Lithuania is paying people to trade in polluting cars for escooters and ebikes

Too bad in the Netherlands we are hamstrung by an asinine law that considers a 2-wheel scooter (called a &quot;step&quot; here) to be the same as a 4-wheel cart that carries children (called a &quot;stint&quot;).<p>This law was prompted by an accident where a person driving children in an electric cart crossed train tracks into the path of an oncoming train, and 4 children were killed.<p>Electric 2-wheel scooters would be perfect for a lot of places in NL - places where there is already a shortage of bike parking, and places where if you park and lock your bike outside, it _will_ be stolen if it is halfway nice. At least with a folding scooter, you can take it inside with you easily. Plus you can take it onto a bus, which is not possible with a bike.<p>Normally the Dutch are pretty thoughtful about their approach to laws, but this one just makes no sense.

This is good. It makes no sense at all to do electric car incentives for thousands of dollars but not incentivize far cheaper and greener options like they&#x27;ve done in Canada and US.

Escooter&#x2F;ebike is rarely a replacement for a car. Maybe if you use your car only to commute to work, but in these cases, especially if you live in a city, public transport is a good replacement as well. The main advantage of a car is freedom. You can go anywhere you want, any time you want. Need to buy groceries for the whole week and deliver them home, a car can do that. Your wife is pregnant and you need to deliver her to the hospital in the middle of the night, your car can do that. You want to go on a spontaneous trip somewhere, your car can do that.

What is up with that janky photoshop cover image attempt though.

I read somewhere that electric vehicles had some trouble operating in cold environments - something to do with a big loss in mileage. Has this problem been resolved in modern vehicles?<p>Winters in those parts can be quite nippy.

This is wonderful news. I can&#x27;t wait for California to do something it. Instead of subsidizing wealthy suburban dwellers with discounts on their expensive new cars which still generate harmful pollution [1], we could subsidize multiple times as many e-bikes for lower income folks who could have a bigger impact on our roads and air quality.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;business-48944561" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;business-48944561</a>

Standard &quot;cash-for-clunckers&quot; schemes are about subsidising the auto industry, they are about boosting sales.<p>Now this one seems different but what is missing is an analysis on whether it is a good use of resources and actually positive for the environment to spend money on scrapping an existing car instead of continuing to use it for its useful lifetime and only then to replace it for a better car or mode of transport.

Maybe other Lithuanians can chime in (I&#x27;m not from there, but my girlfriend is), this is something that may only work in countries with similar geographic profile (Netherlands for example). I remember the drive from Riga to Lithuania or travelling by train there, and I don&#x27;t remember seeing a flatter place in my life (and I&#x27;ve been to most European + American countries). When her parents visited they were surprised with how much we go &#x27;up and down&#x27; in just my city alone.<p>I can see this working in some flatter areas of the country (same as I see bike adoption in those areas), but find the e-scooters at least too slow&#x2F;battery hogs in this scenario (not sure about e-bikes though)<p>In any case, this is a right move for them, but I think pegging this usage to some kind of license is also important.

Old clunker needs to pass smog test to get the trade in $.

Here in Taiwan, a company called Gogoro [1] manufactures electric scooters (the type you sit on, similar to a motorcycle). These electric scooters have become fairly popular, with electric scooters capturing 15% of new scooter sales (the majority of those are Gogoros but there are also other brands) [2]. The scooters go up to ~90 kph and can travel anywhere a gasoline scooter can.<p>Gogoro scooters&#x27; core innovation is their swappable batteries: when you run out of juice, you pull up to a battery station, take the two batteries out of the scooter (each is about 9 kg and a little smaller than a loaf of bread), put them into the swap station, and take two new batteries and put them into the scooter. The whole process takes under a minute (video [3]). You get around 65 km of range on a pair of batteries, and there are around 1,800 stations in Taiwan [4], which works out to around 4.5 km between stations, but in practice they are very dense (5-10 blocks apart) in the cities and nonexistent in the mountainous central rural areas (map [5] or [6]).<p>I think Taiwan has a lot of road smog, which especially affects scooter riders (who are the majority of road users), since a car has an air filter and a helmet doesn&#x27;t. Gas scooters are definitely a big (possibly the biggest?) source of road smog. I&#x27;m glad that Gogoro is putting a dent into this problem.<p>Personally, I purchased a used Gogoro 2 Plus about a month ago and am quite happy with it; it&#x27;s quite a well-designed product with good attention to UX detail. It&#x27;s good for running errands, getting around town, and getting to hikes&#x2F;nature close to the city. However, riding a scooter is inherently less comfortable than driving a car because you&#x27;re exposed to the elements, and it can&#x27;t carry as much cargo (or people) as a car. My partner and I took a 400 km 2-day road trip on it, but it was exhausting and I don&#x27;t plan to ever try traveling 200 km on it in a single day again (again, this is a general scooter thing, not specific to Gogoro as a brand). I&#x27;m working on getting a Taiwanese car license so I can rent a (gasoline) car for longer trips.<p>Various local governments have given subsidies to encourage people to purchase electric scooters, similar to this Lithuanian example, although they could probably do more, as electric scooter sales have dipped 23% YoY in recent months [7].<p>I&#x27;d love to see Gogoro expand to more places, although I think the limiting factor is the battery station network; you need a relatively dense market like Taiwan for it to make sense. You also need a market where consumers are interested in driving scooters instead of cars. Gogoro has started expanding internationally, with Israel as their first foreign market [8], so maybe you&#x27;ll see them for sale near you sometime soon :)<p>(Not affiliated with Gogoro, just a person who hates smog and is excited about what Gogoro is doing).<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gogoro.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gogoro.com&#x2F;</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.taipeitimes.com&#x2F;News&#x2F;biz&#x2F;archives&#x2F;2020&#x2F;03&#x2F;13&#x2F;2003732573" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.taipeitimes.com&#x2F;News&#x2F;biz&#x2F;archives&#x2F;2020&#x2F;03&#x2F;13&#x2F;200...</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=g_-PKSPbvpw" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=g_-PKSPbvpw</a><p>[4] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.taiwannews.com.tw&#x2F;en&#x2F;news&#x2F;3988915" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.taiwannews.com.tw&#x2F;en&#x2F;news&#x2F;3988915</a><p>[5] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gogoro.com&#x2F;tw&#x2F;findus&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gogoro.com&#x2F;tw&#x2F;findus&#x2F;</a><p>[6] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mowd.tw&#x2F;gostation&#x2F;map&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mowd.tw&#x2F;gostation&#x2F;map&#x2F;</a><p>[7] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.taiwannews.com.tw&#x2F;en&#x2F;news&#x2F;4024434" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.taiwannews.com.tw&#x2F;en&#x2F;news&#x2F;4024434</a><p>[8] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;electrek.co&#x2F;2019&#x2F;12&#x2F;11&#x2F;gogoro-electric-scooters-global-expansion-israel&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;electrek.co&#x2F;2019&#x2F;12&#x2F;11&#x2F;gogoro-electric-scooters-glob...</a>

If we could get people to trade in dirty diesels for scooters, electric cars&#x2F;hybrids and bio-gas powered cars that would be a big win for clean air in cities! Ie very good that Lithuania shows the way here.

They better make sure the same Trabant is not traded in 47 times...Handed over to a crusher - the crusher ticket is needed. Need to watch crushers for the same thing. Even though I love all Lithuanians!! (Labas) they spent over 50 years under a fully corrupt regime and have many ethnic Russians in residence, and to even survive, they had to exploit every advantage. Flea-markets were an art form of ways to buy&#x2F;sell whatever you could find to deal in. I am sure the current free government will try to emplace fraud detection - just as sure am I that any possible loophole will be found.....perhaps a few Lithuanians will tell us how it is on these latter day front lines?