▪️If you thought there’s no way Green New Deal is actually dumb enough to post a picture of the first gasoline-powered scooter and label it the first electric scooter, we’ll you’d be wrong! That’s exactly what they did (and this wasn’t April Fools).

▪️This is an Autoped, which was launched in America in 1915, it was the first mass-produced motor scooter. The Online Bicycle Museum explains it as:

🔹”Essentially an enlarged child’s scooter with an engine mounted over the front wheel, the air-cooled 155cc four-stroke engine claimed speeds of 30mph; though the clutch and brake were activated by moving the steering column forwards or backwards, so it could be unsteady over 20mph.”
https://onlinebicyclemuseum.co.uk/1918-eveready-autoped-scooter/

▪️The big box in the middle contained batteries, but not to power the vehicle. It powered the front and rear electric lights.

▪️It never gained widespread popularity, primarily used by the affluent for recreation and young criminals to get away from police. The picture GND posted is of Lady Florence Norman riding it in London.
https://mashable.com/archive/1916-suffragette-scooter#yf580grP5ZqS

▪️There we’re brief attempts at businesses using it, for example the US Postal Service tried them out as delivery vehicles. But ultimately they weren’t a commercial success; they were more expensive than a bike, but less comfortable and fast as a motorcycle.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/motorized-scooter-boom-hit-century-dockless-scooters-180971989/

▪️As for calling the switch to internal combustion engines and fossil fuels “a lost century,” that’s a bizarre way to portray the most spectacular increase in human flourishing in human history. It’s not just dumb, its ugly and anti-human to its core.