Hey Ego,
No direct experience. I’ve often wondered what keeps people from stealing the ones I see on the streets of LA and cannibalizing them for parts. I wouldn’t want one that was dunked...for the same reasons I’d leave a phone or car with water damage.
So the scooter will have a lithium battery. A motor possibly brushless DC. A speed controller. A main controller to handle cellular radio, gps, security functions.
What made me wonder about the things is it probably would be easy to find a way to remove the custom controller and replace it with a hacked version or just bypass it to create a personal scooter. I should search before saying this because it seems like the obvious hacker activity.
A long time ago I worked with some of the SW to repurpose those disposable digital cameras as personal digital cameras. The idea was you bought the cheap subsidized camera and instead of turning it in and getting prints back, you just kept it and downloaded your photos to your PC and never looked back. The problem was the manufacturer and picture processor expected to get the camera back and resell it multiple times. The hackers destroyed their business model. I bet there is a group of people already doing this to the scooters.
The scooters look vulnerable to something like that. I hear there are junk ones all over the place in some countries. China comes to mind. Because these businesses are Venture Capital money burners they may survive some loss. That is, reality will take some time to catch up with them like Uber which is an extreme case.
So if I were about thirty years younger I’d go find one. Disassemble it and disable the gps. Take it home. Follow the circuitry from the motor back to the controller and figure out just what needed to be removed and replaced. My gut feel is the device outside of its security and gps is no more complex than a good quality remote control toy car. The real technical contribution of this thing is the mapping, tracking, accounting, social media and security software required to make it into a business.
In LA apparently they hire a bunch of wranglers to help collect up the units left in random places with dead batteries. It’s kind of a gig job to make a few dollars.
Edit- like. Usual I typed too soon. I like how these scooter companies say they have custom hardware that is harder to hack. Yes, but this is not rocket science. It just raises the barrier a bit. If they aren’t designing their own battery and motor they’re still vulnerable. The hack will just be more sophisticated than buying a Chinese kit and connecting the plugs.
https://mashable.com/article/e-scooter-hacks-bird-lime/
