New Goodies At The L.A. Auto Show
The Los Angeles Auto Show is where many automakers bring out their latest and greatest, showing off all their wares and debuting new cars and concepts. The show opens to the public on November 18, but there’s an industry trade show that includes the Connected Car Expo that’s open to the media November 14-17. We went in to see some of the new electric transportation shown there. And yeah, we peeked at the cars, too!
Here are a few highlights of what we found.
DYNABIKE
Dynabike shows their ultra-tiny folding bike, as well as a couple of scooters and bicycles. The fat bike on the far end is sub-$1500, and we may be getting one to check out and review soon.
JUICER BIKES
We’ve shown a previous Juicer bike. This is the latest, featuring a belt drive, massive batteries and retro good looks. It’s not finished, de rigueur for a trade show. This is another one we can’t wait to ride.
URB-E
Urb-E is here, with their ultraportable, lightweight scooters. They’re made with aluminum and carbon fiber, and as you can see from the side inserts, you can change the color scheme at your whim. It looks like fun, we saw a couple of them ripping around the show. They’re local, so we’ll get one to play with soon.
They also had this cool, collapsible wagon/trailer for carrying groceries, drum sets, small animals and the like.
FORD
Ford was here with their GoBike. It’s not electric, simply something they were showing as a bike share bike that will launch in San Francisco soon. Interesting to see a bike offering from a car company, something that will discourage people from driving one of their own cars.
U-SCOOTERS
U Scooters, known abroad as e-TWOW, is now here in the U.S. They’ve sold over 100,000 units in Europe and Asia. We demo’d one and it was fun, up to 18.6 mph with a great, proprietary suspension system, it’s lightweight, and claims up to a 21-mile range. Something else we hope to get to fully test soon.
AND THE OTHERS
There aren’t only bikes and scooters to be seen, there are other forms of transportation here.
The eFoldi folding scooter apparently won British Invention of the Year. We’d love to see what didn’t win!
If transportation is shrinking in cities, think Smart Cars and the Scion iQ, as well as things like the Polaris Slingshot, then maybe there’s a place for the i-Road personal electric car. Looks more stable than a 3-wheeled Reliant Robin or even the infamous Peel P50.
