hans.gerwitz

After a year of research and hunting, I’ve finally embraced the urban geek stereotype and ordered a moped.

I wanted one because I was jealous of my neighbor when I saw him ride his classic Vespa to the office on hot days. It’s not worth driving to avoid a half mile of walking in the heat, but it’s also no fun to need a change of clothes from spending 10 minutes outside.

I considered a Segway, but I’d have to get one for Kristan, too. And a scooter for two is just more romantic.

Yet those 50cc scooters can be noisy, dirty, and require a noto­ri­ously high level of main­te­nance. So I thought the solution would be an electric version. Besides greater reli­a­bility, it’d be clean and quiet enough for me to pull directly into the office.

It turns out that there are quite a few models of all-​​electric scooter out there. But most are just versions of cheap Chinese gas-​​powered imports. Or they’re ugly and unproven. And all are from unproven companies, an obser­vation confirmed when one of the leading ones just went poof and left distrib­utors and customers unsupported.

The most promising product out there was (natu­rally) from an Italian company named Oxygen. Their Lepton scooter got rave reviews but their US sales network was a failure and after making a few thousand the company modified it for commercial markets where they can make more money but it’s less attractive for me. They’re awfully expensive compared to gas scooters and I just couldn’t talk myself into spending that much sight unseen.

Vespa announced hybrids that would be a decent compromise for me and look great, but there’s no timetable for public sale in Italy, much less the US.

So, what did I do? Decided to wait until spring. Then a fellow St. Louisian with an interest in EVs sent me an email letting me know about a recovered discussion forum. So I visited to see if there’d been any news, and found a fellow asking if an Oxygen Lepton he’d seen on eBay was a good buy. A few had responded, natu­rally encour­aging him to buy. So I took advantage of my fat inter­tubes and sniped it.