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Tourists ride electric scooters around Singapore’s Marina Bay financial district. The city state is currently exploring ways to allow such vehicles on its roads and pavements to help drive a shift to more sustainable urban transport. Image: DoublePHOTO studio / Shutterstock.com
Airwheels, E-scooters and Mini-farthings: Your ride in the future? Fancy riding an electric unicycle to the train station? Or an electric version of the kick-scooters from your childhood? These personal electric vehicles could be the missing piece in Asia’s hopes for a car-free, public-transit oriented transport system. decade ago, talk of ‘Airwheels’ and ‘Mini-farthings’ would have been met with blank stares from anyone who heard the terms. But today, these words - names for an emerging breed of personal electric mobility devices (PMEDs) - are likely to receive an enthusiastic
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By Vaidehi Shah
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response from commuters and proponents of sustainable urban transport alike. Airwheels, which are self-balancing unicycles; mini-farthings, a smaller, souped-up version of the ancient penny-farthing bicycle; electric kickscooters (e-scooters) and battery-powered bicycles, are just a few examples