When King Carlos III commissioned the Puerta de Alcalá in the 1770s, the city of Madrid was already almost a thousand years old. The gate, designed in the neoclassical style popular during that era, predates more well-known triumphal arches in Europe, like the Arc de Triomphe and the Brandenburg Gate. At the time, the gate connected to the city’s medieval walls, which still regulated passage to and from Madrid. Today, the Puerta de Alcalá still stands in central Madrid, a prominent landmark.
This legacy adorns the homepage of Muving, an electric-motor-scooter-rental start-up based in Spain. In front of an image of the Puerta de Alcalá, a strapping model casually leans against the company’s yellow motor scooter. He looks so European, you’d think I made him up: assiduously disheveled brown hair, aquiline nose, trimmed beard, wearing a gray hoodie under a blue windbreaker emblazoned with the make of the motorbike company that powers Muving’s service, Torrot. Even the brand name is too Mediterranean to glide easily off American tongues.
Muving’s motor scooters work like Bird electric scooters—you use an app to unlock them and ride for a metered fee. But the mopeds offer faster speeds, better range, and a more roadworthy experience compared to kick scooters.
And that’s the problem, maybe. If Spain can export professional basketball players to the United States, then perhaps it can make European motor-vehicle sensibility stick here, too. But it’s going to face an uphill climb in a car-oriented city like this one—or the dozens of others that compose the American urban landscape.