$30k Electric Scooter Is Gunning for a Bonneville Speed Record

20 hours ago 1

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A British outfit called Bo makes a sleek little electric scooter called the Model-M. The best variant claims a 22 mph top speed and a 40-mile range for $2,500. Sounds pricey but practical. The prototype Turbo model is another story—it’s gunning for triple-digit speeds at the Bonneville salt flats next month.

Bo has been around since 2022, but seems to be on a bit of a marketing blitz—last week, it released a teaser video of somebody clad in full Moto GP-looking garb absolutely ripping through a tunnel on its Turbo model concept, and it seems to be loaning out the more socially acceptable Model M to journalists for test rides. My old buddy Matt Hardigree was recently test-riding one and seemed to dig it.

The Bo website says the company’s engineers left Formula 1 to work on scooters “because we think electric scooters are the most important vehicle innovation of this century.” Bold! I have fond memories of the Bird scooter fad when I lived in LA—I rode one all the way from Culver City to Marina Del Rey one time, it was fun and took about the same time as driving in traffic. But then everyone got sick of them, threw them into the ocean, and I haven’t seen them littering the streets of any city in years.

Bo is obviously looking to get away from the disposable vibe, which I appreciate. The Model-M is being framed as an elite alternative to janky Bird and Lime scooters. Though to be honest, it still looks like every other scooter to me, just with one extra layer of aluminum skin to give it a slightly softer Cybertrucky look.

Not hating—I think electric scooters are fun, and $2,500 for an exceptionally well-made one that can go 40 miles doesn’t seem too outrageous. But there’s no need to go ga-ga over everything that’s finished in big planes of plain silver.

As for the super-fast Turbo models, Wired reported you can buy one for $30,000, but I think you gotta know a guy to get the hook-up—there’s no option for it on Bo’s consumer site yet. It reportedly produces over 24,000 watts of juice with a high-power dual motor controller setup developed with partner Rage Mechanics, which is a French company making all kinds of high-performance electric microvehicles.

That sent me down a rabbit hole into the world of electric scooter racing and Rage Mechanics’ previous accomplishments. The company already claims a 106+ mph top speed with its RM-X model, a French-made scooter you can buy for about $26,500 that looks far cooler than the Teslaesque Bo in my humble opinion. So I guess that’s what the Bo Turbo will have to beat to properly claim its speed record.

Get a load of this madness:

Bo says, “Over 24,000W delivers blistering acceleration, advanced traction control adjusts the balance of power to the wheel with most grip, resulting in maximum thrust.” But I think the main thing Bo is trying to show off is its stability assistance tech called Safesteer. That’s the brand’s stabilization system that supposedly counteracts rider twitchiness. Top Gear reviewed one of these in 2023 and described it as “torsion springs to stabilise the steering and reduce twitchiness and kickback.”

Safesteer is on the regular Bo scooters—the Hope V4 disc brakes and floating rotors of the Turbo model are not. Nor is the extreme power output or ram-air intake for cooling

As a technology showcase stunt, this is a neat idea, and I wish their test pilot all the luck getting this thing to triple digits and back to a stop safely. Couldn’t be me—I’m happy with neighborhood bicycle speeds on anything with wheels smaller than my face.

If you’re suddenly finding yourself wondering what kind of performance you could get on a cheaper e-scooter, there’s plenty more room in this rabbit hole. Jump in, I already found one on Amazon that claims it’ll do 50 mph for $1,500.