Here is another initiative that may pave the way for more electric scooters on the streets. Arjanna van der Plas sent me a link of a project she is doing together with others students from the Technical University of Delft in Holland. She explains:

A team of six TU Delft students including me is currently developing an electric moped for Eco-movement. We do because we strongly believe that we need to get people out of their cars into a sustainable, noiseless, traffic jam, less way of transportation. The electric scooters that are currently on the market lack quality: they break down often and their batteries fail, making them unreliable. They basically look like conventional scooters, but their performance is way worse. That is why we develop a new high quality, high performance electric vehicle, that does look like a conventional scooter that much, but rather is a new archetype to set a new standard for electric transportation. Furthermore, we are developing a vehicle that is cradle to cradle, which means we pay attention to its sustainability during the whole lifecycle, from supply and production to after use. We do not want to just make it sustainable, but rather make it eco-effective: make it add something to nature. For example, the tires could clean up the streets or the vehicles could be used to gain scientific data while they are driving around. On our website, that I will update very soon, is more information.

Their project website has a growing amount of information about their ideas an is defenetely worth taking a close look at.

I just finished building my first lego technic project, a motocross of course =) I have to say while building it, I got super excited with the “Lego philosophy” and it’s simplicity. The reason I am posting this here, is to sparkle a modular way of thinking on the contributors of this project and all of the people trying to implement the opensource mindset on a hardware product. I have been reading that the reason that open source software works, is that a piece of code, acts like modules that can be easily refined and combined to achieve different tasks. Look at the opensource content management system wordpress and it’s plugin architecture, any one can work on a  piece of code and write a plugin that realises a special task, that way, anyone can contribute in that problem they want to work the most. After a number of contributions the project tends to grow exponentially, thanks to that is why the Letsevo website exists.

So can we think of developing modules for this electric moped? modules that can be configured in many ways to attend the most various needs…Do you know examples of hardware products already using this principle? It would be great to discuss this idea here with you.

Until then, enjoy my Lego Motocross step by step!

Flicker user Triplebull posted his test drive on this new electric bike during this year’s Eurobike. The Elmoto is suppoused to reach 45 km/h and to have an autonomy of 70 km.

Elmoto’s website

Via: Extraenergy.org (by the way, great ressource! - addded to link section)