According to TechCrunch, the first wave of electric micro-transportation was led by shared micro-transportation companies - such as Limes and Birds, which popularize electric scooters around the world. Now, as oil prices soar, more and more people consider commuting to commute in a cheap, sustainable and fun way, sales of electric scooters have risen.
According to a study, the global electric scooter market size was approximately US$20.78 billion in 2021 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 7.8% from 2022 to 2030. Given this huge market opportunity, private electric scooter startups are emerging with a variety of neat little devices that can fold and remind riders of the impending danger.
Of course, the market has been saturated. But Oscar Morgan, co-founder and CEO of UK-based electric motorcycle startup Bo Mobility, said the industry is completely wrong in scooter manufacturing.
Morgan told TechCrunch: "The way scooters are going is that they take micro scooters and have lithium-ion powertrains installed. It's almost like Tesla said we want to do electric cars, so we'll tie the electric motor to the Ford Model T."
Bo was launched at the Micromability Europe event in Amsterdam in early June, but the startup will sell its first scooters in the UK. Morgan and co-founder Harry Wills met at Williams Senior Engineering, where they worked on projects that deploy Formula One technology to other products and categories. Another co-founder of Bo, Luke Robus, once worked in self-driving cars at Jaguar Land Rover’s advanced design studio. Given their expertise, the team thought it would be better to build a scooter like a car -- with a fully integrated chassis.
Morgan said Bo's redesigned chassis uses "monocoque" structural technology, which is also known as structural skin in the industry, which means that all stresses and loads are supported by the scooter's external skin, with a larger cross-section than the frame of a regular tubular or box-shaped scooter. Bo calls it a "monocurve" because the scooter's aluminum body has a constant curve from top to bottom. It is worth noting that this means it cannot be folded, which Morgan says is a conscious decision to maintain structure and driving integrity. But it weighs 40 pounds and is light enough to easily carry some stairs. "Changing this manufacturing method doesn't make the product cheaper, but it increases the strength of the product by an order of magnitude," said
Morgan. He noted that the single curve also allows Bo to seamlessly package the next generation of stability and IoT technologies into scooters. "The old saying goes, if you are strategically strong, tactics don't matter. And as a basic layout, moving from this tubular structure to a real Monocurve is strategically the best way to make these products, of course at the high end level."
and Bo scooters are high-end products. The startup is currently accepting pre-orders with a deposit of about $50 (£40) but a sale price of about $2435 (£1995). Uncertain riders can also get a scooter subscription for $84 per month (£69). One of the credibility of
Bo is to build a scooter that prioritizes user experience, not just a dazzling spec sheet -- despite 31 miles of battery life, the scooter's hooks can hold luggage and smart features like GPS tracking and anti-theft, OTA updates and Bluetooth, which certainly keep them themselves.
Bo was founded in 2019, based on the idea that existing scooter hardware not only failed to unlock the potential of electric scooters, but also actively prevented many people from jumping onto scooters with safety and security. To solve this problem, Bo created a system called Safe Steer, an active front-wheel stabilization system that counteracts the threat of potholes and bumps on the road, and scooters are vulnerable to these threats due to their small wheels.
"Many people claim they have created a safe scooter because they have installed a new set of tires on it, or the deck is slightly wider, or something like that," Morgan said. "What we want to do is create a profound step change. So when we stabilized the turn, people suddenly jumped on it, and from all demographic perspectives they felt very comfortable, which was profound." Another important difference to the
Bo is that there is no suspension system, which Morgan says is totally unnecessary for a scooter that is over 22 miles per hour. In fact, Morgan even said that the scooter's suspension system is heavy, expensive, unreliable, and does not work, and is the product of companies that don't have a better idea. He believes that all you need is a long wheelbase that gives riders a stable and "noisy" steering, high-quality tires absorb about 80% of normal road noise, and the Air Deck.
Air Deck is basically a little bit of engineering elastic material attached to the 6-inch wide, 22-inch long deck, leaving some space between the rider and the scooter's metal.
"It's like the sole of (sports shoes), so it's like your Nikes take away the heat from the sidewalk, which eliminates the tremor and vibration, which actually makes the scooter tiring to ride," Morgan said. “When you solve this problem, the scooter will become comfortable to ride, which is amazing.”
Bo doesn’t want to be one of those companies that promise but can’t deliver on it, so it is doing a soft promotion for some pre-orderers in the UK; according to Morgan, those people will receive the initial equipment later this year. He noted that the earliest customers would provide direct feedback to Bo to help ensure the quality of the product. By the beginning of next year, Bo plans to enter mass production and start shipping to Western Europe first and then to the United States in time.
To keep it as environmentally friendly as possible and prevent supply chain confusion, Bo is trying to build scooters close to the end customer. Morgan said this means the initial British units will be made and assembled in the UK, while the initial mass manufacturing and assembly will be completed in Western Europe, noting that Bo's goal is to find similar locations in the US as it expands.
Obviously, pre-orders will help Bo enter production, but the company also needs to raise funds from outside. Morgan said Bo ended its oversubscribed seed round last year and is currently in the seed round with the goal of raising $4 million.
