FIRST PUBLISHED March 2010
The Elecscoot is unusual. Most electric scooters, as you can tell from A to B’s listing, are restricted to 30mph. In a way, that makes sense. Most of them are bought for the same sort of trips as a 50cc moped – a few miles into town and back, all within 30mph speed limits.
But some electric scooters do offer higher speeds – 40, 50, even 60+mph – thanks to beefier motors and a bigger bank of batteries. The idea is to offer the same sort of performance as a 125cc petrol scooter so that you won’t feel embarrassed, vulnerable or unsafe on faster roads.
Finished in UK
The Elecscoot 4 is one of these, with a 4Kw motor and claimed top speed of 60mph. Basically Chinese, it’s part-assembled in Co Durham, with the controller and motor designed in Europe – the wiring loom (and I hope you’re sitting down) is actually Made in England! All this UK labour bumps up the price to £4395 (the all-Chinese Emotive 3, which claims similar performance, costs over £1200 less) but Elecscoot says the result is a more reliable, better quality scooter. And it is backed up with a two-year battery warranty.
On the road
It certainly delivers on performance. Once past 15mph, the speedo needle fairly scampers round the dial, up to an indicated 55mph and close to sixty downhill. So it’ll happily keep up with main road (though not motorway) traffic and will filter to the front of a traffic light queue before zipping safely away.
All this performance uses a lot of energy – what about the all-important range? Elecscoot claims just under 60 miles of mixed riding. That should have been enough for 50-odd miles of rural roads and urban photography, and it was. I did switch onto 30mph eco-mode for a while on the way home, when the amps read out erroneously told me the battery was nearly flat. Back in the garage, the scooter took 9 hours to recharge (they claim 4-5 hours) so by then it certainly was.
Verdict
So yes, you can ride an electric scooter at higher speeds and still get home on a single charge. Whether you think that’s worth the purchase price is something else.
By: Peter Henshaw
Tested: March 2010
