BMW electric scooter a sales dud.. it's not rideable, imo.

[NonPolluter]

BMW sold less than 500 a year, at $25,000 per scooter, no wonder.

There is a negative review from a French owner on another forum that explains why. For one thing, the saddle is allegedly rock-hard.


The alleged fundamental design flaws of the BMW electric scooter (according to the French review) and the astronomical price makes me wonder if BMW intended to "fail" in this project, right from the get-go.

No worries, since Aliexpress or DHgate can ship an equivalent electric scooter anywhere in the world, for 1/4 the cost, or less.

[Richard230]

Well, I can't fault the reviewers for saying that the saddle is hard and uncomfortable. As a longtime BMW motorcycle customer I can confirm that when it comes to BMW saddles, they like to punish their customers for riding their expensive vehicles. And I wouldn't be too surprised if the BMW electric scooter was doomed to fail in the marketplace as even at its high price, they are likely loosing money on every sale. BMW probably had to come out with that scooter to please EU regulators and want to make a point that electric vehicles are not what their customers want. I will also note that my BMW dealer hopes the scooter never comes to North America as BMW would make them try to sell some and they say their customers (who reside in the middle of Silicon Valley) would never buy them. Kind of odd, but I guess they know their clientele.

[Richard230]

Zero's electric motorcycles seem to be improving incredibly every year, yet almost all electric scooters are built by no-name brands with the exception of the BMW C evolution which is too expensive to become mainstream in the European market. Couldn't the likes of Honda or Yamaha release a low cost, low range scooter aimed at the city?

You would think so, but those are big corporations and need a big market before they will introduce a complex and expensive new technology (that will likely drive their franchise dealerships crazy trying to find technicians to work on them) like an electric motorcycle. No doubt they are not seeing that market yet.

In BMW's case all of their research, technology, and most of the parts for the scooter came from their (well-funded) electric cars side of the company and were then put into a chassis very similar to their existing IC scooters. So there were likely much lower costs to produce the C-Evolution than other companies might have to incur.

Rumor has it that the C-Evolution will be introduced into the U.S. market next year. We (and all of the big players) are likely looking forward to seeing how that works out for BMW. I don't think my BMW dealer is expecting very much, though. Right now they have one customer who is interested in the e-scooter - and about 20 who are ready to buy the latest $22,000 LC IC GS model.