Marshall Brain's Blog

I have a friend who filled up his gas tank yesterday. Because of the supply disruptions caused by Hurricane Katrina, he paid $3.20 a gallon and it ended up costing about $60. His reaction to that was, "I'm not going to take it anymore!"

What he decided to do is interesting. He decided to go to Pep Boys and buy an Electric Scooter. Since I have a truck, I helped him out by driving him down to pick it up.

This scooter is fascinating. It is made in China, and with a rebate it is currently priced at $299. I had a moped in college, and this scooter is exactly like the moped. It has a 750 watt (about 1 HP) motor that gives it a top speed on level ground of 30 MPH. It has a four 12-volt batteries that give it a range of about 25 miles. It has everything you would expect it to have from a moped standpoint -- head light and tail light, turn signals, horn, rear view mirrors, storage under the seat, etc.

It has two things that you do not get with a moped. First, it is completely silent. It's almost spooky how quiet it is. Going 30 MPH with zero noise is a new experience. It's a lot of fun to ride it. Second, it costs basically zero to operate. Perhaps a penny per mile. With gas at $3.20 a gallon, his car is costing 16 cents a mile just for the gas.

His wife sent him to the grocery store last night for a gallon of milk. The store is two miles away. He found that taking the scooter was quicker than driving because you can park the scooter right next to the store's door, walk in, walk out and you are done.

Here's the funny thing about this scooter. By the time you add in tires, oil changes, gasoline and per-mile depreciation on the car, the average car costs about 30 cents a mile to operate. That means that if he uses this scooter for 1,000 miles, the scooter is free.

Obviously he won't be riding a scooter like this in the winter when it is 20 degrees F outside. He won't be riding it in the rain. He won't use it for any journey longer than about 15 miles round trip. But his office is only 6 miles away so he can ride the scooter to work on nice days. He can use it to go to the store and so on. Let's say it takes him a year to put 2,000 miles on the scooter. And let's say that at the end of the year he throws the scooter away, so he has zero maintenance costs. He has saved 100 gallons of gasoline and he has put $280 in his pocket compared to the cost of driving his car (2,000 miles would cost $600 in the car, while the scooter cost $299 and he spent $20 on electricity for it).

There are 235 million cars in America -- about 1 for every adult. If 235 million people bought a scooter and used it 2,000 miles per year, it would save the nation about 1.25 million barrels of oil per day. That is nearly equivalent to all the oil pumped out of the Gulf of Mexico every day. And the nation would save $280 * 235,000,000 = $65 billion.

See also Cheap electric cars from China.