ZuumCraft debuts electric scooter

San Diego-based ZuumCraft unveiled an ultralight electric scooter today that it says can maintain its balance during fast turns.

ZuumCraft started taking deposits this week for the three-wheeled, battery-powered scooter that is expected to sell for $2,000 to $2,100. CEO Bill Lofft told the Cleantech Group that ZuumCraft plans to ship 150 of the Zuumers in January in a limited production run but ramp to 300 a month around March.

The Zuumer runs off a lithium-ion polymer battery that charges in three-to-four hours and can run for 20-to-25 miles, or up to four hours, Lofft said. The battery was developed by Switzerland-based Bikeboard and is removable for charging. 

Take a look at the Zuumer in action here >>

ZuumCraft founder Tom Boyd said the steering column has a low center of gravity and dual-arm suspension, which allows the vehicle to make sharp turns without tipping.

Boyd said the potential market for the Zuumer is college students or office workers, who might otherwise be interested in a $5,000 Segway or $3,300 Vespa as a low-cost transportation option for a single person.

"Segway was a pioneer; the Segway did some amazing engineering, and there's a lot of really good applications for everything they developed, but it's just not necessarily a very practical solution to personal transportation," Lofft said.

"A Segway is not intuitive, and the driver needs to be trained on it. With a Zuumer, I can give 10 seconds of instructions, and they can do it."

The vehicle will be manufactured in China and assembled in the U.S., Lofft said. At first, ZuumCraft plans to only sell to the U.S. market.

ZuumCraft has just emerged from stealth mode. The company was formed in January 2008, but Lofft worked on the product for the previous two years using expertise in steering columns to develop the patent-pending suspension that makes the Zuumer stable, he said.

"We had the ability to take a semi and keep it from flipping, so I decided to bring our technology to the market for new vehicles," he said.  

To show potential investors or buyers the technology in action, ZuumCraft posted a video online at Metacafe of a Zuumer with a water bottle on the back that didn't fall off when the driver made tight turns. The video was viewed in 79 countries and elicited numerous requests to buy the Zuumer, which isn't yet in production, Boyd said.

That's an example, he said, of how much demand there is for clean-running vehicles.

ZuumCraft took its first round of financing from a San Diego-based individual investor last week, somewhere "in the family" of $1.2 million, Lofft said.

And ZuumCraft started today on a week-long 600-mile trek from San Francisco
to San Diego to show it off to potential buyers and partners, making stops at the Silicon Valley offices of Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard and Google, as well as Stanford University.

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