The Walkcar from Cocoa Motors has been making rounds on the internet for years since its debut, but is now finally available for sale.
Laptop-sized Walkcar e-scooter begins sales
Imagine if your laptop had wheels, and you stood on top of it to ride around the city.
That’s pretty much what you get with the Walkcar electric scooter.
It features four wheels, making it almost like an electric skateboard. Almost, but not quite.
The wheels are arranged in a square with the front two wheels powered by electric motors. The rear two wheels swivel to help with steering. The wheels are each fully-suspended, according to Cocoa Motors.
That steering is achieved by leaning your body weight side-to-side. Acceleration and braking are controlled with forward and backwards leaning, similar to the Spectra X that we recently reviewed.
That bodyweight control method for throttle and braking is just about the only thing that the Walkcar electric scooter shares with anything we’ve tried before.
The iPad on wheels finds itself in a unique class when it comes to micromobility options. And it just might make a nice little last mile vehicle for some riders, with an emphasis on the “mile” part. Don’t expect to get too much further than a mile or two out of its tiny 68 Wh battery.
To be fair, the Walkcar is rated for a range of 5 km (3.1 mi) in Sport Mode or 7 km (4.3 mi) in Eco mode, but I’ll want to test it out before I put too much faith into those ratings. And I can’t imagine Sport mode will be too thrilling with its top speed of 16 km/h (10 mph). If that’s too fast for you, Eco mode will scoot you around at up to 10 km/h (6 mph).
It should be easy to carry around when you’re not using it, as the device weighs just 2.9 kg (6.4 lb) thanks in part to its lightweight carbon fiber deck and aluminum frame.
Cocoa Motors claims that the Walkcar uses the world’s smallest in-wheel motors, which also helps achieve its small size while remaining powerful enough to climb inclines of up to 10 degrees. The company rates the Walkcar’s power level at 260 W continuous or 600 W peak.
For now the Walkcar electric scooter-thing is beginning pre-sales in Japan for a price of ¥198,000 (US$1,844).
That’s quite a premium for a novel electric scooter, especially compared to much higher power electric scooters for the same price.
Laptop on left, Walkcar on right
The company hasn’t announced if or when the Walkcar will be available in the West, but we’ve recently seen a number of new micromobility devices launch first in Asia only to be followed months later by launches in Europe and North America.
Will the Walkcar follow suit? No one knows for sure. But if it does make it out here, I’ll be first in line to test out this weird little motorized laptop.
via: New Atlas
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June 13, 2020 at 05:25PM
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