Segway’s electric scooter offers a ride from your car to your desk
A year ago, CityGo Urban raised over $300,000 for its successful concept: an electric scooter that would zoom commuters to work. Today, it’s finally re-emerged in the news — but as a part of a newly-envisioned “Last Mile” system developed by Segway, which bought CityGo shortly after its Indiegogo campaign ended.
The CityGo scooters themselves don’t seem to have changed much in the interim: It’s an electrically-powered scooter with about a 12-mile range that can be plugged into a wall socket to recharge. Segway built out the concept a bit into a holistic “Last Mile” system with proprietary public charging stations that could be installed in, say, a parking lot to juice up before scootering the last little distance before work. Or there’s a charging unit that fits in car trunks.
Segway also augmented CityGo’s smartphone app. While it previously just monitored scooter battery life and a few other less-useful metrics, Segway’s connected it to the cloud with the auspicious plan to potentially network scooters, charging stations, auto companies and even city infrastructure, should anyone be interested.
Segway confirmed that it acquired CityGo and its designer “shortly after the Indiegogo project was published last year,” according to a spokesperson. While CityGo was already offering refunds due to shipping delays, a backer update three months ago stated that meeting Segway’s design requirements would delay the product even later. Segway’s press release didn’t mention when the scooter would ship, but orders seem to be on course for delivery in the first half of 2018 if that backer update is accurate.
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