In designing a new scooter, Swiss company Cycon looked to a new geometrical form. Instead of basing the scooter on hard lines and angles, they made it circular. What follows is a scooter that promises to flow as smoothly standing still as it does while riding.
The frame of the Circleboard scooter looks similar to a cut-out third of a circle crafted from aluminum. The metal frame appears to be a single piece of metal, curving seamlessly from the handlebars through the deck area and undulating into a wave-like transition toward the rear wheel, but it's actually two separate pieces, allowing for folding. The deck is placed atop the lower frame and the design utilizes three 200-mm wheels.
As is clear by looking at it, the Circleboard's handlebars do not rotate like other scooters'. The two front wheels are mounted to internal hardware that assists in creating a carving effect when the rider leans his body. The rider leans into the turn with his feet and body, and the frame tilts, rotating the wheels and carving into turns. The result looks like a flowy, wide-turning ride that mimics the circular design.
"It's really a street-carving machine; it feels like surfing or snowboarding, just in the streets," Cycon's Gerald Engele told us.
A simple friction foot brake mounted over the rear wheel brings the scooter to a stop. Two wheel covers over the front wheels serve as fenders.
The curved design looks to make Circleboard rather large and cumbersome when folded when compared with other folding scooters. Engele told us that the pay-off is in creating a better, less rickety connection between the handlebars and deck.
"You will not feel any little play during driving like usually all other scooters have," Engele explained. "They always have a lot of play between handlebar and steering tube and between steering tube and deck, which leads to a very poor and low quality appearance and feeling. Our Circleboard feels like one single rigid frame."
The appearance definitely comes across as a sort of rideable artwork, and that curvy design is bound to create a feeling (or at least mental picture) of wave-like flow, even on cracked, uneven concrete.
The Circleboard was designed by German aircraft engineers and is hand-built in Switzerland, with 95 percent of its parts sourced from Austria, Germany and Switzerland. As that background suggests, the Circleboard is quite a bit more expensive than the average Razor, selling for €499 (approx. US$663 as of publishing).
Watch the Circleboard move below.
Source: Cycon
