If you have recently travelled to a major European city outside the Netherlands or to the United States, you will have most likely come across one of the thousand of e-scoots that have been flooding the streets recently. The public opinion about this new solution for the last-mile transportation is mixed. Some people love having the ability to quickly hop on a scooter and save some valuable minutes, while others are annoyed, because they are blocking the sidewalks and the streets get even more crowded. But lets have a look at the environment and evaluate if this option is really as eco friendly as advertised:
As the name suggests, e-scooters are entirely powered by electricity, which suggests gives them a big advantage over cars, busses or normal scooters, when looking at the emissions created while driving. However, a study conducted by the North Carolina State University shows, that the energy consumed during the lifecycle of a scooter only accounts for less than 5% of the overall emissions, an e-scooter releases. The majority of the CO2 emissions stemm from the production and transportation. Especially the manufacturing of the lithium-ion battery and the frame of the scooter accounts for 50-70% of total emission of the scooter. Since most scooters are manufactured in China, the scooters have to be transported to Europe or the United States, which accounts for another 3% of the scooters environmental footprint (Hollingsworth, Copeland and Johnson, 2019).
However taking all these factors together, using an e-scooter is still a lot more environmentally friendly than using many other last-mile transportation options, including car, bus, train and metro. A good indicator to compare these options, is the CO2 produced per person kilometre (g /pkm), meaning the amount of CO2 produced per person per kilometre in each mode of transportation. The website epowers.org found, that e-scooters are much more environmentally friendly with 46 g / pkm compared to cars (140 g /pkm), busses (75 g / pkm) and the metro (65 g / pkm). The value for e-scooters is taking into account the manufacturing, transport from China and electricity for an e-scooter. If the scooter was to be produced in Europe, this value would be even lower (Epowers, 2019).
However, this picture is only one part of the truth. Since most people don’t own their own e-scooter, but make use of one of the many scooter sharing companies out there (Bird, Lime, Tier), another significant component needs to be added to the equation. Since users of these services, don’t charge the scooters themselves, transporters operated by the rental companies, have to drive around the city to collect, charge and redistribute the scooters every night. With a range of only 15-20 km per charge, every scooter has to be picked up basically every day. In addition to that, some cities prohibit scooters from being in public areas over night, which forces companies to even collect and store fully charged scooters every day (Short, 2019). This accounts for another 20-40% of overall CO2 emissions of the overall scooter, according to Hollingsworth, Copeland and Johnson (2019). In addition to that, a scooter has a much shorter life span, when being driven in rental, compared to a privately owned one (Hawkins, 2019). These factors significantly weakens the eco-friendliness of the scooter and makes it less eco friendly compared to taking the bus or the train. However, it still produces only half of the CO2 emissions of a car (Hollingsworth, Copeland and Johnson, 2019).
Concluding, e-scooters are by themselves certainly a fast and environmentally friendly alternative for last-mile transportation. However, renting them in the current business model diminishes the positive eco score.
What is your opinion on e-scooters and how will they evolve in the future?
Sources:
Epowers. (2019). E-Scooter CO2-Bilanz: Eine wissenschaftliche Studie zur Ökobilanz. [online] Available at: https://www.epowers.org/elektro-scooter/co2-bilanz/ [Accessed 2 Oct. 2019].
Hawkins, A. (2019). Electric scooters aren’t quite as climate-friendly as we thought. [online] The Verge. Available at: https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/2/20751610/scooters-electric-dockless-carbon-emissions-study-life-cycle-analysis [Accessed 2 Oct. 2019].
Hollingsworth, J., Copeland, B. and Johnson, J. (2019). Are e-scooters polluters? The environmental impacts of shared dockless electric scooters. Environmental Research Letters, 14(8), p.084031.
Short, A. (2019). Atlanta Bans E-Scooters at Night After Drivers Kill Four Riders. [online] Streetsblog USA. Available at: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/08/12/atlanta-bans-e-scooters-at-night-after-drivers-kill-four-riders/ [Accessed 2 Oct. 2019].
Image: Britta Pedersen—picture-alliance/dpa/AP
Hi Lukas,
Thank you for this interesting blog post. I have been reading some report on the micromobility industry, which raised my doubt on the viability of this e-scooter sharing business model. However, regarding the high charging costs of the e-scooters, there seem to be some solutions. The e-scooters could be equipped with swappable batteries to increase their radius and reduce the number of charges. Some firms also pay customers to charge the scooter at home, with the payment being either in money or in driving minutes. I wonder whether this will change the outlook on the e-scooter sharing future?
Dear Lukas,
It is quite a good topic you mentioned in your blog, however I am still not quite sure about whether e-scooter are more eco friendly than any other way of transport.
Another point to add on the list of anti eco-friendliness from e-scooter is the recycling of the batteries. The problem with this factor is that we do not know exactly how big the impact is. On a similar topic the CEO of Peugeot, Carlos Tavares, made a big critic in this matter but concerning specifically electrical cars. In the context of the political revendication to push car makers to build more and more electric cars, he says: “…I would not want that in 30 years, we discover something that is not as beautiful as it sounds, on the recycling of the batteries, the use of the rare materials of the planet, on the electromagnetic emission of the batteries during recharge?…”. It goes on for an entire paragraph. Consequently, e-scooters depending on electric batteries are to a least extent concerned by this problem (due to less complex electrical engine), which still makes their true environmental impact unknown.
In order to reduce the environmental impact to a least extent would be to manufacture them in Europe or in North America (close to their end point). However, doing so would require a lot of effort from the company as it needs to review the entire value chain, marketing campaign (Rent local, be ecological), organisation…
My opinion on e-scooter: I would not use their products for their “eco-friendliness”, but rather for their convenience. If i want to be eco-friendly, a bike works just fine. Let’s be Dutch about it.
https://www.20minutes.fr/economie/2360899-20181025-oui-patron-psa-bien-exprime-reserves-essor-voiture-electrique-fabrique
(link for the Peugeot CEO quote, it’s in french 😀 sorry for that)
Hey Lukas,
I like your take on the environmental friendliness of the eScooters and I agree with you that the current business models do not fit with the currently existing scooters. However, I believe that you are going in the wrong direction with your analysis. You compare the scooters to cars, the metro, or busses, but I believe that this is not a very fair comparison. The reason for this is that according to a recent analysis the median scooter only takes around 70 trips (around 85 miles or 1 month of use) before reaching the end of its lifetime, whereas cars for example have a basic coverage guarantee of 36k to 72k miles and last for a lot longer even. I do not want to say that cars are better than the scooters, but rather that the problem lies somewhere else: the durability of the scooters. Xiaomi, on of the main manufacturers, builds its scooters for a 200lbs weight limit, while the average US American man weighs 197.9lbs. Also they are not build for steep environments, yet Lime, one of the main scooter sharing companies in the US, was founded in the very hilly city of San Francisco. Neither are the scooters made to be used in snow or other bad weather conditions, yet 8 different sharing companies are fighting for market dominance in the city of Vienna, where snow in winter is not very unlikely. Taking all of these points together, I believe the real environmental problem of the electronic scooters is that they are not build for the needs of sharing, or at least not yet. Once you have a scooter that can carry people weighing more than 200lbs for an entire winter, then they could really become a more environmentally friendly alternative.
https://www.bcg.com/de-de/publications/2019/promise-pitfalls-e-scooter-sharing.aspx
https://oversharing.substack.com/p/shared-scooters-dont-last-long
https://www.motor1.com/features/253277/comparing-new-vehicle-warranties/
Hey Malte,
thank you for your insightful comment. I completely agree with your, that the e scooter business is still in it’s infancy and still a lot has yet to develop. I am actually surprised, how widely they are already available, even though the are so new to the market in general. But this might also be a good thing, that finally legislation has dared to legalise this kind of business, instead of holding back innovation.
However the data I provided, actually took into account the lifespan of each modes of transport and the associated manufacturing efforts. Still the lifespan is a very important element in this case, since it varies greatly.
All in all I am very curious, where this will go in the future.