Yahoo Finance Electric Scooter Championship shows 2020 can always get wilder
With electric scooters as numerous and troublesome as tribbles, it's amazing no one thought of a professional race series. That chasm in the market has now been filled by the Electric Scooter Championship, also known as the eSC and the eSkootr Championship. Headed by CEO Hrag Sarkissian and COO Khalil Beschir, ex-Formula driver Alex Wurz and Formula E champion Lucas di Grassi are on board as ambassadors. The inaugural eSC season is planned for 2021 "in the hearts of major cities" around the world, with a two-pronged raison d'être that wants to "make international motorsport more accessible, affordable and sustainable than ever before," and that wants to help cities by "[promoting] the cost, convenience and sustainability benefits of micromobility within the rapidly changing electric mobility landscape."
The competition mounts will certainly cost less than a Formula E race car, but they'll likely come in well above a typical electric scooter. These two-wheelers will flip the bird to the Birds and Limes of the world, with a "recognized high-technology provider" planning on showing a prototype later this year. Di Grassi explained, "you need to separate the concept of an extreme racing scooter from the escooters you see on city streets (today). With this series, we have created a superfast race machine capable of speeds greater than 100km/h, that can accelerate faster than a road car, and which will reach 100km/h in only a few seconds. Little surprise, then, that the scooter "will need to be ridden by professionals." Best to caveat all the emptors for this one.
As for where those professionals will come from, the series says it plans to tap the extant ranks of "racing drivers, cyclists, skaters, snowboarders, motorcyclists, and even esports racers." The coyness during this initial announcement means we also don't know what the composition of an eSC team looks like, but we're already entertaining ideas of a rider balanced on air jacks while the pit crew swaps tires in under two seconds and a cadre of engineers parses telemetry on the pit wall. And if the eSC can re-create the high-viz neon tunnel from the teaser in real life, we'll be at the first race with press credentials, reporting from the front row.
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