First look at the Zuumer

The Zuumer is a three wheeled scooter that has a highly flexible design to it. I will have an opportunity next week to test-drive it, and have talked with a ZuumCraft representative. This isn't just a simple platform with three wheels on it, but there is a suspension system which makes the Zuumer highly amazingly maneuverable. Most standup scooters have pitfalls in steering and can easily jackknife, but according to ZuumCraft people the Zuumer is designed for easy maneuvering with little danger.

A key meme to them is to start from FUN. This isn't a stodgy electric vehicle where it's purely function. Instead it's maneuverability is appealing .. for example being able to make hairpin turns at 15 miles per hour without losing traction or tipping over a water bottle standing on the platform. That's the safety and maneuverability designed into the Zuumer. The videos show amazing turns and slalom rides, and make me believe them when they say it gives the sensation of surfing or skiing. But at the same time it requires little skill to learn.

They attempt to compare themselves favorably against the Segway. The Segway uses two wheels and therefore to be upright they designed in an amazing computer system to detect how to turn the wheels to maintain balance and to detect how and where the rider is standing and adjust speed and direction accordingly. Because the Zuumer is three wheels the control system can be much simpler, as three wheels automatically maintain balance. One motion the Segway excels at, spinning in place, would be impossible with the Zuumer but in practical use spinning in place probably isn't necessary. What's necessary is to make tight turns, tight U-turns, etc, and the ability to easily step off the vehicle, pick it up, and turn it around.

That is, if you're riding on the sidewalk (which may or may not be legal where you are) and need to turn around.. with the segway you make the motions which cause it to spin in place. On the Zuumer it appears to require a U-turn and the maneuverability would help you accomplish the U-turn. On other standup scooters I've ridden if you make a too-tight U-turn the scooter will jackknife and possibly tip you to the ground. If the quarters are too tight it's possible to step off the scooter, pick it up, and turn it around by hand.

Coming to a stop (stop and go traffic) should be more practical with the Zuumer due to three wheels. On a two wheeled standup scooter coming to a stop means stepping at least one foot off the scooter. On a Segway it means stopping and then rocking back and forth. Because the Zuumer has three wheels you would stop, and that's it, no need to step off or rock back and forth to maintain balance.

The Zuumer has lithium-ion batteries which gives a range up to 30 miles. I don't remember the speed, however, though most laws would limit it to 20 miles/hr speed. The battery pack is easily removed so that for instance you can bring the pack indoors for charging. And because it's easily removed you could have multiple packs, and easily swap packs and continue riding.

One target market for the Zuumer is facilities personal and other corporate-campus travel. An easily swappable pack makes each vehicle have a larger useful radius of time and space. If the pack runs down, simply go to a charging station, swap in a new pack, and continue riding.

One usage they recommend is using the Zuumer to replace trips to the grocery store or other ways to haul stuff around. I myself ride a bicycle for my grocery shopping and highly value this possibility. As they say, why drive your gas burning behemoth to go to the grocery store? If burning fossil oil is to be replaced we need ways to effectively replace all our travel with electric vehicles, and that is why I am currently using my bicycle for grocery shopping. However the Zuumer is obviously not large enough to handle a full shopping trip, where the benchmark is four bags of groceries.

The Zuumer can have panniers mounted which allow for some cargo. I can't imagine it can carry four bags of groceries but perhaps one or two.

It may be possible to attach a trailer and there are a large variety of cargo trailers for bicycles that are appropriate and can carry four bags of groceries.

Another use case is integration of the Zuumer with mass transit. It's feasible to use a small EV to ride to mass transit, ride the mass transit to a place near your destination, and then ride the Zuumer again to the destination. This then requires that it's easy to carry the Zuumer onto the mass transit and/or attach it to a bicycle rack.

The Zuumer model currently available weighs over 70 lbs. This weight would interfere with carrying onto mass transit as some trains or busses require you to climb steps etc. It may be possible to stash the Zuumer on some bicycle racks, but the ones used by the bus system near me (VTA) have design assumptions that it's a bicycle and that they have a gizmo which goes over a bicycle wheel. The Zuumer isn't that tall and might not work in the VTA bicycle racks.

However the currently available model is made of steel framing, and they are working on an aluminum framed version. The later version would be lighter and more easily carryable. Another design tweak is to assure the steering tube can fold down for easy carrying onto other vehicles, or stashing in the trunk of a car, or in luggage compartments of a train or airplane. I did not ask whether the battery is certified to be brought onto an airplane.

Entrepreneur makes right connections to launch scooter business: prototype Zuumer set for sales as green solution to short-distance traveling is an interesting look into their early corporate developmental steps. An interesting strategy is to initially target large corporate campus's for on-campus transportation. We talked at length about this during the call with Tom Boyd and it appears the Zuumer could do well with this. The idea is to help corporate campus denizens to avoid driving cars around campus.

Some corporate campus's are sprawling to the extreme. Not just corporate campus's, so are college campus's, some hospitals, military bases, etc. Suppose you have an urgent meeting in 10 minutes and the meeting is a 20 minute walk away? What do you do? The prevailing belief is the way to get there is to hop in the car and drive. But it's such a short distance the car is going to be inefficient, and there is a need to change the prevailing belief so that gasoline usage can be reduced. A scooter like the Zuumer offers a good alternative if deployed as an on-campus service. How it would work is for the campus owners to buy a fleet of scooters and to have one or more recharging stations scattered around. The scooter enables people to more quickly traverse their campus more easily without burning gasoline.

I witnessed a setup like this on Google's very sprawling campus in Mountain View. They had BladeZ scooters widely available in building lobbies, and someone dashing across campus could hop on one of those. But what if you were to hop on one and halfway there the battery conks out? While it's easy enough to plug a scooter in for charging, there's no guarantee every campus denizen will understand the need to do so. How does the Zuumer help? First, due to Lithium-ION batteries it has a longer range, but the quick-change battery pack makes the situation much simpler. A maintenance person would get a call "Hey, this scooter is down" they zip out with a fresh battery, and after a quick swap they rider is good to go.

The quick swap battery pack also would make fleet ownership more affordable. Owning one scooter and two battery packs is cheaper than owning two scooters. Consider an example of a security patrol who uses a Zuumer to get around. They could have a patrol circuit to ride, then every so often they stop at the office where spare charged battery packs are maintained. After a quick swap they ride away on their patrol leaving the depleted battery pack plugged in for recharging.

As of this writing, in September 2008, they are about to begin ZuumQuest '08 which is a promotional tour of the California coast. Their official start is on September 20, which is also Coastal Cleanup Day.

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqdB7FC81bA]