Honda Developing Micro Scooter

Admin · October 27, 2022

Honda has filed patent documents that show its concept micro scooter. (Honda/)

Over the last few years use of the electric rental scooter has seen a meteoric rise, with names like Uber, Lyft, Bird, and Lime scrambling to get a slice of a multi-billion-dollar market for new urban-mobility solutions. Now it looks like Honda has taken note of the potential and might be tempted to enter the market with its own unique take on the idea.

While most rental scooters follow the same simple stand-up design, Honda has filed several new patent applications for a compact, foldable machine that’s more like a motorcycle, including a seat and suspension. The designs suggest a bike that might have a bit more range and performance than the rental scooters that we currently see on city streets, but it’s very clearly still an urban last-mile solution rather than something that would be intended for longer rides.

This image shows how the handlebars can be folded to allow the scooters to be tightly packed together for storage or transportation. (Honda/)

The bike has an extremely short wheelbase, with the rider sitting almost above the rear wheel. The seat is movable and can be slid forward to make the bike smaller or shifted rearward for rider comfort. The patents also show that the bars and footplates can be folded to reduce the bike’s width when it’s out of use, and the combination of the sliding seat and folding parts means the machines can be packed closely together for transport or storage.

Mechanically, there’s a combined swingarm, motor and transmission unit bolted to the rear wheel. The battery is mounted under the seat, suggesting it could be a swappable unit, perhaps Honda’s own Mobile Power Pack, as used in some existing electric scooters in Japan. Perhaps the most intriguing element of the design is how Honda intends to make it easy for staff to collect rental scooters scattered around a city and return them to base for charging.

This mechanism allows the scooters to be grouped and attached together for transport. (Honda/)

Instead of picking them up in vans, Honda’s idea is to make it possible to attach the scooters together, allowing a single rider to operate groups of them. The footboards have a second section, normally folded underneath and out of the way, that can be flipped out and connected to the lower fork section of another scooter, using a hitch ball and a slotted interface to ensure a firm grip. Honda’s patent shows how four bikes could be connected in a diamond pattern; the rider sits on the front bike, controlling and steering, while the remaining scooters trail behind. The scooters would also be electronically connected, so the unmanned bikes behind would respond to throttle inputs but also to steering commands. While their steering can’t move when trailing behind a lead bike, the cornering inputs of that lead machine would be transmitted to those following, so that the scooters on the left and right would alter their relative speeds during corners. The innermost bike slows down and the outer one accelerates in corners to help the train of scooters respond to the rider’s inputs.

A top view shows how with the bars folded they can be grouped together. Then someone can hop on the front scooter and ride them en masse to be charged or serviced. (Honda/)

Although this sort of patent is no guarantee that the idea will reach production, Honda has filed several documents, showing that it’s an active project. Given the large financial rewards for companies that manage to dominate the scooter-sharing market, it’s understandable that the company that did more than any other to get the masses onto two wheels in the postwar era might want to get a slice of the action.

Another view of the scooters in their attached form. (Honda/)