Every electric scooter has two range figures. There is the one printed on the box, and the one you get on a Tuesday morning in February with a backpack on. The gap between them is not marketing dishonesty so much as testing convention — but knowing how the convention works lets you predict your real distance to within about 10%.
Start with watt-hours, ignore everything else
Battery capacity is quoted three ways and only one of them is useful. Amp-hours (Ah) measure charge, not energy, so they are meaningless without voltage. Milliamp-hours are amp-hours dressed up to look bigger. Watt-hours (Wh) combine both, and watt-hours are what predict range.
The conversion is one multiplication: Wh = volts × amp-hours. A 36 V 7.8 Ah scooter holds 281 Wh. A 48 V 15 Ah scooter holds 720 Wh — two and a half times as much energy, even though the amp-hour figure has only doubled. If you take one thing from this article, make it the habit of converting every scooter you consider into watt-hours before comparing them.
The number that ties energy to distance: Wh/km
Divide usable watt-hours by your consumption in watt-hours per kilometre and you have range. Consumption is where all the interesting variation lives. Private scooters land somewhere between 9 and 33 Wh/km, and where you sit in that band is decided mostly by speed.
| Steady speed | Consumption | Range from 500 Wh usable |
|---|---|---|
| 15 km/h | 9–12 Wh/km | 42–55 km |
| 20 km/h | 11–14 Wh/km | 36–45 km |
| 25 km/h | 14–17 Wh/km | 29–36 km |
| 30 km/h | 17–22 Wh/km | 23–29 km |
| 40 km/h | 26–33 Wh/km | 15–19 km |
Notice how brutal the top of that table is. Going from 20 km/h to 40 km/h halves your range twice over — you travel less than half as far for double the speed. That is not battery weakness, it is aerodynamics: drag rises with the square of speed, and the power to overcome it rises with the cube.
The five things that eat your range
1. Speed
The dominant factor above 20 km/h, and the only one fully under your control while riding. A standing rider presents roughly 0.72 m² of drag area to the wind — about the same as a small door. Tucking down over the bars cuts that to nearer 0.58 m², which is worth several kilometres on a long ride.
2. Weight
Rolling resistance scales directly with mass, so a 100 kg rider works about 40% harder than a 70 kg one at low speed. On the flat at speed the penalty shrinks to under 10% because drag dominates — but on hills, weight is everything, since you are lifting all of it.
3. Hills
A 10% gradient adds roughly 98 N of resistance for a 100 kg rider-and-scooter combination, which at 20 km/h is over 500 W of extra demand. What saves you is that hills come in pairs: energy spent climbing is partly returned on the descent, where you can coast. A route with 200 m of total climb typically costs 15–25% of range, not the 60% the climbing figure alone would suggest.
4. Temperature
Cold raises the internal resistance of lithium-ion cells, so less of the stored energy is available. Expect about 93% of rated capacity at 10 °C, 85% at 0 °C and 72% at −10 °C. Combined with denser cold air, a January commute can be 25% shorter than the same route in June.
5. Stop-start riding
Every acceleration from a standstill is kinetic energy you throw away at the next red light. Urban riding with frequent stops adds 10–20% to consumption over a steady cruise. Regenerative braking claws back perhaps a third of that, which is why scooters with regen do better in traffic than their specs imply.
Working an example properly
Say you are looking at a 48 V 13 Ah scooter — 624 Wh — for a 14 km each-way commute with two short climbs, riding at about 25 km/h, and you weigh 85 kg with a laptop bag on an 18 kg scooter.
- Usable energy: 624 Wh × 0.90 = 562 Wh.
- Steady consumption at 25 km/h for 103 kg all-in: about 15 Wh/km.
- City stop-start correction × 1.15, rolling-route correction × 1.12 → 19.3 Wh/km.
- Range in mild weather: 562 ÷ 19.3 = 29 km.
- In winter at 0 °C: usable drops to 478 Wh, so range falls to about 25 km.
A 28 km round trip just fits in summer — with about a kilometre of reserve, which is no reserve at all — and does not fit in winter. That is the calculation that saves people from an expensive mistake, and it is exactly what the range calculator does, including the temperature and terrain derates.
The right question is never "how far does it go" but "how far does it go on my route, at my weight, in my winter".
How to buy with range in mind
- Double your one-way distance, then add 30%. If you cannot charge at the other end, that is your minimum usable range.
- Convert everything to watt-hours. It is the only figure that compares fairly across voltages.
- Discount the claim by 35–45%. That lands you close to real-world range for mixed riding at legal speeds.
- Account for ageing. After three years of daily use, expect 80–88% of the original capacity — check yours with the battery health calculator.
- Prefer higher voltage at the same watt-hours. Less current for the same power means cooler wiring, less voltage sag and better hill behaviour.
Getting more from the scooter you own
Tyre pressure first: a pneumatic tyre at 35 psi rather than 50 psi can add a third to rolling resistance, and small tyres lose air quickly. Then speed discipline — holding 20 km/h instead of 28 km/h routinely buys 30% more distance. Finally, treat the battery well: charge to 80–90% for daily use, avoid charging below freezing, and store at 40–70% if the scooter is parked for weeks. None of it shows on one ride; all of it decides whether year three still gets you to work.