See Also: part 1 and part 2 (and more coming).

This blog post serves as my “first impression” of the Segway Max G3 electric scooter. However, thoughts like this are meaningless if you don’t know the background of the person doing the thinking. Some “professional scooter reviewer” that goes through fifty scooters a year, spending maybe a week with each one, has a very different opinion on scooters than someone who spends years with the same model.

Likewise, folks who are used to $3000 scooters probably have very different views on $500 scooters.

In order to let you know if my thoughts even matter to you, here is a rundown of my “scooter background.”

2020: The Kugoo G5 made me a “scooter guy.”

In December 2020, I got my first electric scooter – a $799 Kugoo G5. This was a review unit I was sent, and as I wrote about at the time, it was dead on arrival. After some weeks, I was able to receive a replacement unit, and that one worked great. After a few weeks of getting used to riding it (I had never even ridden a skateboard, so the whole experience was new to me), it became my new favorite means of transportation. If I lived close enough to work to ride it there each day (weather permitting), I would have started doing that and been quite happy. It was a joy to ride.

I became a “scooter guy,” even though I had previously had zero interest in them, and thought they were dumb.

Here is the Amazon listing for that scooter:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09L81Q3VV?ref_=ppx_hzod_title_dt_b_fed_asin_title_0_0

As you may notice by the awful reviews, I was not the only one that had a problem with the unit. Amazon even pulled the listing, and shut down the reviews. I was never able to post my review there.

The Kugoo G5 was a wonderful riding experience. It had 10″ air filled tires, and they were wider that I expected on a scooter. This made rides very smooth and it handled small bumps easily. It was also a very powerful scooter, able to speed up hills in my neighborhood without any struggles at all.

The Kugoo G5 was lacking in a few areas. First, the Kugoo app was crap. Every time I ran it, I had to search and find the scooter and connect to it. Since you had to use the app to “lock” the scooter (which was dumb since anyone could download the app and unlock it), I was constantly having to “disconnect and reconnect” when I went back to the scooter and wanted to unlock it.

Second, my unit started squeaking as I rode it and there was zero maintenance guides I could find anywhere about what I might do about it.

Third, while it did fold down, it was cumbersome to do that, and when you folded it, the front wheel went up so the base would rest awkwardly on the floor.

And fourth, it was heavy. It was a real pain to get up and down the steps to m apartment. If it was easier to fold down, I would have just done that and carried it, but since that was a pain, I ended up trying to lift/roll it up the steps. I sure wished I had a lighter scooter every time I did that.

But beyond those items, it really was a wonderful scooter — far beyond what I would have expected from a brand I’d never heard of. I routinely got around 45 miles on a charge, and never had any issues with it … until it broke. But more on that in a moment.

2023: The GoTrax Apex Max made me a dual-scooter guy

In 2023, I got a GoTrax Apex Max. At $399, it was half the cost of the Kugoo G5. I referred to it as my “toy scooter”. It had much less power, with much shorter range and a slower top speed. BUT, it was lighter, and I could easily pick it up and carry it without needing to fold it down.

However, it was so underpowered it could barely drive up my street. A slight incline would cause it to slow down to 7 mph. Had the hill been any longer, I would have been walking it.

BUT, it was a great “easy” scooter to use for running a few blocks away to pick up a TO GO order or whatever. I wouldn’t dare try to ride it anywhere else since I expect I would get stuck on a hill or just run out of battery.

It also had no way to “lock” it so I had to carry it when I entered a business, and would only park it when I could be on the other side of a window keeping an eye on it.

2025: The Kugoo kraps out.

When it warmed up enough to start riding the scooters again this year, I noticed my Kugoo handlebar was loose. It had a bit of wiggle that it never had before. As I rode it, I felt unsafe from that.

I tried to fix it by tightening some bolts at the base of the stem, but that didn’t help. Eventually, I resorted to disassembling everything I could down there to see if I could find something else to tighten.

I found this:

Yep, the stem broke. That was the “wiggle” I was feeling, and my feeling of being “unsafe” was well justified. The only thing holding it together was a plastic housing! Riding with that broken part could have ended badly.

I tried to contact the Amazon seller, but their account was no longer active. Searching to find the Kugoo website led me to a half-dozen or so different websites with variations like Kugoo Mobility, Kugoo USA, Kugoo EU, etc. I reached out to a few of them looking for a maintenance manual (before I had disassembled the stem), and then again trying to see if any replacement parts were available so I could repair it.

Silence.

Well, almost. One of them which sent me to a blog post that talks about airing up tires, and a confirmation that they had no parts.

At that point, I knew I wanted a replacement scooter and that it would not be a Kugoo. I wanted something from a company that supported their product and had spare parts available.

And I needed it “now” since I did not want to spend the next few months going down the rabbit hole of reading reviews, watching “review” videos, and hanging out in scooter forums asking questions.

To be continued…