As a pedestrian or cyclist you usually don’t hear them coming, unless you catch the faint whine of the motor as the electric scooter hurtles past you, revealing the rear view of a couple of laughing teenagers, a Chinese tourist, or a French businessman — buttocks tightly clenched as he balances on the scooter’s tiny platform — on his way to work.
Paris in 2019 is a chaotic experimental playground for all kinds of new electric vehicles, but among them it is the ubiquitous trottinette that currently dominates the streets — and unfortunately also the pavements — of the French capital. (To avoid confusion, it should be explained that these trottinettes, with wheels the size of those on a supermarket trolley, are the electric version of a child’s scooter; in France un scooter is a small motorcycle).
At first glance this electric free-for-all seems like good news for the environment, the people of Paris and the sharing economy. But it cannot last. The number of trottinettes offered for rent by a dozen companies such as Lime, Bird and Tier is forecast to rise from 15,000 to about 40,000 by the end of the year. They jostle for space not only with old-fashioned bicycles (that’s me) and vehicles running on diesel or petrol but also with shared electric cars, electric-assisted bicycles such as Uber’s bright-red Jump, and privately owned electric skateboards and electric monowheels, a kind of stand-up unicycle balanced by gyroscopes and accelerometers.