En smart elektrisk scooter til forbedring af bymobilitet

Startups, der kører for at implementere lejelige elektriske scootere rundt om i verden, ser ud til at følge Facebook -administrerende direktør Mark Zuckerbergs berømte motto for afbrydelse:Flyt hurtigt og knæk ting. Desværre for disse startups, de ting, der oftest går i stykker, er deres scootere.

Køretøjsvedligeholdelse, reparation, og omsætning har tvunget scooteroperatører til at få store økonomiske tab i deres tohjulede søgen efter at styre vejen.

Da de såkaldte "scooterkrige" begyndte for et par år siden, MIT spinout Superpedestrian havde et stærkt salg af sit første produkt, en adaptiv, elektrisk drivlinje til cykler kaldet Copenhagen Wheel.

Men de naturlige boost -ryttere får, når de pedalerer med Copenhagen Wheel, er kun halvdelen af ​​historien. Inden for hjulets markante røde nav er sensorer og mikrocomputere, der gør det muligt selvstændigt at diagnosticere problemer og endda tage skridt til at beskytte sig mod almindelige farer inden for et nanosekund. Hvis systemet identificerer et problem, kan det ikke rette, det tager sig selv offline og rapporterer detaljerede oplysninger tilbage til scooteroperatører til hurtig reparation.

Superpedestrian kalder systemet dens Vehicle Intelligence -platform. Da relativt lavteknologiske scootere begyndte at dukke op på gadehjørner overalt, virksomheden så en mulighed for at samarbejde med deres operatører. Nu har Superpedestrian afsløret sin nye elektriske scooter designet til flådeoperatører. Scooteren har Superpedestrian's Vehicle Intelligence -platform for at forbedre sikkerheden og køretiden, og reducerer vedligeholdelsesomkostninger drastisk.

"Da denne [mikromobilitet] industri blev født, vi sagde 'Vi har den perfekte løsning til at optimere sikkerheden, samtidig med at vi fuldstændig transformerer økonomien i at køre disse ting, "siger grundlægger og administrerende direktør Assaf Biderman." Så i stedet for at have køretøjer, der kan køre i en måned eller to, nu kan du have køretøjer, der kan køre i et år eller længere, fordi de ikke er beskadiget så meget af ting, der skader andre scootere, mens omkostningerne ved at oplade og vedligeholde dem reduceres til en brøkdel. "

Superpedestrian har allerede ordrer i bøgerne på deres nye scootere og de data, de producerer. Inden for få måneder, de suser ned ad veje i hele Nordamerika, Europa, og dele af Asien.

Fra prototype til produkt

Siden starten i 2004, Biderman har fungeret som associeret direktør for MIT's Senseable City Laboratory. Gruppens forskning identificerede flere faktorer, der belaster byernes traditionelle transportnetværk, herunder en voksende global befolkning, øget urbanisering, og bilproducenters incitamenter til at sælge større biler, selvom de fleste pendler til arbejde alene.

"Alt dette lægger et enormt pres på transport, "Siger Biderman." Din gade i centrum kommer ikke til at fordobles i bredden når som helst snart. ... De fleste undersøgelser forudsiger, at i midten af ​​dette århundrede, vi har omkring tre gange flere mennesker, der ønsker at bevæge sig på byveje. Den eneste måde, vi kan imødekomme denne efterspørgsel på, er ved at gøre mere brug af vores eksisterende veje. "

I 2009, laboratoriet begyndte at bygge en prototype elcykel, der kunne hjælpe med at løse nogle af disse problemer. Resultatet blev Copenhagen Wheel. Hjulets nav gemmer energi hver gang en rytter bremser, giver derefter et kraftboost, når de trykker ned på pedalerne. Hjulet kan også overvåge rytterens hastighed, drejningsmoment, og forbrændte kalorier, samt en række miljøparametre.

I 2013, Biderman besluttede at starte Superpedestrian, med ideen om at kombinere intelligent software med alle de ting, der får elektriske køretøjer til at køre.

Vehicle Intelligence-systemet, som virksomheden til sidst designede, bruger indbyggede mikroprocessorer til at overvåge og kontrollere alle de mekaniske, elektrisk, og termiske aspekter af køretøjet. Det kan også udlede problemer med køretøjet baseret på afvigelser i de data, det indsamler - herunder højere temperaturer i battericeller eller små ændringer i motorstrøm. Hvis sådanne data vises, systemet kan tage skridt til at kompensere for problemet, beskytter både rytter og køretøj inden for nanosekunder.

For eksempel, if a capacitor in one of Superpedestrian's scooters is damaged as the result of a crash or fall, the Vehicle Intelligence system will detect the problem immediately. The vehicle will then measure how much capacitance is left in the system, og, if there's enough capacitance to continue operating safely, it will simply reduce the scooter's speed limit and send a nonurgent service request to the cloud that could be addressed the next time the vehicle is picked up for charging.

The Copenhagen Wheel, the company's first product to feature its Vehicle Intelligence system, was released at the beginning of 2017, quickly becoming one of the best selling e-bikes in the U.S, ifølge virksomheden. As the system was used in various conditions and climates, Superpedestrian came to fully appreciate its power.

"Because the vehicles communicate rich data about their own functionality in real-time to our servers, we realized in about a year that more than 55 percent of technical issues were addressed without human intervention, " Biderman says. "That's got no parallels in the electric bike, micromobility, or automotive industries."

Scooters come to town

As the Superpedestrian team was gearing up for a focused launch of the Copenhagen Wheel in Europe, rentable e-scooter companies like Bird and Lime started appearing in cities around the world. The scooters quickly became a popular—if controversial—way to get around.

It soon became clear, imidlertid, that scooter operators had put more thought into finding new markets and attracting customers than designing sophisticated transportation vehicles. One common problem is that different scooter subsystems, såsom batterier, motors, and controllers, are made by different manufacturers. That can negatively impact both performance and operators' ability to gather higher-level insights into their vehicles. The dearth of self-protection and diagnostic capabilities in these vehicles, along with their nonconnected components, make maintenance and repair efforts so time consuming that many operators resort to throwing out damaged vehicles rather than repairing them.

Superpedestrian, på den anden side, builds every component of its platform. Having anticipated building other vehicles in addition to bikes, the company designed its Vehicle Intelligence system to work with any vehicle that has a power output under 3 kilowatts.

"When this [e-scooter] industry was born, we said, "Let's pause; we'll come back to the European consumer market, because we're still bullish on that, but this industry is booming now. It's here, it's a large market, and it really needs what we have, " Biderman says.

Now Superpedestrian is in the final stages of shipping its scooters to some of the largest operators in the world. Although Biderman cannot disclose specific partnerships, he says orders are currently being fulfilled and expects them to be on roads in the next few months.

With a slightly wider platform and handlebar stem than other scooters, it feels and looks more rugged than what's on the road today. The company also says the vehicles have a much longer range than other scooters thanks to "the industry's most efficient powertrain." Og, with its Vehicle Intelligence system, the company says the scooters are safer and much cheaper to maintain than anything the industry has seen.

Biderman believes e-scooters are just the beginning of a revolution in urban mobility, and thinks Superpedestrian has positioned itself well to accelerate that transformation:"We'll see scooters and e-bikes and mopeds and enclosed vehicles and multiwheel vehicles. It's about minimizing the number of miles that cars drive while maximizing access to mobility for people. That's where we think we contribute."