CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Dec. 4, 2018 /PRNewswire/ — Superpedestrian, the micro-mobility company that transformed the electric bike with its award-winning Copenhagen Wheel, announced today it has produced an industrial-grade e-scooter equipped with its proprietary Vehicle Intelligence technology.
Combining rigorous vehicle design with self-sustaining capabilities and minimal battery charging needs, the new scooters are safer, sturdier, and cost a fraction to maintain. Superpedestrian’s solution addresses the most pressing problems faced today by operators, which experience significant barriers to scale due to low reliability and high operational costs of fleets.
“Shared scooters must be super-robust, require minimal charging, and be smart enough to sustain themselves on city streets for prolonged periods of time, all while costing a few hundreds of dollars to produce,” said Assaf Biderman, Founder and CEO of Superpedestrian. “These challenges cannot be addressed using technologies from automotive or consumer electronics industries, and that’s why major sharing operators worldwide are partnering with us for solutions.”
Superpedestrian’s new scooters offer:
- Lowest operational costs: With self-diagnostics and self-protection capabilities, the new scooters detect and protect themselves from hardware failures in real time, minimizing manual maintenance and maximizing vehicle availability. If a scooter does require hands-on servicing, the vehicle automatically reports the issue directly to the operator — decreasing vehicle downtime from days to mere hours — and reducing maintenance costs by an order of magnitude.
- Long life: Reports show current scooters break and require replacement as often as every 30 to 90 days. Engineered as an industrial-grade transportation solution, Superpedestrian’s scooters can maintain themselves on the streets for approximately 9 to 18 months.
- Minimal battery charging: Superpedestrian’s scooter dramatically reduces charging frequency. An efficient motor design and advanced battery management system allow Superpedestrian scooters to operate for 3 to 7 days on a single charge, compared with the daily charging common in today’s fleets. This presents significant savings for operators, which currently spend over 40% of revenues on charging.
- Instant compliance: Continuously evolving city regulations are another issue faced by scooter operators which are often forced to remove vehicles from the streets when new speed and power limits are introduced. With Superpedestrian’s solution, operators can use a single vehicle hardware platform in any city and control it from the cloud to instantaneously comply with local requirements.
“We’re barely scratching the surface. As urban transportation is transformed, a host of new vehicle technologies will be needed – from new types of micro-vehicles to further progress on zero-maintenance, to integration with autonomous driving, and many more. Superpedestrian is at the heart of all of this.”
More about Superpedestrian’s intelligent scooters at: https://fleet.superpedestrian.com.
See how the scooter works: https://www.youtube.com/embed/v89zn1wrVks?rel=0&mute=1;autoplay=1
Reporters can interview Biderman and give the scooter a test drive. Contact Caroline Beckmann atcbeckmann@tridentdmg.com and 202-440-1783 for more.
About Superpedestrian
Superpedestrian (https://www.superpedestrian.com/) is a transportation robotics company located inCambridge, Mass. Founded out of MIT and beginning operations in 2013, Superpedestrian develops core technologies for micro-mobility. The company invested 3.5 years in research and development to produce its Vehicle Intelligence technology, which it introduced into the market in 2017 with its award-winning Copenhagen Wheel. Having set a new standard in electric bike drive systems, the company now brings its Vehicle Intelligence technology to shared fleets of electric bikes and scooters