An e-Scooter Or A Car, The Preferred Daily Commuter

COULD E-SCOOTER BE BETTER THAN DRIVING A CAR?

Malaysians spend an average of RM611 per month on transportation alone, accounting for 13.5% of total monthly spending, according to data from the Department of Statistics Malaysia.

Our nation is also notorious for its high cost of car ownership, with Kuala Lumpur ranked as the fifth most expensive city in the world to buy even a midsize car. 

Zakwan, a 24-year-old Executive

Even more than that, the idea of owning a car which  loses value year after year is not very compromising these days.

On a side note, those who can afford a private car actually face the burdensome task of navigating through traffic every day, as the average motorist in the Klang Valley spends a whopping 44 hours per month stuck in traffic.

These long hours could have been spent on fitness routines or spending quality time with family, pets, or loved ones to especially keep our mental and physical health in check.

As the era evolves and things have shifted over time, driving license applications have been declining and are now at their lowest level since World War II as a similar pattern can be seen not only in Malaysia but a worldwide trend. 

The reasons being perhaps derives from owning a car costs taxes and the hassle grows when finances come into consideration especially for the new generation lets say between 1997 to 2012, the Gen Z of course. 

Talking about postmillennial, according to Roberta Katz, a senior research scholar at Stanford's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Generation Z is a highly collaborative cohort that cares deeply about others and has a pragmatic attitude about how to address a set of inherited issues like climate change (CASBS). 

This explains some of the Gen Z’s preferences of choosing electric scooters due to KL's transportation emissions producing 14 million metric tonnes of CO2 per year, affecting climate change.

Image from Beam/Facebook

Meanwhile other reasons could be as the total cost of car ownership (over a five-year loan period) can be around RM95,000, car-sharing programmes or public transportation offers better options for the current generation.

A statistic also shared 76% of 670 Malaysians drivers agrees to consider switching to a combination of e-scooters and public transportation for their daily commuting. If that happens, what will happen to our automotive market, especially car brands?

Anyhow, Beam Mobility is celebrating the positive effects of going car-free on both a micro and macro level this week in conjunction with World Car-Free Day. While there is still work to be done to create and perfect a car-free generation, Beam invites everyone to take a step in this direction today by driving something new for the betterment of the country.