Rider 3000W review

In July last year, I finally bit the bullet and replaced my 50cc scooter. It had been ailing for a while and I’d been spending more and more money on it, but I’d also wanted to go electric for quite some time. I’d done a lot of research and knew I’d be limited to 45 KM/H, but understandably it’s the range that worries everyone. I’d been looking for a while and finally, I found the model I’m reviewing. It has a stated range of 115 KM! That’s massive, considering I’d seen scooters with as little as 45 KM. At 115, there would be enough margin to easily do a week’s visits to work, the cinema and more. It’s not quite enough for me to go see my mum, but she doesn’t like the idea of me on it anyway. She’s quite pleased she’s off-limits for me.

In September, the Rider was delivered. All shiny and new.

It’s a chunky beast that weighs in at about 95kg (my old one was 70 or so) and is physically wider as well – you definitely feel the width between your thighs (oo-err) and putting the main stand down is almost impossible without standing beside the scooter. It does have a nice modern Vespa quality to it, especially in the aqua green I chose and there are retro elements with the wing mirrors and overall styling. I’ve waited until now to finish my review so you get a real feel for it.

First, the range isn’t quite as claimed at about 90 km in winter and 100 km in summer. Charging takes a good while on a standard plug socket. It means I can’t fill up on the road, but I do keep the charger and cables in the underseat storage.

I’ve “filled up” 18 times so far. It costs about ~€0.30 to charge at off-peak, whereas my previous scooter cost between €7-9 each time I did 100 km (I used SP98 fuel). That works out at €5.40 for over 1800 KM of electric travel compared to an average of €135 when ICEbound.

Good Points

First off, the Rider’s retro styling looks pretty and, while it wasn’t intentional, choosing the colour I did gives the scooter a resemblance to the Yego public scooters, which camouflages it a little from potential thieves. Being able to remove the battery entirely means added security as without the 20KG battery, this thing’s going nowhere. I did run out of battery one time as I neared home and was able to walk the battery back for a bit of a charge. I walked the somewhat-charged battery back to the scooter with enough charge to get me home where I could fully reload it.

In use, the Rider is great. It’s manoeuvrable and the acceleration is much better than my Peugeot Ludix. It’s also better than that scooter for my hearing. I love to listen to podcasts when I’m on the road and no longer have to have them on at full blast to be able to hear them clearly over the noise of the Ludix’s 50cc petrol engine. The Rider just hums slightly, which the babies love. They went from racing around making “BRRMM, BRMM” noises to now making whooshing sounds.

Bad Points

In daylight, the screen is mostly illegible. Can anyone tell me how much charge remains? There’s the aforementioned difficulty of parking the scooter, though I do appreciate the second kickstand, which is ideal for short stops. Again, there are pros and cons with storage. The supplied topbox seems to be constructed of thick plastic, meaning the space inside is reduced for the same volume of case. On the Ludix, I was able to easily stash my crash helmet, with this it just won’t go; I’ve tried all the angles, taking off the speaker system and so on. On the other hand, the added space under the seat is useful and there’s a hook for a bag under the driver’s display.

One last thing for the screen. When the scooter is first turned on, an overall trip is displayed.

It gets replaced by an updating trip meter for the current trip, but there’s no way to see the full amount unless you turn the scooter off and back on again, which brings me to one of my biggest bugbears with this scooter. When you switch the scooter off, it plays a “wheep wheep” noise to let you know the alarm is engaged. It really shouldn’t play that noise at over 100 decibels when I’ve come home and parked it in our garage, an echoey enclosed space. When outside, people are shocked by the noise.

Conclusion

It seems like I don’t like this new ride, but nothing could be further from the truth, it just takes getting used to its foibles. I’m still not overly confident about the range, to the extent that while I was coming back from Bordeaux I dropped my speed to under 30 kph just to be sure I’d make it home. As it was, I could have just come back at full speed and I would have been fine.

The scooter has two “gears”. In 1, you can get a maximum of 35 kph from the bike. If you change to 2, that goes up to 45 kph. It feels odd that they didn’t just make it 30 and 50. Overall, I really like the scooter and I hope that a software update will help with some of these issues.

Update 25.07.17

As an experiment, I wanted to ride to the seaside. I needed to be sure I could ride back without having to change while there. This is the route I chose:

As you can see, it’s a little over 40 KM, so I should have got back home with a bit more than 20 % charge to spare. Here are the stats to kept note of:

• Started fully charged 250714
• Left home at 1223
• Odometer at 2631km
• Going to Andernos les Bains used 30% off battery same day
• Arrived at 1340
• 2671 km on the odometer
• 70% battery left
• Left Andernos at 1620
• Arrived at 1720
• 2731 km on the odometer
• 41% battery left

The 41 % turned into 40 when I drove the following day, but this is a good sign. It means I don’t need to have as much range anxiety either. Next time, I’ll try to go a bit further and get to the Atlantic coast:

Lastly, I didn’t get my rebate for the purchase of this scooter, which is irritating, but given that it’s only cost me less than €10 to “refuel” it for the 2731 km done so far, compared to the ~€220 it would cost if I was still using SP98 petrol, I’m not so worried.