Spring, sunny season, walks in the open air and trips out of town. And of course electric scooters: these vehicles have had a perhaps unexpected boom a couple of years ago, coinciding with the first lockdown coronavirus and the increased demand for individual modes of travel, and demand has hardly dropped since then.
Also for this reason, from 2020 to today it was necessary to adapt the rules of use to the greater diffusion of these vehicles, which can be guided from 14 years upwards, not necessarily with driving license or driving licenseand can be used on urban roads with a speed limit of 50 km / h, on cycle paths not exceeding 25 per hour (which in any case no electric scooter can do) and also on pavements and pedestrian areas at no more than 6 km / h. The helmet is mandatory only under 18 yearsbut highly recommended for all other drivers.
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Segway Ninebot F40E, technical characteristics
We had the opportunity to test the Ninebot F40E, the middle model of the Segway range for 3 weeks: it has a 350W motor (peaking at 700W), front wheel drive, electronic and disc braking, 10 ”tubeless tires and 367 Wh battery. Net of discounts and promotions, costs 569 euros and is exactly halfway between the scooters of the D family (350-500 euros) and those characterized by the letters E or G, which reach 800 euros and more.
In short, it is a excellent compromisemore or less aligned, from the point of view of price and technical characteristics, with one of the bestsellers on the market, the Xiaomi Mi Electric Scooter Pro 2, which costs about twenty euros less in the list.
How’s the Segway Ninebot F40E
The test took place at the beginning of March in the streets of Genoa, a city that is not easy for these means, given the constant presence of climbs (and descents) that are also quite challenging. According to the manufacturer, the Ninebot F40E can overcome gradients of up to 20%, and even in the steepest streets of the center of the Ligurian capital we still managed to travel without problems at just over 20 per hour in S mode.
The speech of the how to use it is important: the Ninebot F40E has 3 (the other two are Eco and Drive) and the one in which you use it has a huge impact on both performance and, above all, battery life. In Sport mode it is not difficult consume half of it even in a distance of just 6-7 kilometers. In short: as always for these vehicles, the declared autonomy (“up to 40 km”) should be taken more than anything else as a rough indication, because it varies a lot depending on the slope of the roads you face, the weight of the driver. as well as the outside temperature.
In traffic, the Ninebot F40E gives a nice feeling of securityperhaps higher than that offered by Xiaomi’s Mi Electric Scooter: it is definitely stable also driven in a cheerful way and when cornering, the braking is powerful (even too much, because the rear wheel tends to get stuck in the more decisive ones) and the vibrations transmitted to the frame are acceptable.
On the other hand, the weight (which partly contributes to stability and solidity) is not the most contained, since it exceeds 17 kg, and, probably also for this reason, power delivery is a bit lazyeven in Sport mode.
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