AD&P; > December 2015 > TALK > On Mobility > abovecar@gmail.com
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ably most conveniently executed
in a shared car rather than using a
ride-sharing service.
Scoot Networks is a growing new
mobility start-up that currently
ofers 250 shared electric (Vespa-
type) scooters in San Francisco, the
same city Uber and Lyft launched
in. These scooters are available for
one-way trips across a large zone
and have a 30-mph top speed. The
user doesn't need a motorcycle
license, and Scoot provides a
helmet. The scooters are available
for as low as $2 for each half-
hour. While the market for Scoot
is growing, we should remember
these vehicles make users more
vulnerable to personal injury and
bad weather.
The Renault Twizy launched in
Europe as a "quadracycle", a mix
of car and scooter with a 49-mph
top speed. The roughly $11,000
vehicle is not ofered with a full
door. The Twizy is an experiment
for Renault, about 15,000 have
been produced. The vehicle is so
small, four can be parked (nose-
to-the-curb) in the space for one
conventional car, although city
parking must be redesigned to
accommodate such parking
confgurations.
In the U.S., the Twizy is certifed a
Low-Speed Vehicle (LSV), only able
to drive on 35 mph posted streets
or less—but in the case of the Scoot
application, the vehicle has a top
speed of 25 mph. This reduces the
Twizy top speed by 50% from the
European version, which is unfor-
tunate. A Scoot Quad user could
fnd herself in an uncomfortable
situation going 25 mph on a street
with cars going 40 mph or faster,
holding-up trafc. Why does the
airbag-equipped Twizy have to go
so slow in the U.S., when a con-
sumer can legally buy a 186-mph
top speed Kawasaki Ninja motor-
cycle? The Twizy ofers more oper-
ator protection, static stability, and
far more visibility to other drivers
than the motorcycle.
In the carsharing space, Daimler
is the automaker with the most
experience. It launched its carshare
venture, Car2Go, in 2008. So far
there are 1-million members shar-