E-scooters are transforming Berlin. I rode them for a week to see how

There’s an electric scooter revolution happening in Europe. 

In the past year or so, the rentable, battery-powered, two-wheeled vehicles have swarmed European cities like Paris, Brussels and Madrid. And Berlin, with some 5,000 e-scooters operating and more to come, is gunning for the title of Europe’s e-scooter capital. 

I’d only tried riding an e-scooter once before. I was never convinced of their practicality or sustainability. So, I tried to change my mind by using only e-scooters to get around Berlin for about a week, as I was covering the IFA trade show. 

A different Berlin

Berlin has an amazing public transportation network. You can ride the U-Bahn (subway), the S-Bahn (train), trams and buses, all with a single ticket, and the city’s wide streets are thoroughly interspersed with bicycle lanes. So is there even any point in adding e-scooters into the mix?

After my week of scootering around, I think the answer is a careful yes. For longer rides, the U-Bahn or the S-Bahn are preferable. But for those 2-3 mile commutes from the train station to your destination — which will inevitably happen, despite that dense transport network — the e-scooter is ideal. 

Of course, it’s not that much different than the bicycle, especially an electric one. But there are subtle differences. The e-scooter requires almost no energy expenditure, which means you’ll never get sweaty — ideal for a business trip. It’s also smaller and less clunky than a bike. It boils down to a question of preference; some people will always prefer the bike or the e-bike, but I think the e-scooter has its place, too. 

E-scooters helped me enjoy Berlin. Instead of getting lost in a maze of U-Bahn stations, I felt the breeze and checked out such Berlin landmarks as the Tiergarten, Reichstag, and Branderburger Tor. (The latter was the only place in Berlin where the police told me I couldn’t park my e-scooter in a certain area. I had to move it 10 meters to the left.)  I never got tired (the subway does inevitably tire me out for some reason) and I saw more of Berlin than in the last five years of covering IFA. 

Pleasant riding, with some caveats

Riding an e-scooter is easy, no matter which provider you choose. You install the Uber-like app, add a payment option, scan the scooter’s QR code and you’re ready to go. But which one should you choose? 

Currently, four e-scooter sharing companies operate in Berlin: San Francisco’s Lime, Berlin startups Tier and Circ, and the Stockholm-based Voi. More are coming: Berlin-based start-ups Flash and Wind are preparing to join the mix, among others. All are well-funded, and all are incredibly similar from the user’s perspective. I’ve tried all except Voi (whose scooters were for some reason often vandalized; more on that in a bit), and I’ve seen no big difference: The apps are similar, the scooters are similar, and the prices are, in most cases, identical.

Circ, Tier and Voi charge 1 euro to start the ride and 0.15 euros per minute. A typical, 3-mile ride will cost 3 euros. Lime is a bit more expensive at 0.2 euros per minute, but its scooters were a bit more comfortable and its app a little better, so I’ll call it a tie. Most of the time, I didn’t care which scooter I rode; I picked one that was near and, if possible, not busted up. 

Riding these through Berlin was fairly easy. Most of the time, there’s a bike lane, which you are required to use under the city’s rules. Failing that, you should ride with the cars, and not on the sidewalk — I got a few angry glances before I realized that. There were a few scary moments — a narrow underpass on a fairly fast road will make you feel exposed on a tiny scooter, and a cobbled road is definitely not very pleasant to ride on. But in my experience, Berlin drivers are very mindful of both bicycles and scooters. They’re used to them and they won’t often do anything rash that will endanger you. 

There are other rules by which you’ll need to abide. You should not drive drunk, and only one person should ride on a single scooter. Helmets are optional in Berlin, but highly recommended; I rode without it simply because I didn’t want to drag one on my trip. It did make me slightly uncomfortable. The scooters aren’t very fast; they go up to about 20 km/h, but it’s enough to get you seriously hurt should you fall. 

Perhaps not so sustainable

Despite the city’s openness towards this new mode of transport, many Berliners don’t particularly like e-scooters. Some go so far as to vandalize them, burning the QR codes to make them impossible to rent, or even busting them up completely — the Lime in the photo below was completely unusable for both these reasons. 

I’ve talked to some locals, and reasons for these include people, especially tourists, driving e-scooters recklessly and parking them in the wrong places. Recently, an association for visually impaired individuals staged a protest against e-scooters, claiming they’re making life miserable for the disabled. 

But there’s another potential reason for this: ecology. The idea behind e-scooter sharing is that it replaces, to some extent, the cars that pollute the city streets. But, unlike regular bikes, they do contain lithium batteries, whose production has a non-negligible carbon footprint. There’s also indication that the e-scooters last for a very short time before they need to be replaced, which doesn’t make them very environmentally friendly. 

There are ways to improve this. For example, Wind Mobility, which raised 45 million euros ($50 million) in VC money in July, has scooters with a replaceable battery, and I’ve gotten the impression that Berliners care about ecology enough for this to make a difference. (Wind hasn’t yet launched in Berlin.)

Better or worse?

The last time I visited Berlin was exactly a year ago, and e-scooters were nowhere to be seen. Now, they’re there at every corner. To me, it seemed that they made a positive difference; I saw a lot of people using them, and that could mean people aren’t driving as much in cars. But I also saw quite a few recklessly thrown on the street, and heard a fair number of people grumbling about them, even as I was just passing. 

Sustainability questions aside, the scooters aren’t that much different than shareable e-bikes — they take up a little less space, and (ideally) go on the same roads. It will probably take a few years for cities like Berlin to find out how many e-scooters on the streets are optimal and which, if any, additional rules and regulations should be implemented. 

For me, all the e-scootering around made the Berlin experience better than ever. Next time, I’ll bring a helmet, though.