There are all sorts of things you could read or watch today that are incredibly important. Apparently, a new strain of bird flu just killed a man in Mexico. Also, while Modi still won India’s latest election, his party performed much worse than expected. Oh, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is still going on. Instead of learning more about those things, though, I would like to suggest you spend 17 minutes watching a kid spend way too much money and time building a car out of electric scooters.
OK, so “car” might be stretching things a bit, but the end result is still pretty impressive. Basically, the goal was to build a contraption that you could strap to four electric rental scooters and drive like a car. Was doing so important or necessary? Not at all. You know what, though? It’s fun. And we fully support people dedicating way too many resources to a project just because they want to see if their silly little idea could ever work.
Getting it all to work properly took a while, and yet, in the end, he actually managed to build something that worked well enough to drive over to a friend’s house. Of course, he didn’t add any airbags, crumple zones, a roof or safety features of any kind, so he probably would have been toast in a crash, but the same could probably be said about anyone riding an electric scooter. And unlike a scooter, you don’t have to worry about the scooter-car tipping over, so you could make the argument that it’s actually safer.
Seeing it all come together, from fabricating a way to control each throttle and brake lever to setting up a Nintendo Wii steering wheel to make it turn and all the other little things needed to turn this dream into a reality, really is fascinating. That said, we do have one question: What is he going to do with it now that it’s finally finished?