Electric scooters are not new, especially overseas. In Spain, folks can zip about on the Xkuty while fans in nearby Portugal wait for the Coimbra electric scooter to be approved for production. BMW Motorrad introduced its BMW C evolution electric at last year’s Paris Motor Show. Closer to home, Canadians can enjoy the crisp cold air while riding their E-Breeze. Americans have a variety of electric scoots from companies such as Z Electric Vehicles, maker of the ZEV 5000.
Xor Motors, based in Aix-en-Provence, France, is – at first glance – just another electric scooter manufacturer. But it offers a twist on the well-know ride. As can be seen seen in this video, the Xor X02 electric scooter can actually be folded small enough to be rolled away by it rider.
How? From what we can interpret from the video, an owner of a Xor X02 first detaches the seating as its own separate roll-away unit. The rear wheel then folds into the space previous occupied by the seat. The “front” of the electric scooter then folds and cover the rear wheel, compacting the vehicle to roughly half its entire, non-folded size. Finally, the owner grabs one of the scooter’s front forks. He then simply pulls the now compact scooter behind him like rollaway luggage. Same with the seat, which has its own wheels. The entire Xor X02 is light weight as you can imagine.
The seat houses the Xor X02’s battery pack. This makes it easy to recharge it. Owners now don’t have to drag the entire scooter to a plug or charging unit. Power delivery varies between 4 kiloWatts to 8 kW depending on the model selected. According to Xor’s website, the X02 has a range of between 46 to 86 miles depending on speed and how the owner is driving. Top speed varies as well, ranging between 28 mph to 78 mph. It takes approximately one-and-half hours to fully recharge the X02’s battery.
Xor has not released pricing information on its foldable electric vehicle at the time of this writing. The Xor X02 is strictly for the European market; there is no word if the company plans to bring the electric scooter to the U.S. Which we think is a shame: we can definitely see a market for it, especially in cities such as San Francisco and New York, where parking space is a premium.