The Connected Scooter Revolution

Imagine a world where your phone seamlessly connects to your scooter as you approach. When you put the key into the ignition a photo of your wife come up to greet you and important information about your scooter is at your fingertips. As you scroll through the menus, you see the local points of interest, a compass, notifications from social media channels, email, and alerts from all of your apps. Well, this is something that Kymco has developed and revealed at the recent CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas, the show where tech geeks get a first look leading-edge concepts and products.

Kymco recognized that the way we interact with technology today is evolving as pointed out by it's Chairman; Andrew Ko, they have developed the first smart scooter that integrates into our connected lives. The in-dash feature which manages the IoV (Internet of Vehicles) interface is called noodoe and it will be an option on two 2017 Kymco scooters: the AK550, and Like 150i both due out later this year.

The full color screen is embedded into the dash and is operated by a three-button command center placed next to the throttle. Naturally, it would be hard to operate the throttle and the noodoe controls at the same time which we have to assume was intentional. For the sake of safety, the rider must not be stopped to access notifications and scroll through the noodoe menus.

There are 7 customizable screens. The default screen which is the the speedometer, 3 dashboards (Clock, Weather, and Compass), and 3 photos of your choice. Customization is all done in the noodoe app which also includes a cloud-based social community.

Through the iOS or Android app every rider can develop their own dashboards and share them with the noodoe community. Everyone in the community can post, share, and download user-submitted dashes from the community to their scooter. Another community based feature is the ability to create your own group. When on the road, members of your group will appear on your compass as icons for easy location while riding. The app will further help in locating the vehicle when you return to a crowded parking lot ("Find My Ride") or need to plan the shortest route to the scooter from a remote location.

To jumpstart the community and offer a range of customizations, a network of dash developers is already hard at work making dashes for download in the cloud. As the community grows, more and more content will become available. Since the app is something that is connected to the internet, Kymco plans to continue offering updates and improvements to the Noodoe application which can be used to update not only the app but the firmware on the scooter as well.

The future of IoV is looking good for two wheeled vehicles and Kymco has done a great job with it's first to market Noodoe integration. To learn more visit www.kymco.com.