Search "electric scooter range in cold weather" and you'll mostly see numbers between 20 and 50%. We looked hard and couldn't find anyone showing where those numbers come from.

That matters, because a 50% loss would make a scooter useless for half the year in a lot of cities. A 12% loss is something you plan around once and then mostly forget about.

So we measured it ourselves, using half a million real rides from the Apollo app. Below, we'll walk through what we found, how to read the data, why the cold costs range in the first place, and whether riding through winter does any lasting damage to your battery.

How we measured winter range loss

Every ride in the Apollo app since April 2025 has the air temperature attached, pulled from a weather service for the exact place and hour the ride started. That gives us 512,359 rides on 8,449 scooters, across a full year and a half of seasons.

The tricky part with any range test is that lots of things change range: the rider's weight, how fast they go, how long the trip is, hills, wind. If you just compared all summer rides to all winter rides, you'd be measuring a mix of all of that, not just the temperature.

We measure range as distance per percent of battery on real roads. Not a lab number, not a spec sheet. It's what riders actually got.

How much range does an electric scooter lose in cold weather?

Here's the full curve. Each point shows how much range a scooter kept compared with the same scooter on a mild 68°F (20°C) day.

*Ballpark only, based on 67 rides. The 32°F figure is based on 2,223 rides (95% confidence interval: 9.9 to 13.9%).

How to read this chart

It's a slope, not a cliff. Most people picture freezing as the moment a battery "gets cold." The data doesn't show any switch at 32°F. You're already losing about 5% at 50°F (10°C), a temperature most people would call a nice fall day. From 68°F down to freezing, the loss works out to roughly 1% for every 3°F (about 2°C).

The shaded band is how sure we are. Where lots of people ride, the band is narrow and the number is solid. As it gets colder, fewer people ride, so the band gets wider. Around freezing we have thousands of rides. At 10°F (-12°C) we have 67, which is why that last stretch of the line is dashed.

Don't over-read the flat part. Between 32°F and 20°F the line almost levels off, from about 12% to 13%. It would be nice to say the cold stops mattering after freezing, but the band widens a lot over that stretch, and the 10°F point drops again. The honest read: expect roughly 12 to 15% somewhere below freezing, and more once you get into the low teens °F.

What that looks like on a real commute

The typical trip on our commuter scooters is about 2 miles (3.2 km). For most people's commute, a 12% dip doesn't change anything. It mostly shows up as a lower battery number when you get home.

Where it can matter is longer commutes on smaller batteries. Say your scooter gets 20 miles (32 km) of real-world range in summer and your round trip is 18 miles (29 km). That's fine in July. At freezing you're looking at about 17.5 miles (28 km), which is cutting it close. That's the rider who should plan a top-up at work in winter, or size up next time.

Why do electric scooters lose range in the cold?

Your battery isn't leaking, and the charge isn't disappearing. Two separate things are happening, and they stack.

1. The scooter has to work harder

Between 30 and 39°F (-1 and 4°C), the energy used per mile rises about 13%. That almost exactly matches the range loss, which is two different measurements telling the same story. Most of the missing range is energy going into pushing the scooter, not energy that's gone missing.

Where does the extra energy go?

• Tires. Cold air shrinks, so tire pressure drops. The rubber also stiffens. Both add rolling resistance, so every mile takes more effort.
• Bearings. The grease inside thickens in the cold, adding a little drag to every wheel rotation.
• Air. Cold air is denser than warm air, so there's slightly more wind resistance at the same speed.

None of these is dramatic on its own. They just add up. The good news: tire pressure is the one you can fix for free. When the temperature drops, check your tires and top them up.

2. A cold battery is sluggish

Inside a lithium-ion battery, energy moves through chemical reactions, and cold slows those reactions down. The energy is still in there, it just doesn't come out as easily. On the one model where we can measure it, the Apollo Pro, internal resistance was about a third higher with a cold battery.

That's why a scooter can show 20-something percent on a January morning and then shut off. When you hit the throttle, the battery's voltage dips more than it would in summer. If it dips low enough, the scooter cuts power to protect the battery. Some charge is still there. The battery just can't hand it over fast enough. Warm the battery back up and that charge is usable again.

That's also a big reason scooter numbers don't look like EV numbers. You'll see much bigger winter losses quoted for electric cars, and a lot of that is the heater and defroster running. Borrowing those numbers for scooters overstates the problem.

Where you store your scooter matters more than the forecast

Remember, the air temperature isn't the same as the battery temperature. A battery that spent the night in a warm hallway starts the ride warm, and it takes a while to cool down on the road.

On the Apollo Pro, the one model that reports battery temperature, riders started their commutes with the battery in the mid-60s°F (18 to 20°C), even on days well below freezing. That's a big part of why real-world winter losses are smaller than people expect: most riders keep their scooter inside.

Flip it around and you can see where bigger numbers come from. A scooter left in a cold garage or outside overnight starts the ride with a cold battery, so it gets hit by both effects at once from the first block. If you've ever heard someone say their scooter "lost half its range" in winter, there's a good chance it was sitting somewhere cold before the ride.

Does a bigger battery help in the cold?

We assumed it would. It doesn't. We ran the numbers for every Apollo model with enough cold rides, from about 540 Wh up to 1,800 Wh. Near freezing, all of them lost somewhere between 10 and 15%.

A bigger battery doesn't lose less. It just leaves you with more miles after the loss. We only have data on our own scooters, but this is lithium-ion chemistry, not an Apollo quirk. We'd expect any electric scooter to behave the same way.

Quick example: a 10-mile (16 km) round trip plus 15% is about 11.5 miles (18.5 km). Any scooter that reliably does that in real riding will get you there and back all winter. Comparing models? See our guide to the best electric scooters of 2026, which uses real-world range from fleet data.

Does cold weather damage an electric scooter battery?

This is the question a lot of riders are really asking. Losing some range for a few months is fine. Losing it for good is not. From what we can see, winter riding does no lasting harm.

To test this, we followed two groups through last winter:

• The winter riders: 71 scooters that did at least 10 rides below 41°F (5°C) between December 2025 and February 2026.
• The comparison group: 86 scooters that never rode below 50°F (10°C) at all.

We measured both groups against their own fall rides. In the coldest months, the winter riders were getting about 86% of their fall range. That's the normal cold effect, right in line with the curve above.

Then spring came. The winter riders bounced back to 98% of their fall range. The scooters that never saw the cold? Also 98%.

So that missing 2% isn't winter damage. If it were, the group that skipped winter wouldn't have it. It's just a battery getting a few months older, which happens whether you ride or not. Riding in the cold costs you range in the moment, then gives it back.

One caveat to keep this honest: these are fairly small groups, and one winter. It's a clear signal, not the final word. We'll keep tracking it.

Winter electric scooter tips: storage, charging and salt

What actually hurts a scooter in winter isn't the riding. It's mostly what happens before and after.

• Store it indoors. A warm battery gives you more of what's in it, and avoids the double hit of a cold battery on a cold road.
• Never charge a frozen battery. If the scooter has been sitting somewhere cold, bring it in and let it warm to room temperature for a few hours before plugging it in. Overnight is even better. Charging lithium-ion cells below freezing can damage them in a way riding in the cold doesn't.
• Top up your tires. Cold air drops tire pressure. Check it more often once temperatures fall. It's the cheapest range you'll ever get back.
• Plan for the lower number. If your commute is close to your scooter's limit, charge at work or before the ride home rather than letting it run low in the cold.
• Rinse off road salt. A water rating like IP66 is about water, not salt. After riding through slush, give your scooter a rinse or wipe-down and let it dry.
• Storing it for the season? Charge to about 75%, check on it once a month, and keep it somewhere dry and above freezing.

For the full walkthrough, watch our video on how to store your electric scooter for winter.

Who still rides an electric scooter in winter?

In New York, about one in five people who rode with us in summer were still riding in January. In Montreal, it was fewer than one in fifty. Same scooters. A Montreal winter is just a different sport: snow, ice and a lot of salt.

That gap tells you something. The battery data says scooters handle the cold fine. What keeps people off them is the road: ice, snowbanks and slush. That's a fair reason to park, and it's a different problem from range.

The coldest ride on record? January 25, 2026, near Ottawa, at -8.8°F (-22.7°C). The rider covered 7 miles (11.3 km) and used 9% of the battery.

If you park your scooter for the winter, that's completely fair. Just park it because of the ice, not because of the battery.