed in a backpack. He pitched his idea to auto manufacturer Smart, and it was willing to put one scooter in every single car.
Ouboter then tried to find a manufacturer for his innovation, but soon realized that Europe simply was too expensive. In Taiwan, he could convince the owner of a factory to produce the scooter, also because he had proof that Smart liked his idea. Just before the production could start Smart failed the moose test —evasive maneuver test performed to determine how well a certain vehicle evades a suddenly appearing obstacle — and so the project was put on hold, since Smart had to solve that problem.
But Ouboter had another idea: a three-wheeled scooter, called the Kickboard. He teamed up with K2 and presented his idea at the International Sports Fair in Munich in 1998 very successfully. With the earned money, he founded Micro Mobility Systems in 1999 and started producing the two-wheeled scooter, which was an even bigger success. Because of the excessive demand, he allowed his partner in Taiwan to distribute the scooter in the United States with the name Razor for a commission. After having sold about one million Scooters in 2000, the sales decreased rapidly in 2001.
Scooters have become wildly popular for commuting, college students, urban dwellers and even Israeli schoolchildren.
In 2017, scooter-sharing services Bird and Lime introduced dockless electric kick scooters. Since its launch in Santa Monica, California, Bird expanded its services to over 100 cities and reached a valuation of $2 billion in 2018. In the same year, Lime amassed over 11.5 million rides. Lyft and Uber — the largest ride-sharing companies in the U.S. — introduced their own electric scooter sharing services in 2018. By 2030, the global scooter market is expected to be valued at $300-500 billion.
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