The legal status of e-scooters in Germany has made headlines since June 2019, and I'm excited to share my personal experience with an affordable and road-legal e-scooter that I recently purchased.

As a huge fan of electric vehicles, I was eager to get on the road with an e-scooter. However, most cheap options were not road legal, and even the ones that were started at around €400-€500, which was out of my budget. Fortunately, I found a discounted e-scooter from Maginon, which you can also order directly from their website.

The e-scooter is called the E-Maginon and has an impressive range of features. According to the manufacturer's specifications, it has an energy consumption of around 158Wh, which means that with this amount of energy, I was able to cover a distance of about 12 kilometers on a single charge.

One of the things that caught my attention about this e-scooter is its slow charging time. With my stopwatch, I measured that it took around 3 hours and 15 minutes to fully charge the battery pack. This might seem like a long time, but considering the capacity of the battery pack, which is 4.4Ah, it's not surprising.

Another upgrade I wanted to make was to extend the range of the e-scooter. To achieve this, I created a small modification called a "range extender." I used a DC jack and a suitable switch that can handle a bit of current, and connected the battery pack, motor controller, and DC Jack to the switch.

According to my wiring diagram, in switch position 1, the built-in battery pack powers everything like usual. But in switch position 2, you can hook up an external battery pack through the DC input jack. This is useful for me because I have a spare electric skateboard battery pack lying around that I can use as a backup.

In addition to the range extender modification, I also wanted to improve the charging time of the e-scooter. To achieve this, I soldered wires to the battery terminals and calculated a suitable resistor network for each lamp. After testing them, I successfully implemented my upgrade.

The last thing I wanted to do was to get rid of the external batteries used by the front and back lights. So, I soldered wires to the battery terminals and created a new wiring diagram that uses high-battery voltage resistors. This modification allowed me to remove the external batteries and replace them with internal ones, which are safer and more efficient.

Overall, my e-scooter upgrade was a success. The upgrades I implemented did not compromise the performance or safety of the scooter, but rather improved its range and charging time. If you're thinking of getting an e-scooter for yourself, I hope this review has been helpful in giving you an idea of what to expect.

Thanks for watching!

WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enIn case you don't know yet since June,2019 it is legal in Germany to ride so called E-Scooters,A.K.A. electric scooters on the streets.Which is great news for me because I'm a huge fan of electric vehicles.But everything I built on my own so far has never been legal to ride on the streets.So I immediately started searching for an E-Scooter on Amazon,but sadly all relatively cheap ones were not road legal.And the legal ones started at a price of around 400 to 500 euros.Which was a bit too pricey for my tastes.Thankfully though I found a discounted E-Scooter from (manufacturer), which you can also directly order from the Maginon website.It is called the E-Scooter Street one.Which can drive with speeds of up to 20 kilometers per hour,and up to range of 12 kilometers.At a price of only 279 euro.So needless to say I ordered one of those.And in this video I will not only go for tests ride with it.And tell you my personal opinion about it.But I will also try to upgrade some of its let's say a price related not optimal electrical features.Let's get started!This video is sponsored by JLCPCB, who produce high quality PCBs for a rather low price.I've been using the service for years, and I can surely recommend it.So why not upload your gerber files today, and get your own professionally made PCBs within a week.After receiving the E-Scooter I obviously opened up its box in order to take out the manual with the operatinglicense, a box filled with accessories and finally the E-Scooter itselfAt this point though. The scooter was not ready a for legal ride on the streets.Because I still had to attach the handles a bell a front light as well as a front reflector.And finally a back lights.And after than ordering a proper insurance for the scooter.Adding the insurance number plates to the back of it.And charging the scooter completely up with the given power supply.It was finally time for the first test ride.So I started my Geo Tracker app and basically just drove around with the scooter in my town.To get a good feeling for it. I tried all kinds of different terrains.And also how the scooter performs uphill and downhill.And after around one hour of driving.The battery was empty and I was able to achieve a travel distance of 12 kilometers.At the maximum speeds of 18 kilometers per hour.So it's most important test results are not that far off it's given product description.And while I enjoy driving this E-Scooter I still have to address some problems.The first one is that why the metal frame of the scooter is truly sturdy, and the hinge design is simple and effective.I have to say that some kind of shock absorber would have been nice.If you are driving on small rocks. It might not be such a problem.But as soon as you hit cobbles or something similar. Your whole body as well as the scooter will shake.There was even so much shaking that my front lights got loose. And I even lost my back light on the way back.Course that is a mechanical problem, that I'm not able to fix in this video.But I wanted to tell you anyway, because I think it is rather important.Now when it comes to electrical upgrades they are basically four of them which come to mind.Which includes the scooters maximum speeds, its range, it's required charge up time.And finally the fact that the front and back light use their own little batteries.So, let's see how much we can improve those problems.That means it was time to remove the lids of the electronics compartments. Which requiredremoving a couple of screws and also cutting the warranty seal.Because as it would expect my modifications will not only destroy the warranty of the scooter.But also probably it's tweak leader status.But anyway next I took off the lids which reveals the battery pack as well as the motor controller.Now I do have to say that the mounting and wiring was very neatly done.But since I need access to pretty much all wires later on. I pretty much had to destroy this nice setup.So first up, let's talk about the maximum speeds.Which I measured to be around 18 kilometers per hour.And which dropped over time as the voltage of the battery pack decreased.As you might already have guests. Thus the voltage of the battery packdirectly determine how fast a bill DC motor can spin.Which means by increasing the voltage we should get a higher speeds.But the problem I noticed was that even while going downhill with the scooter this beat was limited to 18 km/h.Which probably means that the controller limits the motors rpmaccording to the German law!And thus the voltage of the utilized battery pack could be enough to already get a higher end speeds.To prove this theory.I firstly measured the maximum RPM of the hub motor while using the original electronics.Which turned out to be around3200!Next, I disconnected the motor wires as well as the power wires of the battery and instead hooked them up to this VESC.After configuring the motor through the VESC software.And telling the VESC to spin the motor as fast as possible with the power of the battery pack.I measured an RPM of around3200 as well!That was quite a surprise for me because that means that the motor is specifically designed to achieve 18 km/h.With the given voltage of the battery pack.And only increasing the supply voltage Wood leads to higher speeds above 18 km/h.But since getting a higher voltage battery pack and using a new motor controller would be quite a hassle.I decided to not alter the maximum speeds.Next is the rangeWhich turned out to be around 12 kilometers with the given battery pack that comes with an energy of around158WH.To for example double of the range, we would simply need a battery pack with double the energy.But that would of course mean, we would require more space in the electronics compartment.Which we do not have!So I came up with another plan.For which I use the decent DC jack and a proper switch that can handle a bit of current.What I did was creating two holes in the side of the electronics box.Which was easier said than done. And then connecting the battery pack, motor controller and DC Jack to the switch.According to this wiring diagram.After then using two component adhesive to secure the extra components to the box.My small range extender modification was complete.Now in switch position 1 the built in battery pack powers everything like usual.But in position 2, you can hook up an external battery pack through the DC input jack.This is useful for me, since I got this spare electric skateboard battery pack laying around for quite awhile.By simply adding a wire to it with a suitable plug.I can place it inside a backpack and thus use it to power the scooter in emergency situations.And with that being said, it was time for the charge up time.Which according to my stopwatch required around 3 hours and 15 minutes!That is no wonder though.Because the battery pack has a capacity of 4.4Ah,and the power supply can only deliver a maximum constant current of 1.5A.By doing a bit of math. We can see that the charging process should take around 3 hours.But can't we just increase the maximum constant current to shorten the charging time?To find that out. I had to open up the battery pack in order to find out that the utilized cells were H18650CC.Which can handle a charging current of 2.15A.That means since this is a 10S2P pack we can charge it with a maximum of 4.3A at 42V.Such chargers do kind of exists.But if you want to be on the safe side, you can also use a suitable lab bench power supply with current limiting feature.For the last upgrade. I wanted to get rid of the external batteries used by the front and back lights.So I soldered wires to the battery terminals, in order to determine how much voltage and current each one requires.With those values in minds I calculated a suitable resistor network for each lamp.And created them in order to hook them up and test whether the lights would function correctly with the high battery voltage.Which they did!So I drilled holes in both lamps through which I fed a wire which I soldered to the electronicsThen I drill the additional holes into the frame of the scooter, to guide the wires into the electronics compartments.And there I solder the wires to the resistors and the battery power according to this wiring diagram.And after securing the lamps with a bit of locktite. My scooter upgrade was pretty much completes.I decided to not increase the speeds, but for everything else I implemented and in my opinion decent upgrades.And of course the scooter can still drive without any problems.As always thanks for watching!If you enjoyed the video then don't forget to Like share subscribe and hitting the notification bell.Stay creative and I will see you next time!!!