Tech Hd

A few months ago, my wife mangled her big toe on a beach in Florida. I won’t get into the grisly details—fine, she jammed a nail in a freak sand fall—but the surprisingly nasty injury left her hobbling. That wouldn’t fly for our trip the following weekend to Washington, D.C., a city built for walking.

Fortunately, our nation’s capital, like many other major metropolises, is abundant with light electric vehicles for rent. Six companies, in fact, operate dockless scooters in the District: Bird, Jump, Lime, Lyft, Skip, and Spin. They were interchangeable to my wife, who simply needed something to help her navigate the Mall with ease. So she hopped on a Lime out of necessity, while I snagged one in solidarity because a.) I’m a supportive husband and b.) those things looked really freaking fun.

Even with massive crowds swarming the monuments and memorials during peak cherry blossom season, the device made for a smooth, seamless, and inexpensive ride through the city. It only took a few brisk blocks for me to become a believer, despite knowing electric scooters come with a bit of baggage.

San Francisco, for example, temporarily booted Birds from its streets, while residents of big cities have blasted the e-scooter startups with myriad safety, parking, and littering complaints. (Check out the Bird Graveyard Instagram accountto see what happens when angry riders abandon—or beat the crap out of—the scooters, or watch this recent South Park clip.)

Still, the appeal of the humble electric scooter is obvious: Traffic sucks. Sustainability doesn’t. And it’s generally cheaper, quicker, and cleaner to rent one of these things for a mile or two—to run to a meeting, pick up a snack, meet with a friend—than to order an Uber or Lyft.

While ride sharing is a solid start to curbing congestion, Jeff Russakow says it’s hardly a panacea. “Taking a 3,500-pound, 15-foot long car on a three-mile trip doesn’t really solve the problem,” he says. “You’re still causing the traffic.”

Russakow is the CEO of Boosted, which made its bones developing Boosted Boards: high-performance, vehicle-grade electric skateboards for last-mile transportation. We’re big fans of the boards at Popular Mechanics—so much so that Field Editor James Lynch once rode a Boosted Stealth 90 miles (and 15 hours) from New York to Philly just to get a cheesesteak.

Russakow and John Ulmen, Boosted’s cofounder and CTO, have long been on a mission to reinvent transportation, which is why they’re taking their popular, powerful tech to another form factor and new frontier: the scooter.

The Boosted Rev, available now for $1,599, isn’t the first electric scooter on the market by any means. But it is the first vehicle-grade version.

“The stuff you can buy today is toy- or leisure-grade,” Russakow says. “Those other scooters can’t mechanically, electrically, or environmentally go for thousands of miles a year, take a real pounding over potholes, or have the acceleration and deceleration to keep you safe. But ours can.”

After my fleeting love affair with the Lime in D.C., I didn’t need much convincing when Boosted offered to send a Rev to our office. But Russakow’s impassioned sales pitch helped seal the deal.

“The first mobile revolution was the cellphone revolution—the thing that drove all the technologies we have today,” he says. “We think this is the start of a second mobile revolution.”

The Look

The Boosted Rev is, at its core, essentially one of the company’s boards in scooter’s clothing.

“It was always our plan to do all of these different kinds of vehicles,” Russakow says of Boosted’s grand intentions. “About 85 percent of an electric vehicle is the powertrain, and the frame you put over it—whether a skateboard or scooter—is the last 15 percent.”

Rip the Rev right out of the box and you’ll see the frame is sleek, but simple, with a wide neck, a wide handlebar, and fat tires. Think: more function than flash.

“We wanted to design something that would make for a comfortable ride,” Ulmen says. “This isn’t a scooter you grew up with as a kid that’s going to be squirrely and wobbly. It feels really clean and stable.”

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