Urban Transport

Although there are electric rollerblades and skateboards, sometimes people just want a temporary boost while using their existing non-electric set of wheels. That's why Veelo was invented.

Folks wanting to leave the car at home may look to electric kickscooters for last mile transport solutions, but they're perhaps best suited to smooth pavement and can have the rider standing awkwardly. The Taur scooter is built for the road.

A couple of years ago, we covered a two-seat electric pedalcycle called the Screecher that rocked a curved solar canopy above the rider to charge its batteries. Now the next generation is going into limited production.

Back in April, Ukraine ebike maker Delfast announced that work had started on a three-wheeled electric package delivery solution. After reaching the final development phase in July, the Trike is now on sale.

It was just this May that we heard about Poimo, an experimental inflatable electric scooter developed at Tokyo University. Well, its designers have now unveiled a custom-fit version that would be made for each user, based on photos that they provide.

Folding electric kickscooters are a convenient way to zip from the transport hub to the office, and can be great fun too. Mercedes has its eyes on last mile commuters with a folding e-scooter that sports the no-nonsense moniker of eScooter.

At the end of last year, Segway gave us a glimpse of a few of its upcoming urban mobility electric two-wheelers, including an eMoped. Now the company has put that C80 model up for pre-order on Indiegogo.

While folding electric scooters are now a common sight, most of them still have fully rigid frames that bang over obstacles on the road. The Splach e-scooter is different, though, in that it incorporates front and rear coil-sprung suspension.

The German Aerospace Center has revealed a working prototype of a multi-use urban mobility and logistics vehicle called U-Shift, which is made up of an electric U-shaped base platform that's used to ferry around various pod modules.

As electric unicycles become more popular, it goes without saying that some people will want to use the things off-road. InMotion's V11 is designed with that in mind, as it features 2.75 inches (70 mm) of air-sprung suspension travel.

While bicycle-sharing systems certainly are proving to be popular, they still have a few problems, such as the limited availability of bikes. Researchers at the MIT Media Lab are working on a solution, in the form of the MIT Autonomous Bicycle.

A couple of years ago, we first heard about a two-wheeled electric thing known as the JackRabbit. Whether you think of it as an ebike or an e-scooter, it's now back in a new-and-improved form.