The Lavoie Series 1 e-Scooter Is What Happens When McLaren Gets Into Micromobility

That’s a roundabout way of saying that even established luxury carmakers are eager to tap into this very profitable segment of the market. As much as we love riding around in our fancy cars, the reality is that our cities are becoming more congested so, during workdays, that “riding around” is usually reduced to “being stuck in,” wasting time.

A bicycle, even an electric one, still involves a certain degree of effort on the part of the rider, if only to haul the thing up the stairs or to secure it to something so that it doesn’t get stolen. An electric scooter, on the other hand, is lighter and more compact, and will get you from point A to point B with zero effort on your part. If that scooter is a McLaren, then you get the supercar of scooters in every sense of the word.

Indeed, McLaren is getting into e-scooters. Lavoie is the subsidiary of McLaren Applied, McLaren Group’s advanced technology arm, so it employs the who’s who in automotive design and tech, with assistance from aero engineers, luxury product specialists and personal mobility experts, to craft the perfect premium e-scooter of tomorrow. It’s called Series 1 – not the most inspiring or inspired name, but a harbinger of things to come.

Series 1 was previewed last week, with highlights on two of its stand-out features: foldability and safety, both inspired by Lavoie’s user-centric philosophy. Everyone can design and sell an electric scooter, which is why our pavements are littered with them and not one offers the complete package of performance, looks and durability. Only McLaren can create the most luxurious of e-scooters, or so we’re told.

“The Series 1 is an e-scooter, but like none ever seen before,” Lavoie says. “Its speed, supercar-standard quality, robustness, stability, safety, and range are designed to make public transport an irrelevance to owners.”

The Series 1 folds in three parts, for the most compact footprint when being transported by hand. Many similar two-wheelers fold at the stem, but this one folds at the deck as well, which makes it that much more convenient as a first- and last-mile solution. Lavoie calls it the Flowfold mechanism, which is inspired by F1 race car suspension and is deployed within seconds, at the touch of a button.

The e-scooter is made of automotive-standard magnesium and weighs just 36.4 pounds (16.5 kg), so when it’s folded down, it can easily be carried up a flight of stairs into the office or apartment, or up public transport. The idea is that, since it can be easily lifted and taken inside, the owner would no longer have to worry about tying it down to something and still risk having it stolen.

If that does happen, Series 1 comes with app connectivity, which includes a theft deterrent alarm that blasts a loud sound and immediately sends a warning to the owner’s phone. There’s also GPS tracking, and turn-by-turn navigation on the main display. The latter is meant to make rides safer, by removing the need to look down at the phone when traveling.

Rider safety was a priority in the design, so the Series 1 comes with a patented lighting system that makes both rider and scooter more visible on the road. Rear-integrated lights illuminate the rider, while a triangle-shaped headlight casts a much brighter beam ahead on the road, and floodlights on the side of the deck enhance the real estate of the scooter. Turn lights are integrated into the handlebars, for even more visibility on the road.

The full specs of the Series 1 are yet to be revealed, but Lavoie did say it comes with rear-integrated KERS braking and a 31-mile (50-km) range per charge, with a full charge achievable in two hours. By the looks of it, Lavoie doesn’t even have a prototype ready to be shown off, although the plan is to start shipping the production version in 2023, with pre-orders scheduled for January 2023. More details are pending, with the initial announcement serving as a mere introduction.

These details include pricing. As you probably know, Bugatti also has a branded e-scooter that sells for around $1,200, if you can find one available. Buzz online is that the McLaren two-wheeler will be a bit more expensive, since it packs more tech – the emphasis in the press release below on how this is a premium personal mobility device and on the many talented McLaren specialists involved in the making of it seem to point in that direction as well.