Electric Scooter

c. 2014

I sincerely think that scooters are one of the finest forms of transportation. I drive a scooter on a daily basis as my primary transportation for just about everything. Need a new soundbar from Best Buy? Strap it on the scooter! Picnic in the park with the partner and dog? Scooter has ample space. Need to park - anywhere? Scooter.

While gas is cheap for the scooter, there’s still plenty of down sides so I started looking into electric scooters. I was amazed that all I could find were low range, under powered and expensive. At the time I was developing high performance motor controllers and decide to try and take matters into my own hands and convert a gas powered scooter to electric.

The vision was to create a system that roughly matched the performance of my existing scooter and had removable batteries. The removable batteries was - and I still think still is - key. It would allow me to park wherever at work, grab my battery and plug it in at my desk so I’m topped up for the ride home. No need for a special parking spot with access to power - just pop the battery out and pilfer energy anywhere!

I purchased a broken Honda Aero 80 and began ripping it apart. Since scooters tend to use the motor casing as part of the swingarm I machined a custom bracket to adapt the electric motor and complete the swing arm structure. I also removed the CVT belt drive and converted it to chain drive so I can do regenerative braking.

At work I developed a stackable motor control platform so I borrowed some parts and built a giant stack capable of delivering 300 A at 48 V of field-oriented-controlled goodness. The prototype used a simple potentiometer to set the current in the motor.

Ultimately, I only took it on one sketchy test ride before having to backlog and eventually scrap the project. I had just started a new job and just didn’t have the time and tools to finish.