This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Gary Brown, an architectural visualization artist in Charlotte, North Carolina. It has been edited for length and clarity.
My wife and I own a townhouse here in Charlotte. It’s about four miles from where I work.
We actually closed on the house as the city shut down due to COVID in 2020. We entered that period where everybody was working from home for about two years.
Then, as I started going back to working in an office, I realized that I hadn’t really driven much because I’ve been working from home. I’m spending $700 a month on a car payment, insurance, parking fees at my office, and all the other costs of a car just to drive four miles down the road.
That started to get me thinking: How else can I get there?
At first, I got an electric Segway scooter, but after about six months, I realized that it was too hard on my back. I also considered taking the bus or the light rail, but the routes don’t go quite close enough.
I ended up getting a gas scooter. I had seen them while studying abroad in Europe and realized that this problem has already been solved by just about every other country except ours.
It checked all the boxes: It’s fuel-efficient. I could park in a garage downtown and not pay anything — a huge deal, given that I was spending thousands of dollars a year parking my car there. It also gets 60 miles per gallon and has some storage and heated seats.
Owning a scooter is cheaper than owning a car
I bought my scooter used for $3500 cash. A helmet and other gear cost another $1000.
The operating costs are much lower than a car: My insurance is $35 a month, and gas for the month averages to about $15. Yearly maintenance that runs about $300.
Riding in the heat and cold can be rough at times, but that’s a tradeoff I can accept. If the weather is really bad, I’ll ask my wife to drive me to work, or I’ll take a rideshare. Uber and all those apps have helped facilitate my turn to a scooter.
After about a year of using the scooter, I had barely used my Tesla, so I sold it.
When I first started this experiment, there was only ever my scooter, a motorcycle or two, and a handful of bicycles where I parked at work.
Now, sometimes I have trouble finding a parking space because there are four or five scooters, several motorcycles, some electric scooters and bikes, and fewer bicycles.
I read predictions that one day, everyone will rely on Uber rides or robotaxis instead of owning a vehicle. I don’t think that’s going to happen. We are a country where freedom is based on your car, and our cities and highways are designed around that.
There may come a time when owning a car is old-fashioned, but I don’t think driving will be. Scooters like mine are a sort of gateway drug to alternative modes of transportation.
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