is transportation editor with 10+ years of experience who covers EVs, public transportation, and aviation. His work has appeared in The New York Daily News and City & State.
Personally, I think electric scooters are a little goofy, but I’m glad they exist. I know a lot of people who don’t want to drop a couple thousand dollars on an electric bike, but still want the joy and freedom of zipping around town at a modest 18mph, while being able to hop on a subway or bus if needed. They want something you can carry with one hand, but that still has the stability to carry you around town.
This is not one of those scooters. The Bo Turbo was designed by a team of ex-Formula One engineers, and glancing at the spec sheet, it would appear that these folks brought some of that manic energy from F1 to this scooter project.
The Bo Turbo will out-accelerate a Tesla Model 3, thanks to 24,000W dual motor propulsion system and an 1,800Wh battery. It has a top speed of 100 mph (!) and can travel up to 150 miles on a single charge. It aims to break the current scooter speed record under official supervision of the Guinness World Records folks.
The company makes a number of wild claims here, including a higher power-t0-weight ratio than a Bugatti Veyron. They also claim that the scooter’s battery can deliver enough energy to fast-charge 1,500 iPhones at the same time — which, like, cool. But why?
Look, I get it. This is not for me, a suburban dad of two that enjoys biking with my kids to our town pool. That’s totally cool. I don’t need to be the target demographic of every product we report on. And scooters can and should go as fast as the scooter people want them to. But I am struggling a bit with the question of who exactly this is for. A scooter that goes 100 mph? Like, this isn’t legal, right?
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1 / 3 Image: Bo
Bo’s CEO seems to acknowledge that it’s in a bit of a legal gray area with this scooter. In an interview with The Autopian, Oscar Morgan basically says no one was going to tell them not to build this scooter, so why not?
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