Removable battery packs, FTW

Why are we writing about a shitty little electric scooter? Because the e-max city 80L does something no other realistic means of two-wheeled transportation does: the battery comes out easily so you can charge it inside your house or office. Designed specifically for urban use, scooters like this offer equivalent performance and equivalent ease of licensing to 50cc ICE scooters -- long a staple of cities outside the United SUVS of America -- but have always suffered from one major drawback: if you live in an apartment building or work in an office building, they're impossible to charge unless you get very creative with a very long extension cord. No longer.
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The plot thickens further when you realize this isn't one of the cheap Chinese-built electric scooters being sold at Pep Boys, but rather a high-quality product of Germany. e-max was just bought by Australian company Vmoto, which hopes to expand the brand across Europe in the near term.

Aside from the removable battery, the rest of the specs are rather competitive. There's a 50cc regulations-meeting 30mph top speed and a range of up to 40 miles. Not bad when you consider these are intended solely for short distance urban commuting and that the removable Lithium battery does a full recharge in less than three hours.

One of the major objections to electric motorcycles is that their limited speeds make them most suitable for urban riding, yet the difficult recharging makes them unsuitable for urban living. Hopefully this dinky little scooter is the harbinger of more electric two-wheelers adopting removable batteries.

e-max

Thanks for the tip, Will.

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