A Complete Guide to Electric Scooters with Suspension

Electric scooters with suspension come in many styles and prices. These are exciting times for commuters, casual riders, and fans of electric scooters. If you’re shopping for a scooter—whether it’s your first or second—suspension is a feature you might be curious about. One of the first questions many people ask is: what is suspension in electric scooters, and why does it matter?

In this article, we’ll explain the reasons why you might want suspension—or not—and the different types and setups available.

Before we get into the details about how suspension works and why it’s useful, let’s go over a few reasons why some scooters are made without suspension, and what buyers should think about when deciding whether or not to get it.

Reasons to Consider a Scooter Without Suspension

• Cost: Adding suspension to a scooter requires extra parts and design work, which increases the price.

• Weight: Suspension adds more parts to the scooter, which also makes it heavier.

• Complexity: Suspension systems are mechanical and may need adjusting, oiling, or repairs. This means more regular maintenance.

So, should you always choose a scooter with suspension over one without it? The answer depends on how and where you ride. If you only take short trips, ride on smooth surfaces, don’t go very fast, and want a light and low-maintenance scooter, then one without suspension might work well. A good example is using a scooter on a college campus with nice bike paths, or for short trips to catch the train or bus nearby.

Why Suspension Matters for Ride Quality

If suspension isn’t always necessary, then when does it become a smart choice?

Comfort and a Smoother Ride
One of the biggest benefits of suspension is comfort. Imagine riding a scooter like the Volpam, which doesn’t have any suspension. With its hard tires and stiff frame, every bump and crack in the road is felt directly in your hands and feet.

Now, think about how different that ride would be with suspension. Just like in a car or bicycle, suspension helps take in the shocks and shakes from rough roads. This makes the ride smoother, less tiring, and more enjoyable.

Better Braking and Control
Suspension helps the tires stay in contact with the road. Combined with air-filled tires, it improves grip, braking, and stability while turning. This extra control becomes more important when the road is uneven or wet.

Rolling Over Obstacles More Easily
Scooter wheels are small, so bumps, potholes, or debris can stop them quickly or cause you to lose balance. Suspension helps the wheels move up and over these obstacles without stopping your forward motion. This makes the ride safer and more stable. Solid tires can struggle here, while air-filled tires add even more help.

Longer Scooter Life
While suspension can add weight and require maintenance, it can also help your scooter last longer. By reducing the impact on parts like the frame, battery, steering, and folding system, suspension helps prevent damage over time.

By now, you’ve seen the value of suspension—so let’s go deeper into how it works and what to look for.

Key Features Found in the Best Electric Scooters with Suspension

There are three major features that determine the overall suspension performance:

1. Air-filled tires
2. Front suspension
3. Rear suspension

Air-Filled Tires: Important for Safety and Comfort
If you plan to ride faster than 10 mph (16 km/h), air-filled tires are highly recommended. They make the ride smoother, improve grip, and most importantly, help with braking.

The downside is they can get punctured. However, many modern scooters now come with tubeless tires that include a sealing layer inside. This layer helps prevent air from escaping when small objects poke through the tire. These tires can also be patched, which makes maintenance easier. Because of these improvements, solid tires don’t have many benefits besides being cheaper.

Front Suspension: Key for Handling Bumps
Front suspension plays a big role in comfort and handling. It connects directly to the handlebars and absorbs the first impact from cracks and potholes, keeping the rider’s hands from taking the hit. Once the front wheel rolls over something, the rear wheel is more likely to follow without trouble.

Rear Suspension: Boosting Comfort and Stability
While the front does the heavy lifting, the rear suspension is just as important for making the ride feel steady and smooth. A good rear suspension can reduce tiredness and help with longer trips.

Some scooter makers, like Apollo, include all three of these features—front suspension, rear suspension, and tubeless self-sealing tires—in every model. The only exception is the Apollo Air, which comes with front suspension and tubeless tires.

Suspension Technology: Types and How They Perform

Now that you know the basics, let’s take a closer look at how these systems work and why they matter.

Why Air-Filled Tubeless Tires Are the Best Option
In the early days, electric scooters used smaller bicycle-style tires with inner tubes. But since scooter wheels are small—usually 8 to 12 inches—these tube-style tires were hard to change. Motor cables made the process even harder if the wheel had a motor in it.

Tires with inner tubes have other problems too. They’re easy to puncture and hard to repair. Fixing them usually means removing the tube and casing. If they’re not fully inflated, they can also suffer from pinch flats—where the rim squeezes the tube, causing a leak.

Tubeless air-filled tires solve most of these issues. Like modern car tires, they hold air directly in the tire casing and rim. Many include a sealing layer to stop air from escaping when small holes appear. Even if the hole is too big to self-seal, you can patch the tire without removing it. Some scooters now use split rims to make tire changes easier and have connectors that let you remove the motor wheel for repairs.

Types of Front Suspension Systems

Front suspension greatly improves the comfort and control of the ride. There are several common types:

• Fork Spring Suspension
  Works like bicycle forks, using springs to absorb shock. These setups usually don’t include oil or adjustable features because of space limits.

• Steering Tube Spring Suspension
  This simple system puts a spring inside the steering column. It works well and doesn’t change the size of the scooter.

• Swing Arm Suspension
  This is found on more powerful scooters. A swing arm with a spring or shock absorber provides strong shock absorption and better handling, especially at higher speeds.

Other designs use swing arms with one or two springs, or combine springs with dampers. Some even use twisting (torsion) springs for suspension.

Rear Suspension Systems: Design and Purpose

Rear suspension systems help in much the same way but may use different parts. For example, Apollo uses a rubber-like block as a spring on the rear of some models, such as the Apollo Pro and Apollo Go. Some other scooters use rubber blocks that twist to absorb shocks. These setups improve comfort and make the ride more stable.

Adjusting Your Suspension for a Better Ride

Higher-end scooters often let you adjust the suspension to match your weight, the terrain, or how you ride. Here are two common settings:

• Preload Adjustment – Changes the initial tension on the spring. A tighter spring is stiffer, while a looser spring gives a softer ride.

• Rebound Adjustment – Found in hydraulic systems, this controls how fast the suspension returns to its normal position. Good rebound control keeps the scooter from bouncing too much after a bump.

Think of it like a car’s shocks—if they don’t bounce back smoothly, the ride feels rough. The same idea applies to scooters.

Some scooters also have a setting called ride height. This controls how high or low the scooter sits. A lower ride is better for smooth roads, while a higher ride is better for rough surfaces or off-road use. The Imotion RS series scooters offer this option.

By understanding how suspension works and what features to look for, you can choose a scooter that fits your needs—whether you want something simple and lightweight or something built for a smooth, high-performance ride.