New Electric Scooter Technology

Environmental News has covered the subject of electric cars in many previous articles. 

Electric scooters, by way of contrast, have received much less coverage, since such technology is in much less widespread use, at least at the moment. 

Early electric scooter technology tended to be associated with high cost, limited endurance, lack of response and other negative features.  Texas-based engine firm KLD Energy Technologies, however, claims it is capable of rectifying all these issues. 

KLD is collaborating with Sufat – a motorbike maker based in Vietnam – to develop a low-cost electric scooter which is able to keep up with its petrol-powered compatriots. 

The KLD/ Sufat electric motorbike is being launched in Vietnam, for the reason that “...there are 22 million scooters in a country of 85 million people”,  KLD founder, Christian Okonsky, advised news agency CNN.

He continued: “That's a lot of people riding scooters in a contained area and the pollution is a concern.”

“All governments in South East Asia are looking for solutions [to the issue of pollution], but so far there hasn't been one.  We believe that we've found that solution”.

Energy Efficient Scooters

KLD’s input to the project has involved constructing the bikes’ engines out of nano-crystalline composite materials – materials that are said to provide much more energy efficient scooters than traditional engine designs could have achieved.  This engine can be married up with every battery type available on the market, the company says.

The scooter’s performance figures put its top speed at around 55 miles per hour –going on twice those of the majority of scooters – while, in terms of acceleration, 0-50 miles per hour is achievable in ten seconds.

KLD’s ultimate production goal through the tie-up with Sufat involves making 24,000 electric scooters a year, and selling them for about $1,500.

Electric bikes – pedal-powered ones with the bonus of added battery power – sell well in the Far East.  According to data supplied by the China Bicycle Association, nearly 60,000 of them were sold there in 1998 – a figure that, one decade later, had leapfrogged to 20 million! 

Continuous urban expansion in China has acted to make distances between home and work multiply and, therefore, electric bicycles are seen as ideal replacements for conventional cycles, offering value as well as practicality.

While growing car sales in China may be working to undo the benefits that mass pedal power has on the environment, the popularity of electric cycles in China is undeniable. 

On this basis, electric scooters may well have their place, too.

Image copyright of Hector Moya/ KLD Energy