Urban Transport

Oregon-based BOXX's first production electric scooter is just about a meter (39 inches) long and looks like an odd sort of cross between a piece of retro luggage and a giant-sized camera. It promises to move you up to 80 miles on a single charge at a top speed of 35 mph (56 km/h) and comes with a price tag starting just under US$4,000. Read More

The Voltitude fold-up electric scooter has an ingenious EasyFold system. Once folded, a special button on the handlebar enables you to "walk" it alongside you indoors, so you never raise a sweat in reaching a power outlet, which will fully replenish the battery inside four hours. The 25 kph (15.5 mph) electric assist Voltitude begins volume production in July with an on-line price expected in the vicinity of EUR4000. Read More

Leaving the car at home and biking to work certainly has its benefits - to the air we breathe, to the fitness of the rider and to the bank balance. For white collar workers though, this presents an attire problem - unsightly creases, mud splashes and a soaking from the elements don't do much for your business suit. The Cambridge Design Partnership has just announced a possible alternative to stowing away a spare suit at the office or trying to flatten out the creases with a portable iron - the Suitpack. Just out of prototyping, the design is designed to keep clothing crumple-free while commuting to work, and has various compartments for storing accessories and shoes. Read More

Two things are certain in this crazy world - unicycles are cool and unicycles are seriously hard to ride. Well no longer. Now anybody can clown about on a unicycle and what's more, you don't even have to pedal. Thanks to Focus Designs and several years of development the learning curve required to master the unicycle has been reduced from several weeks to an average of 20 minutes, making it a viable and incredibly cheap-to-run personal transport. Read More

It is no secret that personal transportation form factors are beginning to diverge and a new one caught our attention this week that is almost certain to carve itself a niche in this intensely interesting and competitive space. It's not as sexy as a Yikebike, Honda U3-X or Toyota Winglet, but it is easy to use, has a range of 12 miles (20 km), a top speed of 15 mph and a price under US$1000. At 90 pounds, the Personal Rover is not exactly small, but it folds up so it can be rolled on castor wheels inside a building, and will easily fit inside a car boot to fulfill secondary transport duties. Read More

When Microsoft asked gamers to get off the couch and get moving with the release of the Kinect motion controller in 2010, it’s doubtful that zooming around the streets at speeds of up to 32 mph (51 km/h) was the kind of movement they had in mind. But as we’ve seen ever since unofficial open source drivers hit the Internet in 2010 and Microsoft came to the party with its official Kinect for Windows SDK last year, the Kinect has proven to be a remarkably flexible device. That flexibility now extends to a motion control interface for a motorized electric skateboard modestly dubbed by its creators, the “Board of Awesomeness.” Read More

If you think that you've spotted a strangely old-looking motorized bicycle cruising around the streets of Los Angeles, don't worry, you're not hallucinating. What you're likely seeing is one of two hand-built Juicer e-bike models - both of which harken back to the very early days of motorcycle development, when engines and motors were fixed to bicycle frames. The Juicer 36 is fashioned like a stretch cruiser and the 48 is an homage to the board-track era. Retro styling aside, the stand-out feature for us has got to be the gorgeous battery/motor configuration, that's been arranged like cylinders of a V-twin engine. Read More

China's state press agency, Xinhua, reports that the country's largest rail vehicle maker has debuted a six-car train more than twice as powerful and 200 km/h (124 mph) faster than the high-speed models currently in service between Beijing and Shanghai. The new electric test train can draw a maximum of 22,800 kilowatts and is reportedly capable of reaching speeds as high as 500 km/h (311 mph), making it one of the fastest trains ever designed for commercial passenger use. Read More

Although some cycling purists may sneer at them, electric bicycles certainly do come in handy when hills need to be climbed on morning commutes, or loads need to be hauled. E-bikes can be quite expensive, however, plus their motors and batteries make them heavy and clunky when their electric-assist feature isn’t being used. That’s where the Ridekick ...well, where it kicks in. The motorized trailer quickly hooks onto an existing bicycle, pushing it to speeds of up to 19 mph (30.5 km/h), for a distance of about 12 miles (19 km) per charge. When you want your regular ol’ human-powered bike back, you just unhook it and go. Read More