I started a thread asking about "the best" scooters over on TDS, which quickly turned into manufacturers and fanboys pushing their product and poo-pooing others, along with statements like "when X expedition dive a cave on mars 10,000 feet deep and 100 miles back, they relied on Y brand scooters."
There used to be a bunch of good info on Dive Matrix, but I don't know whatever happened to that forum.
At the basic level, you'll find 3 main battery types: lead acid, NiMh, and lithiums.
Lead is the oldest, argued as the most reliable and easiest to replace ("can find lead acid batteries in any third world country"), the heaviest, and gives the shortest duration for similar models. These tend to go for pretty cheap nowadays, with some Mako types going for $500ish on various forums. I seem to remember burntimes of about an hour to two, for scooters that weigh 70+ pounds. In this category you'll find Makos, gavins, and older Silent Submersion scooters (uv-18, 26).
Next up in age of technology and price are the nimh scooters. These ruled about 5 years ago, with the DiveX cuda, some SS models I don't remember, the Hollis entry model, some suex'es, etc. the newer battery technology meant longer run times for the same or less weight, along with more advanced electronics (speed controllers, etc). I had a Cuda 850, which had something like 300 minutes burn time, but weighed 70 pounds. There were increasingly smaller models, but all had burntimes of at least an hour to 90 minutes, typically at a fraction of the weight. Used ones tend to go for $2-3k, but the nimh battery chemistry is somewhat limited. I had to replace my battery after 4 or 5 years, and it cost a grand. As a side note, most manufacturers still make nimh scooters as either entry level or travel models. Expect about 90min runtime from them.
Newest are the lithium models. These are light, powerful, and expensive. They are difficult to ship, and you can't fly with them. Some have advanced electronics, including programmable controllers and downloadable logs of battery usage. These start at about $5k for a 20-30lb scooter that can deliver over 2 hours burntime (as opposed to 50-60lbs for nimh and 80-90 for lead acid), all the way up to 8-9 grand for expedition models with ridiculous runtimes.
I think the most important question to ask yourself is what kind of runtime you need. When I was shore diving, I wanted at least 3 hours, as I'd do two 90 minute dives (on the trigger) in one day. When I moved to NC, I didn't need that at all, as I was only really on the trigger for 20-30 minutes on the wrecks for a 60 minute dive. I think you need to realistically judge what you need (5 hour burntimes are awesome, but do you really need it?) for runtime. That will narrow down what models to look at, new and used. From there, determine your budget, look at what weight you'll be comfortable with, look at features/maintenance/repair costs, see what is local that you can try and/or get support for, etc.
The Tahoe Benchmark used to be the go-to document to compare scooters. It's not been updated for a few years, but might give some insight into the models that you'll fine on the used market nowadays.
Jim
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
