this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2024
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micromobility - Ebikes, scooters, longboards: Whatever floats your goat, this is micromobility
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Ebikes, bicycles, scooters, skateboards, longboards, eboards, motorcycles, skates, unicycles: Whatever floats your goat, this is all things micromobility!
"Transportation using lightweight vehicles such as bicycles or scooters, especially electric ones that may be borrowed as part of a self-service rental program in which people rent vehicles for short-term use within a town or city.
micromobility is seen as a potential solution to moving people more efficiently around cities"
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If you're in North America, I'm sorry but that's just not relevant because North Americans decided the only transportation one is allowed to get is a car and the Ami doesn't sell there because it's not a car.
If you're in a North-American style suburb elsewhere in the world, then yeah I get it it sucks. But the Ami isn't even a pragmatic solution there, because such suburbs tend to be surrounded with roads with 70+ kph speed limits which is much faster than the Ami can even go so you won't be safe there either. If you can't get a car and can't ride a bike or use public transit, the only pragmatic solution is to not live in a car-dependent suburban hellscape.
The Ami is designed for inner city driving where 45 km/h keeps up with the flow of traffic. But where you can comfortably drive an AMI at 45 km/h without holding up traffic, you can also ride a bicycle at 30 km/h, or walk, and there's probably public transit unless you live in an unusually terrible city (and I say that as someone who lives in a well below-average city).
I'm on the edge of a reasonably big US city. No bus lines, no sidewalks or bike lanes. Just a ditch on the side with lots of big trucks driving 80-90km/hr on curvy, deadly two-lane roads. It sounds rural but I live on the inside of the city's "loop" highway.
Yeah so my point stands, you need a car. Have you seen an Ami in person? It's a glorified electric scooter. Think of the tiniest car you've ever seen in your life and make it 3x smaller. No way I'm driving that on a US road with trucks overtaking me at 90 km/h, and I say that as an habitual cyclist and motorcycle rider.
Yeah I wasn't arguing with you, I've lived in Germany and the Netherlands and in quite a bit of the US so I've seen lots of realities. No I haven't seen that vehicle in person but I have owned a very fuel efficient motorcycle, fuel was cheap but keeping it running was not. The conversation is broader than one vehicle though.
Honestly I wish it was easier/more cost effective to rent larger vehicles. I use my Subaru beyond it's capacity way too often but I really could use a larger vehicle and don't have an extra $100k. The cost of living here has become impossible over the last decade. My daughter's English boyfriend was shocked how expensive things are here when he visited recently. Cars and food are the worst but in most of the US you have to pay market prices for both and even double the minimum wage is still not a living wage here.
Oh and then there's rent. If you're living somewhere with actual public transportation, you're making a car payments worth of extra rent or property taxes anyway. The only affordable places to live are the highest crime rate areas. Most of the US has very low violent crime outside a few dozen terrible neighborhoods. But it's affordable there if you don't mind maybe dying.