Firstly, this was my idea… right. Someone has gone into my brain, probably while I was asleep… and nicked it. But mine was built into a Lambretta dashboard, either like the one you get on a Rallymaster to hold the clock and rev counter, or into the top of a legshield toolbox.

This blatant ripoff of my idea (if there are any lawyers reading, this is a pathetic attempt at humour!) is attached to a Japanese electric scooter, which doesn’t come from one of the big four (Honda, Yamaha, Suzuki and Kawasaki), but a company called Terra Motors. They’ve got a bit of a track record with electric vehicles, launching an electric TukTuk back in March.

Back to the iPod dock… doesn’t do too much really either shows you your speed, or how much charge there is left in the battery. I would be kind of cool to be able to switch to a sat nav mode, or blast some tunes out through some integrated speakers. Rigged up to a traditionally powered scoot you could show stuff like engine temperature, and revs too… all fairly easy to achieve I imagine. In fact, I bet someone’s already done this on a Lammie. If you know of it, let me know, I’d love to do a post on it.

So electric scooters. Cheap to run, less to go wrong, and once they’ve got the performance and range issues sorted out, I think a bit of a no brainer. They’re the future. Although I still prefer mine Lambretta shaped.

via C|Net