The business of directing electric scooters: illegal speed for 100 euros

It may not be a simple hobby of those urban drivers who turn green at a traffic light, they see electric scooters going faster and faster. For between 10 and 150 euros, any owner of one of these vehicles can get it around the forest so that it drives more than 20, 25 or 30 kilometers per hour which, depending on which city and road, the law allows.

This newspaper was able to verify offers from scooter sellers in different parts of Spain – Catalonia, Madrid, Aragon, the Basque Country, Andalusia and the Valencian community. for between 10 and 150 euros they change the power to watts of the vehicle to skip the legal limit.

“All the devices can be demarcated. Otherwise no one would buy it; to go to 25 & mldr; no one would buy it & rdquor ;, explains a seller online Southern Spain. In business They call it “demarcate”, and it consists primarily in intercepting the sensors that disconnect the skate’s battery when it reaches 25 kilometers per hour.

Usually the electric scooters are for sale in Spain standard with the capacity to reach 50 km / h but limited to 25. These tricks they increase the power even to go up to 70, and in some cases reaches 100.

Result: uncertain balancing machines in the hands of a young audience which exposes the body to high speeds with no paralysis, no air sac and no adequate brakes to respond. “A lot of people take it indefinitely and are careful not to give the edges to go too fast, okay? The legal thing is to take it limited; then you decide”, Claims another supplier of scooters, this one in the north, to whom EL PERIÓDICO is addressed. All salespeople consulted leave the final responsibility in the hands of the customer.

Racing scooters

“On any given night we caught four children doing chase in a bottle& rdquor ;, predicts a source from the Valencia Municipal Police. The agent fears the emulation effect that the eScooter Championship could cause, a scooter racing competition announced for this year on all sorts of virtual platforms… as a professional sport.

But in these races, the use of the ESC is planned, a race car that the organization calls “the formula 1 of scooters & rdquor ;, which reaches 100 km / h, and not the thin urban machines that already fill the streets that pass through the environment is not favored.policy of the municipalities.

One hundred per hour provides a supplier to its customers in the Valencian community with a foreign-made model, the Dualtron Storm. “It is not legal to demarcate it,” he admitted. I sell ordinary scooters, which go out of the shop at 25 (km / h), and people say to me: ‘Hey, stretch it out for me’. Y I unofficially demarcate it up to 50 yards ”

You know it is not legal… except private: “If you use it for your farm, for a port, for an airport, a campsite… there it is legal & rdquor ;, consider this seller.

“N trick”

Police monitor the most daring, but there is no record of a significant number of sanctions in Madrid or Barcelona on scooter users for speeding or other offenses. Among other things because it is still waiting for publication in the BOE Manual characteristics of personal mobility vehicles. A decree of the Ministry of the Presidency on 10 November 2020 instructed its drafting at the Central Traffic Headquarters.

The law has yet to be done, but the trick has already been done: for between 150 and 250 euros, a small controller is sold that diverts a legal or illegal speed to the skate according to the will of its owner: “There is a little trick; it is an assignment. You carry it in your pocket, you push the button and you restrict it… ”, explains one of the suppliers contacted.

The device, similar to the electronic control of a garage door, is sold for 60 euros in the Ecoplanet store in Madrid, and between 36 and 220 euros in the Urban 360 chain in Barcelona. In the absence of legal prohibition, “It is not the seller who makes the mistake, but the driver who violates the limit of speed & rdquor ;, explains the Valencian policeman.

The limitation is for some wet paper managers. One of the tricks offered is to buy a certain skate model on AliExpress, take it apart, expands its battery box and adds other Chinese-made batteries of up to 1,800 watts (the usual is 250). Result: 80 km / h.

Related news

One hundred euros is the average price of these secret services that change the number of electric scooters on the street. Many stores that carry it use the environmental claim in their names and advertisements. The cheapest offer, 10 euros, is published in Zaragoza. It consists of disabling the speed limit on a control screen, via bluetooth. “It goes through the screen. In this model, you place the parameters on the screen and it is delimited. Call me, I’ll tell you how and then you do it “, explains another seller from the north of the country.

Fraudulent devices are already being offered for between 300 and 750 euros in Madrid, Barcelona, ​​Las Palmas and Jaén, according to offers published in the less specialized but more popular portal: Milanuncios. The tips for change the machine also circulates on YouTube. Among the most eloquent, one titled, with emoticons of flames included, “TRUCAR PATINETE so that it runs from 80 to 90KM / H”, with 4,400 visits. Another, less striking, but equally frequent, tells how -with a screwdriver, a cutter and adhesive stop paint- to change the safety fuses of the vehicle so that it runs more; so it starts, literally, burning wheel.