Yeah, this is something that the anti-scooter people in my town (Berkeley) do not seem to grasp. The public scooter companies are getting murdered by cheap scooters. Overwhelming majority of scooters on the streets are dirt-cheap Gotrax models. They are so cheap they are cutting into the mode share of bicycling.
Where do you buy the serious kind of scooters used for transportation?
All I could find were cheap toy scooters.
My girlfriend rides a Mi Scooter Pro 2 to work, 11 miles each day. Cost us around $550 I think, and they’re very popular around here (hilly European capital). So I’d say that’s pretty cheap and also seriously usable.
Decathlon’s entry level escooter retails for about 450eur
You're comparing the cheap end of scooters to the expensive end of smartphones. The cheapest smartphones cost about 10x than the cheapest scooters. Tens of dollars (if not free) vs a few hundred dollars.