Hi everyone!

Once again, I come to you all for advice. Currently, my fleet consists of my trusty acoustic bike, my Class 3 electric bike, and my own two feet. Couple this with my transit card and I've eliminated a lot of unnecessary automobile trips. Roughly, my trips fall into:

• trips within town that I can run them with my acoustic bike, or the ebike if I'm short on time. Usually sub 8 km (5 mi)
• trips to the outlying suburbs by hourly bus, getting me within 2 km of my actual destination, so I just walk
• trips into the metro core by bus + LRT, within 4 km of my destination, so I might walk or might wait 30 minutes for the bus. The ebike won't fit on the bus, and even with the acoustic bike, this bus line often fills the front bike rack.

That latter one is what I want to optimize, since I missed that bus by 1 minute and then proceeded to walk in 38 C (100 F) heat to the LRT station. That was brutal.

So I wish to consider adding an e-scooter, as a faster-than-walking solution for short distances. This would be more compact than bringing either bike, and easily brought onto the bus or train. If I were going any farther than 2-4 km, or bringing more than I could carry, then the bike is needed.

That said, I know enough people that have eaten dirt on an e-scooter, so I would easily accept a scooter that is limited to some 15 kph (9 mph) -- still faster than walking -- so long as it can climb 3-5% grades. I would also like the largest diameter wheels I can get; 10-inch would be great. Suspension would be nice, but I'll take what I can find.

I've searched locally on Craigslist for options, and predominantly see used GoTrax and Niu e-scooters, but these have 6-inch wheels and no suspension, as well as clones of the Xiaomi M365, like Maxshot. These are cheap, but still don't meet most of my criteria, and it seems these clones have a habit of failing due to poor quality construction.

As extra background, I've never ridden a skateboard, so an electric skateboard is not being considered. Nor rollerblades. I would consider a really small folding bike or ebike, but this is only marginally better than what my current fleet can offer. Hence why I'm looking to e-scooters.

EDIT 1: forgot to mention that I'm in California/USA

EDIT 2: thanks to @Showroom7561@lemmy.ca , I honed in on the Segway Ninebot Max family, and settled on a refurbished G30lp for $315+tax.