Anyone know where the electric scooters are?
I heard they’d been approved for the 2022 season. Last year they arrived during the May long weekend. Anyone have some insight on the delay? (and yes I recognize many people in this sub dislike the scooters for some very valid reasons!)
Posted Jun 2, 2022, 11:53 PM UTC
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Soooo, the reasons why scooters are taking so long is due to scooter testing. At least one company, I can’t name them, are requiring their scooters to automatically stop when it is ridden on sidewalks. They use GPS modules to determine where the sidewalk is, and are being slowly programmed into the scooter. Another technical reason is due to slow response time between the gps module and scooter motherboard, meaning by the time you are riding on sidewalk, the scooter hasn’t even stopped. They are testing different gps modules and improving the firmware on the scooters. May or may not see them fully available until late June.
How are they going to be accurate enough to know they are on the sidewalk? Especially downtown? I mean my phone is accurate to a few feet with a clear view of the sky what happens if the GPS drifts to the sidewalk?
This is exactly what they’re trying to figure out ! They have tested multiple modules but with no results :(
I know surveyors have controlled equipment that is as accurate as military grade GPS but I doubt they're going to get their hands on that. I don't think they're going to find anything accurate enough. Not that I'm an expert.
The technology definitely exist for this type of things, but like you said they definitely won’t be able to source these parts, let alone install them in scooters you leave out in the street. Their plan now is to set the road as “scooter allowed zones” and anything else (sidewalks, grass, etc) would be considered an off zone. In my opinion, it would yield to great success, however I have yet to hear any improvement!