Folks wanting to leave the car at home may look to electric kickscooters for last mile transport from the public transit hub to work and back, but they're perhaps best suited to smooth pavement and can have the rider standing awkwardly. The Taur scooter is built for the road.
"The benefits of e-scooters are incredible, but they’ve always been designed for smooth ground at low speed," said company co-founder and lead designer, Carson Brown. "Think about it. Bikes? You face forward. Cars? You face forward. It’s the safest way to scope the road. The number of ride advantages and features you unlock with a folding foot platform design is insane, and you don’t have to sacrifice portability to get them."
Currently raising production funds on Kickstarter, the IP55 weather-resistant Taur electric road scooter does away with the deck found on kickscooters, where you'd likely have to stand with one foot behind the other or even side on, and opts for side-by-side folding aluminum alloy foot platforms instead. This gives the rider a front-facing stance and allows them to twist in either direction if necessary.
The e-scooter features an aircraft-grade aluminum alloy frame with a matte powder-coated finish, and sports large road-ready wheels wrapped in Kevlar-reinforced, puncture-resistant pneumatic tires from Continental. There's no suspension cooked in, but the tires are designed to roll along with low air pressure to smooth over the bumps caused by pebbles, potholes and other obstacles. And each wheel can be removed in less than a minute, should the rider need to change the tire.
The battery is reported good for up to 22 miles (35 km) of per charge range. A full recharge using the supplied charger will take about three hours, but an 80 percent top up is possible in two hours. The Taur rocks a 500-W motor, comes with three power modes and has a top speed of 24 mph (39 km/h) – though the company will limit this according to the regulations of the country the ride is being shipped out to. Ride control is via a 5-way thumb joystick.
There's a 300-lumen LED light to the front in the steering column, but not only does the rear LED offer a ground-level beam at 80 lumens, it also projects onto the rider's back at 100 lumens, giving them an eerie glow but also improving their visibility to other road users. The rear LED serves as a brake light too, with stopping power provided by the motor at the front (which can trickle some charge back to the battery pack as you slow down) and hydraulic caliper brakes to the rear, with a 140-mm disc.
Naturally, the Taur scooter folds for between-ride transport, and can be stood upright for storage when folded. It weighs in at 34 lb (15.5 kg) and supports a rider weight of 250 lb (115 kg). And, being a modern roller, there's a mobile app to go with it, where users can unlock the ride over Bluetooth (or with an RFID key card), set the scooter's built-in security alarm, choose lighting options, limit the speed and receive notifications.
The Taur electric scooter is currently raising funds on Kickstarter, where pledges start at £845 (about US$1,100). If all goes to plan, shipping is estimated to start in March 2021. The video below has more.
Source: Taur
