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The first thing to consider about a gas bicycle is whether or not it is street legal. Different cities have different rules regarding the use of such vehicles and you’ll have to check with your local department of motor vehicles to be certain. However, for the most part, the most basic version of a gas bicycle, which is called “pedal assist”, is legal in American cities (though you still need to check as a handful of localities may have laws against them or require licensure).

What Is Pedal Assist?

When it comes to gas bicycles, the most basic version is known as pedal assist, as noted above and most of these are street legal. In essence, what a pedal assist gas bicycle does is to have the gas motor kick in when you start pedaling. As soon as you stop pedaling however, the gas motor stops running. The idea is that because the motor is simply assisting you rather than actually performing under its own power, it is legally considered to be like an ordinary bicycle and this means that it is street legal in most American cities. There are however other options when it comes to buying a gas bicycle…

Pedal Alternative (Moped)

An alternative to the pedal assist style gas bicycle is what some call a pedal alternative gas bicycle (although the technical term for it is actually moped, as in motorized/pedal since it’s a hybrid of motorized vehicle and pedal vehicle). In essence, these kinds of vehicles have pedals and can be pedaled if you feel like doing so. However, it’s also possible to simply rest your feet on the pedals and use the gas motor to let you glide along through traffic. Typically, the gas motor on these kinds of bikes are small and won’t give you much more speed than pedaling might, however they can make life easier for those who don’t always like to pedal.

Keep in mind however that these kinds of gas bicycles are often not street legal since they can work under their own power. You need to check with your local department of motor vehicles to find out for sure before you start riding around on one.

You Need to Use Your Head with a Gas Bicycle

It’s also important to know that this kind of gas bicycle requires judgment on your part. Trying to use the motor to get up a hill for instance is generally a bad idea, since the motor is often not powerful enough to do it and you could find yourself falling down into traffic if you do so.

Bottom Line

Yes, there are definitely such things as a gas bicycle (although electric versions are more common than gas powered versions). However, depending what you mean by that, you may need to check with your local department of motor vehicles before you purchase such a gas bicycle.

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Because disability scooters are designed for a specific segment of the population, they are mostly street legal in certain cities even though they tend to be relatively slow moving vehicles. They are obviously not intended for use on highways or even major thoroughfares. However they are perfect for getting around the neighborhood, providing new mobility to those who have become unable to move around much on their own. For this reason, they are generally tolerated by the police even though other, similar scooters might require licensure to drive on city streets.

Able to Enter Some Stores

In some cases, disability scooters can also be used inside of stores, to a limited extent insomuch as the store has enough room to move around. However, each individual store does tend to create their own rules and many do restrict the use of these vehicles for the simple reason that they would create too much trouble for other customers.

Often Paid for by Medicaid/Medicare

If you are a Medicaid or Medicare recipient, you should speak to the seller of your disability scooter to find out whether or not your insurance will cover the purchase or lease of the vehicles. Many private insurance companies also cover the purchase or lease of disability scooters, though again, you would need to speak with the insurance company to make sure.

Picking a Disability Scooter

When considering which disability scooter you’d like to own, it’s important to consider your needs and your own ability to be mobile.

An Electric Wheelchair May be Better

As previously noted, while some stores do allow disability scooters to enter their premises, many do restrict their use in order not to interfere with others in the store. However, an electric wheelchair by comparison is always welcome inside of stores because of the Americans with Disabilities Act which requires stores to allow for wheelchair access to their premises.

Therefore, when picking a disability scooter, it’s important to consider your personal mobility needs and to consider the possibility of purchasing an electric wheelchair instead, since you may be required to park your scooter outside the store rather than entering with it.

Four Wheel or Three Wheel?

Another consideration when looking at disability scooters is whether to purchase a four wheel model or a three wheel model. While most disability scooters are three wheel models, the four wheel models may provide more stability, though they will also make it harder to go certain places because of the added bulk of these larger disability scooters.

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First, it’s important to understand that there are two kinds of bikes which are called an “electric dirt bike.” One is more like an electric scooter and the other is more like an e bike. In essence, the electric dirt bike which is powered exclusively by the electric motor is more like a scooter since you can’t pedal it even if you wanted to while other kinds of electric dirt bike models do have pedals. Some of these work like a moped, where the pedaling is optional and others work like an e bike, where you have to pedal to get them started up.

Not Necessarily for Road Use

It’s important to note as well that an electric dirt bike is not street legal in most locations. This means that while it’s fine for the dirt trails that kids might enjoy taking them out on, they are not designed for those who need to take their bikes to school. The reason is simple – most models of electric dirt bike have fairly small motors which are not particularly powerful. As such, many municipalities ban them completely as a danger to others on the road. Other however do allow their use, especially in more rural and suburban areas where there is more room on the roads and less danger from using them.

Safety Precautions Must Be Taken

Because an electric dirt bike can go much faster than a traditional dirt bike, it’s important to make sure that your kids follow proper safety precautions when using them. This means that they wear safety helmets which are designed for use with electric dirt bikes (typically, full face helmets which resemble motorcycle helmets as opposed to bike helmets) and gloves and padding to ensure that if they do have an accident they minimize the chances of serious injury.

Be Sure to Let Your Kids Choose

Now, all that having been said, if you are planning to buy an electric dirt bike for your kids, it’s important to let them choose which model they want since buying the wrong model could see them quietly leaving it sitting around in the garage as something they’d rather not be seen on. At the same time, you need to ensure that the electric dirt bike your kid chooses isn’t too powerful as this could cause the bike to go too fast, causing them to lose control.

Bottom Line

The bottom line is this, an electric dirt bike is a lot of fun and a great gift for your kids. However, you do need to make sure that they handle these machines with respect and that they wear all the right safety equipment when they ride around on their electric dirt bike.

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The first thing that makes an e-scooter a great friend of the environment is of course that it’s electric rather than being gas powered. This already means that you aren’t going to be polluting the environment with your gasoline emissions when you motor around town on your e-scooter. However, beyond the obvious, there is also the fact that an e-scooter sips electricity.

This kind of vehicle gets the best mileage possible, much better than from a traditional electric car for the simple reason that it has less bulk to pull around along with it. After all, a car has to pull the car along with you, while the e-scooter just pulls you and its two wheels and small motor around.

Smaller Carbon Footprint for Manufacturing

Manufacturing an e-scooter also means leaving a much smaller carbon footprint than manufacturing an electric car. The fact is that an e-scooter uses up less material and takes a lot less electricity to create to begin with, meaning that the carbon footprint for creating the vehicle is infinitely smaller than the carbon footprint for a car, even an electric car. Never mind the carbon footprint that you leave behind when you have a car delivered – it comes on a car carrier which is slow moving, polluting and inefficient. While most e-scooters are also shipped on trucks, at least they don’t take up the same amount of space, meaning that you have a smaller carbon footprint for having had one delivered.

Great for Rides in the Countryside

Another thing that makes e-scooters such ideal friends of the environment is that they are great for rides through the countryside. While not all of them are of course designed to go off road, it is possible to find an off road style e-scooter which will allow you to do so. Try that with your Chevy Volt and see how far you get in the thing.

No Need for Additional Equipment

Another thing that makes an e-scooter a great choice when compared with an electric vehicle such as the Nissan Leaf is that an e-scooter doesn’t require you to have additional equipment installed in order to charge it up.

While this also means a cost savings since you don’t need to arrange for a special charging station in your home, it also means that you needn’t worry about owning a home large enough to handle being retrofitted to provide for a car charging station (you can easily live in an apartment building, further minimizing your carbon footprint).

Bottom Line

If you can live with it, there is nothing quite like owning an e-scooter for doing those chores that you simply can’t do with a bicycle. So the next time you’re in the market for an electric vehicle, think about the environment and buy yourself an e-scooter.

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Imagine going out to the movies one evening together with your spouse or significant other. You hop in the car and drive down to the theater and begin the hunt for a parking spot. By the time you find a spot, you’re 10 minutes late for the movie and you’re wondering what happened in the beginning that made this guy start running away from the police.

Now imagine that you and the girlfriend/boyfriend (or wife or husband) hopped on a power scooter, or a pair of them if you’ve got small ones that don’t accommodate two people. Not only can you then skirt the traffic jams, but you can also avoid parking problems since you can pretty much park anyway. Then, you can be the annoyed couple who give dirty looks to the people who arrived late and sheepishly admit later that they couldn’t find parking.

Hop Down to the Grocery and Back Quickly

Another thing that makes a power scooter the ideal city companion is the short trip to the grocery store a mile down the road. It’s too far to walk but at the same time, you don’t want to be bothered with getting into the car and fighting for a parking spot next to the grocery store. When you own a power scooter, it’s no longer a problem. Many of them come with a compartment for storage meaning that the quick hop the grocery becomes a breeze because you can just drop everything into the trunk and go.

Never Be Late for Work Again

How many times have you had to sheepishly tell your boss that there was a huge accident on the way to work and you were stuck in bumper to bumper traffic? How many times has it cost you a promotion or even a job? With a power scooter, those problems don’t exist because you simply flit in and out of traffic and route yourself around the accident, laughing at those who are stuck in their cars. It’s the ultimate power trip to zip by on your power scooter while the person in the car next to you has a pained look as they contemplate the traffic jam ahead and stare forlornly at their watches.

Insurance and Gas

Finally, owning a power scooter just makes sense from the point of view of insurance and gas. Insurance for a power scooter is generally cheaper than for a car and as for gasoline, forget about it. You’ll get five times the gas mileage driving around the city and doing all your chores on your power scooter.

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The CC rating is basically a measure of the power of the engine. You don’t want to get too powerful an engine in an electrical scooter if it’s your first one (say around 1,000CC) because that would make the thing go way too fast for you and could be dangerous.

Too Small is Also Bad

However, by the same token, you also need to make sure it has enough power to get you around town and to do what you need to do. Some companies for example sell electrical scooters with tiny 50CC motors. These kinds of electrical scooters are really little more than toys and are simply not the kind of thing to be relied upon when you are using your electrical scooter to get to and from work or even to and from the grocery store or school. They can be quite dangerous because the tiny motor could fail to give you enough lift even when going over minor hills or when you need to accelerate to switch lanes, thus causing accidents.

Check out the Brakes

The best scooters in the market will include anti-lock brakes which are designed to ensure that your safety is kept paramount. These kinds of brakes become increasingly more important the more powerful your electrical scooter is since they can be the difference between crashing and getting killed or braking within a reasonable distance and getting where you’re going. Be sure to double check any claim of anti-lock brakes on an electrical scooter as well as some unscrupulous dealers will claim their brakes are anti-lock when they really are not.

Pay Close Attention to Safety Equipment

When riding an electrical scooter, you don’t have the advantage of airbags or of a crumple zone on a car to protect you in case of a crash. Because of that, it’s extremely important to look for quality safety equipment which is rated for your electrical scooter’s speed and engine power.

Get a Good Jacket Too

In addition to a helmet, you should ideally look for a jacket which can provide adequate crash protection. There are specially made leather jackets which can provide the kind of protection you need when you hit the pavement so that you walk away from an accident and you should ideally look into purchasing one along with your electrical scooter.

Have Fun

Finally, whatever kind of electrical scooter you buy, be sure that you think it’s fun to drive. After all, that’s half the reason to own an electrical scooter.

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Let’s start with the most obvious factor – price of ownership. Buying a good car these days means dropping the neighborhood of around $25,000-$30,000 and that’s for a fairly basic model. Top of the line models can easily approach the $100,000 mark or higher for luxury models. Contrast that with the market for motor scooters where top of the line models are sold for less than $10,000 and decent motor scooters, suitable for adults to use for going to work can be had in the $1,000-$2,000 range and you see that price is simply no comparison – motor scooters win hands down.

Gas

Another thing that makes motor scooters so attractive is the high cost of gasoline. While motor scooters are of course primarily a singular conveyance (i.e. they carry just one person), most times cars also carry just one person to and from work. However, when you take out the scooter, you pay to haul along just two wheels and a small motor. When you take out the car, you pay to haul around several tons of metal and plastic together with you. This means that no matter how efficient your car may be, it can’t hold a candle to the efficiency of even the most gas guzzling motor scooters on the road today.

Traffic

How many times have you been stuck in a traffic jam only to see a few lucky people flitting by on their motor scooters and getting to work on time? Need we say more? The fact is that motor scooters route you around the traffic jams and allow you to get wherever it is that you need to get to quickly and efficiently.

Parking

The other headache that most people have when driving around in their cars is quite simply the fact that they can never seem to find parking, especially in crowded urban centers. However, when you buy a motor scooter, those problems become a thing of the past. Motor scooters can be parked pretty much everywhere since they can simply be chained to a traffic light and there is little chance of getting a ticket while parking one whereas cars constantly get tickets.

Coolness Factor

Contrary to what some people may think, motor scooters definitely have a huge coolness factor. No, the cheap electric dirt bike type motor scooter isn’t going to get you any second looks, but try driving up on Vespa motor scooters, with their Italian designs and sleek lines and you’ll see heads turning all around, whether you are a man or a woman. The fact is that you can’t get that kind of a coolness factor from most inexpensive cars, meaning that if you want to have heads turn, you need to buy one of those cool motor scooters.

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Again, whether your interest is in a moped, scooter or e bike, the three will likely be advertised together even though they are in fact vastly different kinds of products.

E Bike

Let’s start with the most basic version, which is an e bike. An e bike (or electric bicycle) is basically a bicycle with an electric (or gas, though in that case it’s usually called a gas bike) motor attached to it. However, in order to remain street legal, the motor is very small and does not kick in until you begin to pedal the thing. This allows you to own one without the need to worry about getting a license or insurance.

Moped

A moped by comparison, which is often marketed as a moped scooter is actually a hybrid of a bicycle and a scooter. In essence, a moped is able to run entirely under its own power or it can run under the power of the pedals which it includes. These kinds of vehicles are often more difficult to get a license for because they tend to have underpowered engines.

Scooters

Finally, a scooter, which is also often marketed a moped scooter (yes, it’s confusing) is a two wheeled device which runs entirely under its own power. The big difference between this vehicle and a motorcycle is usually the size of the engine and whether or not they are legal to take on highways.

What You Need to Know When Buying a Moped Scooter

Because so many tend to think of a power scooter as being a “moped scooter,” we’ll refer to them as such even though the two terms are technically different things.

The CC Rating

Basically, when considering a purchase of a moped scooter, you need to think about the CC rating of the thing (the CC rating is the amount of power the moped scooter has). In essence, it should ideally have at least a 125CC engine in order to make sure it’s really safe to ride (motorcycles by comparison typically have at least 1,000CC engines and can easily have 1,500 or 2,000CC engines).

Licensing

The other big consideration when you want to buy a moped scooter is the licensing requirements for it. You need to ensure that the vehicle you want to purchase is considered road legal in your state and or city and then you need to find out from the department of motor vehicles exactly what kind of a license you’ll need to operate your new moped scooter.

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The first thing to realize is that when you buy a scooter, electric and gas models are both extremely efficient and will get you around town to do whatever you need to do. Neither of them however will actually get you across the country since these vehicles aren’t designed with that purpose in mind. They’re primarily intended to be used for travel within a city and that’s one of the primary reasons that we say that when it comes time to buy a scooter, electric may well be the way to go.

More Efficiency

The obvious reason why we suggest that you go for an electric scooter as opposed to a gas powered scooter is the same reason that electric cars are a better value for the money as far as fuel costs than gas powered cars. It simply costs a lot less for the electricity to charge up your scooter. Electric companies all over the country in fact report that people who have begun to charge up scooters on their home electricity see a barely noticeable bump in their electric bills because these vehicles tend to sip electricity, so much so that there is simply no need to bother with gas powered options.

Get a Spare Charger

Of course, there is one big drawback to buying an electric powered scooter: electric scooters need a charger to charge up the battery. This means for example that if your scooter is able to get around 15 miles on a charge and your office is 10 miles away, then you’ll need a second charger which can be plugged in at the office to ensure that you can get home. Of course, this also just points out another good reason why it comes time to buy a scooter, electric is the way to go – you don’t have to pay for the electric bill when charging your scooter’s battery at the office!

Bottom Line

The bottom line is this: whether you buy a gas powered or electric powered scooter, you’ll be doing a favor for the environment and for your wallet. The tiny carbon footprint and minimal costs of operating a scooter simple mean that you don’t have to worry about wasting a fortune or contributing to global warming when you ride around on one. The fact that these two wheeled wonders also come in cool styles which look like something an adult drives and not a kid, well that just makes all the more reason to go out right now and look on Google for the words “scooter electric.”

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In essence, an electric bike is first and foremost, a bicycle. It’s got pedals and those pedals are attached to gears which turn the wheels. The key thing that separates an electric bike from a scooter is that you can use an electric bike even if it doesn’t have an ounce of power in the battery. However, a scooter with an empty battery will be as useless as a car with no gasoline. You can sit on it. You can wheel it from place to place, but unless you’re going downhill and relying on gravity (and very good brakes), you can’t ride the thing like you could with an electric bike.

Most Electric Bikes are Pedal Assist

Another big distinguishing feature of an electric bike is that they work based on a technology known as “pedal assist.” What this means is that you won’t be able to use the electric bike completely under its own power. Instead, you need to pedal first and then the bike’s motor will kick in and make the pedaling easier. It feels kind of like having someone standing beside you, holding the bike and pushing it forward for you rather than having to do everything under your own power.

You Don’t Need a License

The reason that an electric bike is most likely to be pedal assist also brings us to another big difference between a scooter and an electric bike: you don’t need a license. In most cases, local laws regarding powered conveyances, be they an electric bike, a scooter or a car, require that they operate exclusively under their own power. This means that the scooter doesn’t require you to do anything but turn the key and push the gas pedal. An electric bike by comparison is considered street legal in most locals without a license simply because of the fact that you must power it with your own energy.

When You Wouldn’t Want an Electric Bike

Now that we’ve established the basic difference between an electric bike and a scooter, let’s look at when you wouldn’t want to use an electric bike. In essence, you wouldn’t want to use an electric bike if you hate to pedal, because you almost certainly will have to pedal an electric bike. More important however, when you don’t want to feel as if you are riding a bicycle, you don’t want to be riding an electric bike.

For example, when riding along the highway, you generally will not find anyone riding a regular bicycle because it’s extremely dangerous (unless they’ve made special arrangements, for example, for a race of some kind, though in that case, you would need to check with the race organizers to make sure that you can legally use your electric bike).

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