Can you trust what manufacturers say about their scooter stats? How much do they differ from what real-world users experience? To answer these questions (and others like it) we evaluated data collected from the 2018 r/ElectricScooter survey.

To address this question, we plotted all owner-reported ranges for electric scooters that received >5 reviews. These appear as transparent dots on the plot below. We have also plotted the manufacturer-claimed specification as a solid vertical bar. 

The more closely the dots and bars overlap — the more the manufacturer’s claims line up with what users are experiencing. 

The data show that manufacturers tend to be optimistic about their scooter ranges, but definitely not deceptive. We calculated how each score differed from the manufacturer claims. 

We found, fairly consistently, that manufacturer ranges are about 30% above the mean owner-reported values. 

We note that some of the data points are obviously erroneous. We attribute this to incorrect unit conversion or typos on the part of surveyed owners. Also, though we include scooters with at least 5 survey responses, not all questions were answered on all surveys which is why, for example, the Dualtron ULTRA has only 3 data points.

To address this question, we plotted all owner-reported top speeds for electric scooters that received >5 reviews. These appear as transparent dots on the plot below.

We have also plotted the manufacturer-claimed specification as a solid vertical bar. The more closely the dots and bars overlap — the more the manufacturer’s claims line up with what users are experiencing.

The data shows that manufacturers are pretty much spot-on with their claimed top speeds. Claimed top speeds are within about 10% of that reported by users, collectively.

We find that electric scooter companies tend to be optimistic about range, compared to the real-world use case.

Sometimes you will even notice a little star by the rating that specifies under what condition they achieved those numbers. Typically it is something like: in eco mode, flat and smooth road, 140 lb rider, etc etc.

Based on the data, we recommend that you consider the true range to be about 70% of what the manufacturer claims.

For top speed, the manufacturer-claimed values seem to be very much in line with what users reported, on average.