Glide Is a Concept Made to Revolutionize Electric Scooter Mobility in Our Cities

This scooter design, however, is meant to change most of what the designer feels is wrong with current scooter mobility. That designer is named Ruairi Phelan, an industrial and product designer from Dublin, Ireland, while the scooter is simply called Glide. Now, there is a brand of scooters out there named Glide as well, but they build moped scooters.

The Glide concept, on the other hand, is no moped. This design is more similar to classic push scooters, aside from the electric capabilities of course. But beyond just this “everybody’s doing it” sort of design, this idea includes a whole lot of functionality.

As you can see the design is a tubular one and includes the absolute most essential traits required for an urban mobility vehicle such as this, and then some. This sort of design, coupled with a folding mechanism, allows the Glide to occupy a space only dreamed of by other vehicles. In the folded or locked position, the EV occupies a length of 45 in. (115cm), enough to place both your feet and even a bag or pieced of small luggage.

This whole luggage aspect is one of the traits included in this design. A space to place your belongings is excluded in most current models, so here the designer extended the foot board and added a strap with which to secure your belongings.

Part of the folding and unfolding mechanism is the locked and unlocked feature as I mentioned earlier, but it also acts as part of the charging system. Theoretically, once the battery is drained on the system, you, as the good citizen that you are, should return the scooter to a nearby charging station. There, you just back the scooter against one of the designated charging ports and lift the back to lock it into the charging station.

The addition of an easily distributed charging system is also an idea that Phelan incorporated to bring ease of access and continuous utility of the scooter, but to also eliminate the need for middle-men services that usually collect and recharge these types of scooters.

Anything regarding the size of the battery or power of the motor is not specified, as there simply is no need to worry about such aspects so early in the development cycle. That’s not to say there was no thought put into the way all the internal electronics would by distributed within the shell.

Because of its small size everything needed to fit just right. To do so, components like wiring, battery housing, circuit boards, and even handlebars, all had to be imagined in such a way as to create as close to a doable design as possible. For example, there is a braking system and lever on the scooter and obviously handlebars.

But, what do you do with those when transporting or charging this scooter? They can’t just be jutting out the sides. You simply make them foldable. When charging or being transported, the handlebars and brake lever are neatly tucked into the frame and pulled into place once you’re ready to go.

On top of it all, there’s an app for that. Yes folks, the designer even thought of this aspect of this system and created an idea for an app and how to utilize the Glide in just 3 easy steps. Whenever that’ll be, we don’t know.

Until that day, this scooter will only remain to inspire possible manufacturers of e-scooters. Come on people, get this out there.