Are these scooters all (derivatives of) the same model? (3500 Li)

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moreati
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Are these scooters all (derivatives of) the same model? (3500 Li)

I've spent some time researching the various electric scooters available in the US and the UK. I'm considering one for an UK, urban commute of 12 miles (plus detours/errands) each way in up to 45 mph traffic. This would be my first experience on 2 wheels. Ideally I'd like to get a 45 mph capable scooter, that I could buy restricted as the 50-cc classification, and then get derestricted once I had the necessary qualifications. It doesn't look like such a model exists though.

There seem to be a few OEM models that are resold under various names, In particular I'm thinking of the scooter badged by X-Treme Scooters as the XM3500Li: http://www.x-tremescooters.com/electric_mopeds/xm-3500li/xm-3500li.html

Visually, it appears to be the same model as the following scooters (and possibly others):
Elecscoot 4 http://www.elecscoot.co.uk/acatalog/index.html
Marin-EV ELI-4000 http://www.marin-ev.com/motorcycles/ELI-4000

Do these scooters come from the same source (Mountain Chen)? Are they likely the same base model?
If they are from the same source, how much do importers typically modify/upgrade the scooter? The Elecscoot is advertised as having a BMS, but I understand from reading the forum the XM-3500 does not.

Many thanks, Alex

reikiman
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Re: Are these scooters all (derivatives of) the same model? ...

I don't know the details as deeply as some on this site but yeah essentially it's a rebadging situation and the parts are largely the same. Maybe. I wouldn't read too much into similarity in the plastic skin attached to scooters with different brand names. As they say it's what's inside that counts ;-) ...

A week or so ago I talked with Joel of Marin-EV and yeah it looked a lot like other bikes with other names such as the EFUN-D. However they aren't all from Mountain Chen's factory. There are two factories, one is Mountain Chen's the other is EFUN and I think is run by his brother.

My guess is even if two bikes with different brands from different distributors come from the same sourced factory, that they may still be different on the inside. One distributor might request one combination of parts, and another a different combination.

Have you found alibaba.com and similar globalization e-commerce sites? You can browse through hundreds of e-bicycle, e-scooter, and e-motorcycle manufacturers whose bikes happen to look amazingly alike. But the vast majority are underpowered e.g. 500 watts and they call it a "scooter" bleah. The ones making properly powerful drive systems are very few.

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