I wonder if they have gyroscopic stabilizers for full stops.
To me it seems they’re behaving (driving? riding?..) in a very surprising/unsafe manner on the road. Admittedly I’m from a country with a completely different driving culture. Do people just ride scooters like that in China?
Also, there’s this interesting legal question of who is responsible when one of those things crashes into a car or a pedestrian.
Other than that, this is cool as heck and I want my bicycle to do the same now.
From what I’ve seen the driving culture in China does seem to be a lot more relaxed than in western countries. I’ve seen lots of videos of people driving scooters on sidewalks and so on. The legal responsibility is a good question, I would assume the company making the scooter would be responsible since they’re making the self driving system for it.
If this tech works well I can see it making things incredibly convenient. You could just leave your scooter somewhere, and then have it come find you, or you could even share a scooter with a friend this way.
A rental network would be very cool. One would come to you when called, and once you get to where you’re going, it would scoot off to another user, or take itself in for recharging, storage, or maintenance.
Oh yeah, that could be pretty amazing. It would really be strictly superior to actually owning a scooter since you wouldn’t have to worry about having a parking space and stuff. This is also a great illustration of the direct benefits of collective ownership.
