MICROMOBILITY
TIMES ARE CHANGING
Bristol-based mobility startup Bo has just released its fi rst product, a hi-tech e-scooter. Co-founders Oscar Morgan and Harry Wills showed Alex Ballinger their vision for micromobility
“
It’s going to be wild,” said Oscar Morgan, co-founder of e-scooter brand Bo, when I asked about the impact micromobility will have on urban transport. “I think very few people appreciate it. When you reduce the cost of travel by an order of magnitude - it’s actually 10 times cheaper in terms of pure energy to travel on a scooter than any other mode of transport that has a motor - no one quite gets how much this is going to change cities.” Bo, the brainchild of a group of former Williams F1 engineers, has set out its stall in micromobility with the release of its first e-scooter, the Bo M - a radical, state of the art, and stylish urban transport machine, an alternative to some of the cheaply-made and slightly flimsy models currently available.
Based in an industrial estate in Bristol, Bo is a British company at its heart, but Britain will not be the core market in the early stages for the micromobility startup.
40 | October 2022
Home and abroad In the UK, privately-owned electric scooters are still not legal on the roads. The Government has announced the introduction of a new low-emission, low-speed vehicle category in the upcoming Transport Bill, which will pave the way for legalisation, but the legislation is still believed to be months away.
While Bo will not necessarily be held back in business
terms, instead targeting European and US markets in its early stages, emotionally, founders Morgan and Harry Wills are invested in the UK embracing e-scooters. Morgan said: “Commercially, it’s almost not hugely relevant [for us]. From an emotional point of view, do I want to be a British company selling British products in Britain? Yeah, obviously, but in terms of world market, it’s zero difference to us if we’re shipping it to Europe or to the US. “But I feel really sad because I feel like the improvement could be manifested immediately. Everyone likes to talk good talk about air quality and around congestion, but to actually
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