MONTREAL – October 30, 2026 -- An electric scooter that covers 25 miles (40 km) on a mild day will go about 22 miles (35 km) at 32°F (0°C), according to Apollo Scooters. The company analyzed 512,359 rides on 8,449 scooters, and the roughly 12% loss it found is well below the 20 to 50% figure often cited online.
Range loss builds gradually as temperatures fall
Apollo tagged each ride with the local air temperature and compared it with the same scooter at 68°F (20°C). The loss grows in steps rather than dropping off a cliff:
- About 5% at 50°F (10°C)
- About 10% at 41°F (5°C)
- About 12% at 32°F (0°C)
- About 13% at 20°F (-7°C)
Bigger batteries did not change the picture. Every Apollo model, from 540 Wh to 1,800 Wh, lost 10 to 15% near freezing.
Winter riders recovered 98% of their fall range by spring
Scooters ridden through winter dropped to 86% of their fall range. By spring they were back to 98%, matching scooters that were never ridden in the cold.
CEO and co-founder Maciek Piskorz said the company could not find the source of the higher figures online, so it measured the loss itself. He added that a scooter has no cabin to heat: "You're wearing the heater."
Apollo's buying advice is to size a scooter for the November commute, not the July one. Riders should take their round-trip distance and add about 15%.
Snow and salt keep Montreal riders off scooters, not batteries
In New York, about one in five summer riders still rode in January. In Montreal, fewer than one in fifty did. Apollo attributes the gap to snow, ice and road salt rather than battery chemistry.
Batteries showed no measurable range loss through 2,500 miles
A separate study covered 1.1 million rides on 49,837 scooters since 2021. It found no measurable battery range loss through 2,500 miles (4,000 km), about six years of typical riding.
Scooters tend to get parked rather than worn out. Of those past 5,000 miles (8,000 km), 60% were ridden in the last three months, versus 16% of those under 100 miles (160 km).
The data comes from Apollo's app and covers only its own scooters
The cold-weather study uses rides from April 2025 to October 2026. The lifespan study uses rides since August 2021. Each scooter is compared only with itself at similar speed and trip length, with range measured on real roads as distance per percent of battery. Apollo says the cold-weather effects reflect lithium-ion chemistry rather than anything brand-specific.