[Adam Zeloof] (legally) obtained a retired electric scooter and documented how it worked and how he got it working again. The scooter had a past life as a pay-to-ride electric vehicle and “$1 TO START” is still visible on the grip tape. It could be paid for and unlocked with a smartphone app, but [Adam] wasn’t interested in doing that just to ride his new scooter.
His report includes lots of teardown photos, as well as a rundown of how the whole thing works. Most of the important parts are in the steering column and handlebars. These house the battery, electronic speed controller (ESC), and charging circuitry. The green box attached to the front houses a board that [Adam] determined runs Android and is responsible for network connectivity over the cellular network.
To get the scooter running again, [Adam] and his brother [Sam] considered reverse-engineering the communications between the network box and the scooter’s controller, but in the end opted to simply replace the necessary parts with ones under their direct control. One ESC, charger, and cheap battery monitor later the scooter had all it needed to ride again. With parts for a wide variety of electric scooters readily available online, there was really no need to reverse-engineer anything.
Ridesharing scooter startups are busy working out engineering and security questions like how best to turn electric scooters into a) IoT-connected devices, and b) a viable business plan. Hardware gets revised, and as [Adam] shows, retired units can be pressed into private service with just a little work.
The motors in these things are housed within the wheels, and have frankly outstanding price-to-torque ratios. We’ve seen them mated to open-source controllers and explored for use in robotics.
Retired Rideshare Scooter Skips the Reverse Engineering to Ride Again
Source: HackADay
