Who’s Ready for the Electric Moped Moment?

On a recent Saturday morning in Washington, D.C., I convinced my girlfriend to try a new way to get to brunch: We’d ride one of the shiny black-and-blue Revel motor scooters that had just arrived in town.

D.C. has become something of a hotbed for micromobility experimentation—a rainbow of dockless electric kick-scooters vie for sidewalk space with Segways, hoverboards, e-unicycles, and other wheeled gadgets in the District’s touristy quarters. But the arrival of Revel for a four-month pilot represents a new twist. The company, which launched in Brooklyn last summer, offers a fleet of decidedly more robust vehicles—electric mopeds that can seat two, keep up with traffic, and general behave more like the cars and trucks with whom they share the streets.