My first ride with an E-Scooter — in the streets of Hamburg
This morning I saw out of my bedroom window that several e-scooters were parked right in front of our front door. So I decided to test these things.
Here is my report.
Since a few weeks, the E-Scooters of different suppliers are also driving in my city, Hamburg. So far, I thought: Nobody needs that — all idiots who drive around with these things.
And there are hardly any arguments for these devices. They only make sense on short distances, which you could just as well cover on foot and they are not environmentally friendly.
According to newspaper reports, each of these scooters is scrapped after three months at the latest. In the evening they are collected by low-paid mini-jobbers in their cars, and these cars are mostly old and by no means environmentally friendly.
Nevertheless, I tried an E-scooter today. I wanted to know firsthand what I was talking about.
The choice of the supplier
The scooters in front of my doors belonged to the company TIER. So I downloaded the app and registered.
The ride costs 1€ for unlocking and then 19 cents per minute.
To be on the safe side, I downloaded the app of TIER’s biggest competitor in Hamburg — LIME.
But here the price of 25 cents per minute was much too high for me.
So I chose a TIER Scooter for my first ride.
Commissioning
I went to the six parked scooters and opened the app. I was offered a scooter for the ride. The app named a vehicle number.
Unfortunately, I was clumsy and couldn’t find this number anywhere on one of the scooters. Therefore I chose in the app “Start driving” and took one of the scooters.
I tried to drive it, but it didn’t work. I had taken the wrong scooter.
I put it back with the others, finished the ride in the app, and was 1,38€ poorer.
But I didn’t want to give up so easily. I searched the whole scooter for this damn number and finally found it, very small, in the middle of the handlebar under a QR code.
Where this number is, unfortunately, is not described in the app. This could be improved from my point of view.
The ride
To start, you have to push your foot off the ground a few times and then use the lever on the right side of the handlebar. This will put you on the gas.
The first few meters, I drove very slowly, and everything felt a bit shaky. Mainly I was busy to place my feet correctly on the scooter to keep the balance best.
But then it went much better very quickly. You get used to the driving characteristics of the scooter quickly. Brake levers are on the right and left, and the brakes work reliably.
Since the tires are quite hard, you feel every bump during the ride, and because scooters in Hamburg are only allowed to ride on cycle paths and roads, but not on sidewalks, this quickly turns out to be a disadvantage.
Hamburg is a beautiful city, but the cycle paths here are often a disaster.
Especially on the paths paved with small bricks, the scooter ride feels like a ride on a pneumatic hammer. My teeth are beating, and my sunglasses almost fell off.
But then I switched to the street, and everything was wonderful again. I didn’t have the feeling to disturb the drivers or the cyclists. Of course, I always drove far to the right in order not to be a traffic obstacle.
It was problematic that I could not indicate if I wanted to turn. To take one hand off the handlebars, I lacked safety and experience.
That’s why I had to be very careful when turning and make sure that I didn’t endanger anybody through any maneuver.
The speed of the scooter was sufficient for city traffic. However, the scooter only reached the specified maximum speed of twenty kilometers per hour downhill. But that’s perfectly ok because the scooter can be used without a helmet. You shouldn’t drive faster then.
End of the ride
When I had reached my destination, the station of Hamburg Altona, I saw already from a distance that several scooters stood at a place.
The app did not mark this area as a restricted zone, so I added my vehicle.
I opened the app again and told it that I had finished my ride.
Immediately I was shown the final price and the end of the journey was confirmed.
Conclusion
After some initial difficulties, the use of the E-Scooter turned out to be intuitive and uncomplicated.
The driving experience was pleasant most of the time, and the fun factor was also present.
At the end of the day, I will certainly use an E-Scooter again in the future, but not regularly.
First of all, I like to walk and do something for my health and secondly 19 cents per minute are quite expensive in the long run. We don’t even want to talk about the ecological nonsense of these devices.
But today it was a good time. Outside it was thirty degrees Celsius, and a ride in the overheated train would undoubtedly have been more unpleasant than riding the scooter, including the wind.
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