OjO (pronounced Oh-Joe) is an electric scooter that slots into the market space between those cheap little Chinese-made Razor things and something like a sophisticated electric motorcycle. It is an expensive — $1,999 — Chinese-made electric scooter that’s not as flimsy as the things you can get on Amazon for $106.28. Is there a market demand for this niche product? Is there even a niche?
“We decided, ‘Let’s find a space that isn’t quite taken up,” said company president and co-founder Dale Seiden. “There are a lot of scooters out there, but they’re all toylike: They fold, they’re very unstable, they’re kind of like last-mile type of things (that get you to the train station or the bus stop). They’re Razor-type products. We said, ‘If Tesla or Apple was to develop a scooter, what would that look like?’”
So they brainstormed on that, Seiden and his four partner friends, all of them well-to-do, successful business guys. They figured they’d come out with something that was more for adults or millennials, “…something that was not really a kid’s toy type of a thing.” Seiden used to ride dirt bikes back in the “On Any Sunday” days, frequenting places like Bay Mare, Saddleback and Indian Dunes (if you grew up motocrossing in SoCal, you’d recognize those names). All of the partners owned and rode $4,000 Stromer electric bicycles (“The Ferrari of electric bicycles,” said Seiden).
Looks like trouble at the scooter cafe
“We said, ‘Let’s take my manufacturing background in building super-high-quality restaurant equipment, Don (Ratner)’s in creating toys, Alan (Shapiro)’s in distribution of plumbing supplies and see what we (the fourth guy is Ronny Grunwald, CFO) can come up with. We’re all very successful business people. So we came up with this.”
“This” is a chassis made out of strong 11-gauge extruded aluminum rated for a 300-pound rider, though Seiden says it’ll probably hold 500 to 600 pounds (where could you find anyone that large who wanted a scooter?). The seat post, if you add one, is also mighty strong, bolted into the chassis base with four big, meaty bolts. The 48-volt lithium-ion battery goes right in the middle of the chassis base and is fully waterproof, as is the controller. There are two Bluetooth speakers so you can blast your music as you cruise, plus a USB charging port so your phone doesn’t go dead. There’s a non-glare touchscreen digital dashboard on the handlebars that gives you time, speed, distance, charge and Bluetooth-connectivity status.
The OjO is rated at 25 miles range, though Seiden says they’ve gotten 27 miles out of it. Top speed is 20 mph, which means you can still ride it on a bike path. It’s powered by a 500-watt gear hub motor residing in the rear wheel. The treaded tires are larger and soak up way more bumps than your typical scooter tires do. You even get disc brakes front and rear.
Millenials on OjOs
We didn’t go on a bike path but instead went back and forth on a taxiway at Santa Monica Airport. The group’s ersatz headquarters and secret clubhouse — their man cave, if you will — is a hangar at the airport where one board member keeps his Pilatus PC-7 trainer and TBM 930 turboprop, the latter good for 330 mph at 33,000 feet.
These guys know how to party.
They didn’t let us fly either of their airplanes (maybe next time?), but we did get to try out a couple OjOs. Onboard the OjO, we immediately got the sensation that these things were, indeed, a lot more stable than your typical Razor-type scooter. A lot of scooter stability has to do with rake and trail of the front end, i.e., how vertical the whole steering apparatus is. On a cheap scooter, the front wheel’s steering controls are almost vertical, making them what engineers call “jumpy.” Slight movements in the control handles equal big changes in steering. We noticed this in particular in the URB-E and EcoReco scooters. The OjO is a little more reclined, so it’s less jumpy and more stable. It’s still not like driving your Honda Accord, but it’s comfortable enough. On OjOs without the seat, you can lean back on the skid-free, curved foot plate and do wheelies. With the seat, you’re more comfortable as you try to break the 27-mile OjO distance record or 20-mph top speed. Acceleration from the 500-watt motor was brisk; you can get out of your own way pretty quickly.
It was more fun, more powerful and more stable than any of the smaller scooters we’ve ridden lately. But we’ve also ridden electric bicycles, electric motorcycles and electric cars, and we’re wondering how many people would choose one of these over one of those. Or over a little Razor scooter that you can fold in half and stow under your bus seat. OjO thinks there will be plenty of them. We can see college students maybe enjoying one, or high-schoolers commuting to school on them, or a fleet of these things on the campus of some Silicon Valley mega-startup. Or maybe the government could buy them and invade Washington, D.C.? Who knows? They look cool enough to accomplish anything.
They’re available for preorder now at Amazon.