idea Owners
The folding scooter takes very little space when folded up and is therefore optimal in combination with public transport. The outstanding feature of our scooter design: that it can be rolled in the collapsed state and it functions as shopping trolley.
80% of all car journeys in the cities do not go beyond 6 km. On average 1.1 people are transported. Only in every 10th car sits a passenger. Vehicles for the city must not necessary have a high range and many seats.
In an effort to use alternative fuels in conventional vehicles the Auto industry encounters its limits. The vehicles are just too heavy to efficiently move people through the city. To move only one person (ca. 75 kg) with a briefcase ( 25 kg) a vehicle of more than one ton is usually necessary. In modern electric battery driven vehicles this is taken to the extremes, as they often weigh more than 2 tons with almost half a ton of batteries.
Bicycle technology does the same – it can transport a person with a bag - with 20 kg of vehicle weight. Bicycle construction is lightweight constrction and therefore a better basis for a new post-fossil mobility better suited for the creation of new vehicles for sustainable urban transport.
The idea
The idea is to develop a folding scooter, which optimally fits to the needs of modern sustainable urban lifestyle.
For these criteria, we have developed a folding scooter with an integrated electric drive which will serve most of the mobility needs of a city dweller with about 1% of the energy of a car. By combining an electric motor with a sensor a smooth drive is achieved. This is locomotion with minimal physical effort.
The foldable scooter is developed as a PEDELEC and has a motor that has to be activated by the pedalling of the user, as developed for my #SolarScooter. Every 5 seconds the user has to pedal for the motor to go. This gives you a feeling of a pedal assisted scooter, just like a pedal assisted bike (PEDELEC).
Because the scooter is within the laws of a PEDELEC it is considered a bike and not a motorbike. The motor has a continuous power rating of 250 W and a maximum power rating of 450 W. The battery has a capacity of about 450 Wh. This gives you a ride of about 2 hours.
The folding scooter takes very little space when folded up and is therefore optimal in combination with public transport. The outstanding feature of our scooter design: that it can be rolled in the collapsed state and it functions as shopping trolley.
more info:
Projektskizze Kick-e-english-1.pdf
http://www.postfossilemobile.de/
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Test Drive
Here are some pictures from our testing trip to Switzerland with the foldable scooter. It was heavily overloaded with 2 riders and a lot of baggage. But the scooter kept on rolling. Sometimes I had to push it up the hill just with the baggage and Ursula had to walk up when the hill was too steep.
Comments
Hello Hans,
nice idea and I think it would work - only there are already a lot of foldable E-scooters on the market. What are your USPs / Differentiation Points? How much will it costs?
And I assume you checked existing patents (applications) related to foldable electric scooters?
Best
Marc
Hallo Marc,
yes, it does actually work very well. I just made a trip to Switzerland with my girlfriend. We were both standing on the scooter and scooting along with lots of baggage. I will post images of this.
It was no problem taking the scooter into the buses or trains when needed but we also took a 20 km trip throgh the landscape together, up and down the mountains. Sometimes she had to get off the scooter and I had to push it up the hills just with the luggage. But most of the time it worked well and it was lots of fun.
The biggest difference to other folding scooter is that you can even use it when it is folded. It works pretty much like a shopping trolley and you can actually use it in the shopping malls. The scooter also works well, when full of baggage. Its like a trolley when folded and a nice and fast scooter when unfolded.
The price should be something like 1200,- EUR for the first batch, later it could go down to about 950,- EUR.
Yes I have checked the patents and even own two of the patents that are needed to build this scooter myself.
Best
Hans
Hi Hans,
ok thx for the information... I understand the point, that it can be used as a "trolley" However it has already a net weight of 20 Kilo... So don´t you think it might be to heavy for this use case?
Second point: Also regarding your other solution posted. Would it make sense to develop a trailer. I could imagine that it has many advantages, regarding carrying of luggage (or packages etc.) like better balance, higher maximum weight.
And when you think of the use case "City Logistics" you may easily use the trailor (as a trolley incl. holding for the scooter) to enter a bus or metro.
BR
Marc
Hi Marc,
the weight of the scooter is not too much compared to the advantage of taking you up to 35 km away from any bus or train station that you might end up when using public transport. If you need a trolley with less weight you do not need the motor and battery for short distances. This would also make the scooter a lot cheaper.
For transporting more than the usual backpack and shopping I have another solution wich would be perfect in combination with public transport. But I cannot start every idea that I have at once...
I think to add a usual trailer to the foldable scooter makes the luggage very large again. As I said, I would reccomend a different approach.
A trailer that would be nice for the scooters is the Bob-Yak which is a one wheel trailer that fits around 35 kilo. I used to carry may kids in this trailer.
You can see some pictures of me using this trailer with my kids on page 17 of an article I wrote some years ago:
http://www.hansboes.com/wir-haben-den-heizungsregler-gefunden/
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