Interest surges in electric scooters Field is starting to become crowded

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reikiman
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Interest surges in electric scooters Field is starting to become crowded

Interest surges in electric scooters
Field is starting to become crowded

It's an article about yet another electric scooter startup company, Current Motors (hmm name sounds familiar ;), based in Ann Arbor MI and their business plan to "starting off as a low-volume manufacturer that is structured so that it can make a profit by 2011 even if it is selling only a modest 550 scooters annually by then."

Wow, John, that's a lot of scooters compared to electric scooter companies. Anyway great article.

jdh2550_1
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Re: Interest surges in electric scooters Field is starting ...

Some factoids for you...

About 220,000 gas scooters were sold in the US in 2008. 80,000 were "name brands" (Honda, Vespa etc.) that report sales to the Motorcycle Industry Council (btw, CuMoCo is a member of MIC). The number goes up to 220K if you take into account mainstream scooter brands like Sym, Kymco, TGB, Buddy etc - the brands you will see if you go to an independent scooter store (like www.scootaroundtown.com to give a shout out to my local store for no particular reason!). If you add the "no-name" companies that you get when you google "cheap gas scooter" the number goes up to over 300,000.

Over 1 million Priuses (Prii?) have been sold. Not that we will necessarily win sales from the Prius however that shows that a significant number of people are willing to pay a little extra to buy a more environmentally sound car. We're betting that the same holds true in the two-wheel world.

Of course all those numbers are significantly lower in 2009 (it's a bad year to be selling anything!). So here's hoping to an improved economy and higher gas prices in 2010! ;-)

Given the above context our 550 after two years of operations is a rather modest aim (and we aim to get a lot bigger in years 2 through 5). But the article is actually incorrect - we're profitable at a lower number than that (I shan't tell you what though). I believe Vectrix was selling at around 1000 to 1500 per year (worldwide). I wonder how well Enertia's are selling? I'm sure their business plan is predicated on larger sales numbers than that.

Happy Holidays - expect big things from us in 2010. Alas, we did miss our 2009 goals - not for lack of trying though. Those that have followed us are free to hurl cream pies at me for missing the mark. Those few that have pre-ordered we sincerely thank you for your patience and your support. It will be worth the wait...

John H. Founder of Current Motor Company - opinions on this site belong to me; not to my employer
Remember: " 'lectric for local. diesel for distance" - JTH, Amp Bros || "No Gas.

reikiman
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Re: Interest surges in electric scooters Field is starting ...

Yeah, compared to gas scooters sales of electric scooters is like a grain of sand on the beach, right? I said "compared to electric scooters" and actually it would be interesting to know what the sales numbers are for vendors like RMartin or X-treme or ZAP or GreenEVehicles or any of the others. The Lectra in my drive was one of only 100 of those bikes sold. I believe the Sparrow sold 1000 or so total.

I really hope that sales of electric scooters and bicycles (including yours) do get to an amount where it is more than an asterisk in the overall sales.

jdh2550_1
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Re: Interest surges in electric scooters Field is starting ...

I said "compared to electric scooters"

Yup, but my point is that we're selling 2 wheeled electric transportation which compares favorably in terms of capability and usage patterns to about 80% of that pre-existing 220,000 market for 2 wheeled gasoline transportation. To say it another way only 20% of those scooters sold are used for longer distances than we can offer at present (mostly maxi-scooters of 400cc and up but some "true believers" will ride their 150 cc scooters long, long distances!). BTW, in Europe and Asia those number are an order of magnitude or two bigger.

Thus there is a large market that exists where there is NO downside (only upside) from buying an electric motor scooter vs the gas equivalent - when looking at total cost of ownership. That wasn't necessarily true in the past.

So, I believe one should compare us to the scooter market and that lack of performance or too high a cost have a bigger effect on earlier sales of similar products. That's my theory anyways (and I have a lot of money riding on that assumption now...)

Thanks for linking to the article - it's been a fun ride and it's only going to get more exciting...

John H. Founder of Current Motor Company - opinions on this site belong to me; not to my employer
Remember: " 'lectric for local. diesel for distance" - JTH, Amp Bros || "No Gas.

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