This E-Scooter Can Diagnose Its Own Issues, Saving Riders

As more and more people are using electric scooters around the world, more and more drawbacks have been revealed.

Electric scooters have been found to be weak, easy to break, easy to catch fire, and unsafe. It is likely that these issues only get worse if the scooters are widely used.

A micro mobility company in Cambridge has probably found a solution to fix these problems. Superpedestrian, the company specialized on making electric bikes, say that their next e-scooter can diagnose its own mechanical issues and hence stop working.

The company, which was established at MIT, claims that it has cooperated with the world’s largest mobility companies and after six years nurturing the idea, it will introduce electric scooters to the roads across the world within the first six months of 2019.

According to Assaf Biderman, CEO and founder of Superpedestrian, the upcoming electric scooter will have a several-day backup as well as an 18-month lifespan, instead of the current average lifespan of three months.

With their next e-scooter, Superpedestrian aims at creating a rigid and reliable vehicle for riders. And the only way to assure this before putting it on sale is testing. To make the scooter safer, the mobility firm has made the rider base and the wheel bigger. Biderman is also confident about the vehicle’s capability to work under extreme weather conditions.

However, Superpedestrian has brought something different to its scooter. Previously, major e-scooter maker Lime had to recall its faulty e-scooters twice within November, which were reported to break in half and pose fire risks due to faulty batteries.

The e-scooter developed by Superpedestrian will feature “vehicle intelligence”, meaning it can self-diagnose, then adjust its battery voltage, temperature as well as its own motor.

When detecting a failure in its machine, first, the scooter will try to carry out automatic maintenance. If this doesn’t change the situation, the vehicle will raise a support ticket and turn itself off, which means riders cannot ride a faulty e-scooter. Then, the faulty scooter must be fixed by a human mechanic.

This is not the first time Biderman has tried to innovate the e-vehicle. He used to develop the “Copenhagen Wheel”, which are the self-contained rear wheels for electric bike Biderman later obtained the license for commercializing the Wheel through Superpedestrian.

With the continuous innovation of electric bicycles, not only the way commuters travel will change but the whole picture of micro-mobility will change.