The Infinite Machine Olto is a great electric scooter, one with an overall layout that echoes the classic Vespa. It’s comfortable, and it accelerates well, handles nicely, and has a capacious battery. It has a rugged design that seems capable of handling a lot of abuse, but it also comes with thoughtful touches and security features that mean you can park it anywhere with confidence. And it provides all that at less than half the cost of its full-featured stablemate, the P1 scooter.

The reason is that the Olto is also a bicycle. Sort of.

This may technically be a bicycle, but it’s not one you ever want to pedal. While you can set it to operate as either a Class 2 or Class 3 e-bike, it works best when the pedals are both locked in a forward position, acting as footrests. The Olto was designed to provide riders with the experience of a scooter while still allowing them to take advantage of the growing bike lane networks in many urban areas across the country.

It’s impossible to review the Olto as a product without considering what its category represents: an explosion in electrified personal transport, with all forms looking to share infrastructure initially set aside for bicycles. We’ll look at the product first, but we’ll also consider its implications.

Bicycle by technicality?

We talked a bit with the Olto’s designers at Infinite Machine, who are cyclists based in New York City, about what they were trying to accomplish with the design. They described a local scene familiar to anyone who has visited NYC in recent years: ubiquitous bike lanes with a steady stream of traffic, almost all of it electric, and much of it not pedaled. If so many people were already riding their bikes as scooters, the designers reasoned, why not give them the benefits of a true scooter experience while still staying with the legal definition of a bicycle?