Electric scooters are usually limited to a sedate 15mph, but a new racing league scheduled to start in 2021 will see competitors hurtling around a track on two-wheelers at speeds up to 62mph.
This year's Formula One and Formula E championships were put on hold during the coronavirus pandemic, and races have only just re-started under tightly controlled conditions. The drivers haven't been idle though, and rather than taking an extended holiday, a group of them got together to conceive the eSkootr Championship.
As The Verge reports, the series will use specially designed and built scooters with large. low platforms, fat tires and full suspension, but still looks like a very risky proposition (albeit fun with riders and scooters decked out in Tron-style glowing neon colors).
The eSkootr Championship plans to reveal a prototype later this year, and says it's working with a "recognised high-technology provider", but hasn't disclosed which company that is.
The series has a social point to make too, and its organizers intend the league to be a zero-carbon affair that thrusts sustainable transport into the spotlight.
"Exploring the future landscape of mobility through motorsport is a fascinating concept – particularly in a post-coronavirus world," says Hrag Sarkissian, eSkootr Championship CEO and co-founder.
"In defining the initial goals of the Electric Scooter Championship, we quickly realised that the notion of a pioneering, innovative and fully sustainable category was a real and interesting proposition.
"The eSC will define how micromobility and motor racing could and should work together – not only by making the partnership wholly environmentally sustainable, but by also using it to dynamically fast-track concepts and ideas that can reframe mobility for every level of society."
On your marks...
It's not the only futuristic race series scheduled for 2021. Australian company Alauda is planning to start manned tests of its Airspeeder 'flying car' next year, with a full racing league to follow soon after.
Alauda originally planned to hold its first Airspeeder World Championships in 2020, but the league has suffered a few setbacks, including an incident at the 2019 Goodwood Festival of Speed where a glitch sent an unmanned prototype soaring hundreds of feet into the sky (an event that's still being examined by the UK government's Aircraft Incident Investigation Branch).
Hopefully using existing technology (albeit in a very extreme way) means that the eSkootr Championship won't be beset by such setbacks, provided the small matter of safety can be tackled successfully.
