Gasoholics Anonymous

A couple years ago the Go Motorboard 1500 caught the eye of personal EV enthusiasts. It was sleek, well made, sturdily constructed, etc. But it had a couple flaws such as no suspension (making for a very rough ride) and a battery design that didn't stand up well to the rough ride (no suspension) causing batteries to fail rapidly.

The original makers went out of business, but the design has been continued and refined by gosportinggoods.com. They added a suspension system and changed the battery pack.

I owned a 1500 motorboard and was almost highly happy with it. Unfortunately the lack of a suspension was a critical flaw, and I sold that scooter.

The 2000XR is the latest iteration of this design. It looks like the same solid base scooter, but with some up-to-date additions. The most interesting is the new choice of battery, the A123 Systems battery system.

The A123 battery is a Lithium-ION battery made using a "safe" chemistry. This makes for a lot of power in a lightweight package. The 2000XR weighs in at 16 pounds, compared to 19 pounds for the 2000X, and 22 pounds for the 1500. The 1500 was already an extremely light weight (not light-weight) scooter, but 16 pounds boggles my mind.

Having just returned from a trip where I brought along a bicycle, the 2000XR looks very tempting.