Unagi Has Cancelled Its Model Eleven Collision-Sensing Electric Scooter

There’s unlucky information at present for electrical scooter followers who have been enthusiastic about taking one of many web’s most promising potential fashions for a take a look at drive at some point. Today, Unagi revealed that it’s cancelling its Indiegogo-funded Model Eleven scooter, and can be providing backers full refunds or compensation with different fashions the corporate makes.

As electrical scooters go, Unagi’s fashions have stood out in opposition to the competitors with wonderful efficiency and vary, plus a elegant design that hides wires and different unpleasant technical bits. They have been a few of the first electrical scooters to seem like real commuting instruments as an alternative of toys (though they have been nonetheless fairly enjoyable to experience), and the corporate’s dedication to elevating e-scooters was very a lot obvious within the Unagi Model Eleven introduced a yr in the past. The Model Eleven was presupposed to characteristic some actually progressive expertise, together with back and front shock absorbers, a design by Yves Behar, and even AI-powered ADAS (superior driver-assistance system) sensors that may warn riders about potential collision hazards forward.

Made out there by an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign that managed to lift over $700,000 from 345 backers, the final replace from May, earlier this yr, indicated there have been pandemic-related challenges with components manufacturing, leading to a three-month delay for Model Eleven deliveries, pushing them to September.

But at present, in an e mail to Gizmodo, and one other replace shared to Indiegogo, Unagi CEO David Hyman has introduced that the Model Eleven has been cancelled, and that backers will be capable of both request a full refund, a “3 year All-Access subscription to the Model One Voyager”, which is the corporate’s newest e-scooter mannequin, or “2 Voyager scooters to own” outright.

The major purpose Unagi has cited for cancelling the Model Eleven is that it doesn’t match its latest shift in direction of renting out its e-scooters by subscription fashions. The firm’s new Model One Voyager with a boosted vary prices $67/month, however the Model Eleven would have price a lot increased than that, nearly 3 times as a lot, and didn’t make a number of monetary sense.

But whereas the Unagi Model Eleven might by no means see the sunshine of day, Hyman has speculated that “some of the technology developed for the Eleven will trickle down into products that will become available in the future.” So the Model Eleven wasn’t an not possible dream, only one that ended up not being financially possible in a time when firms are nonetheless struggling to get merchandise out the door.