Check on Auto Trader and you’ll find it’s possible to buy a second-hand electric car that’ll keep four people dry for less than £4,000, which makes the £2,249 that Bo wants for its M e-scooter feel like quite a lot. So what do you get for ten times the price of a cheap one from Amazon?

Sat out in the sun at the Bohemia restaurant, the Bo M looked a world away from the endless Chinese imports flooding the streets in seemingly every town. There’s a presence, an obvious heft and quality to its construction, that you could never mistake it for something Toys R Us might have sold.

The Bo M isn’t a simple skateboard platform with wheels bolted onto each end and a stick poking up from the front. Instead, it’s been carefully considered by the firm’s founders, using their backgrounds at Williams Advanced Engineering and Jaguar Land Rover, meaning there’s a metal monocoque (which Bo calls a Monocurve) that’s tough and sleek.

Forged from high-strength aluminium, the form flows from a chunky base, curving up at the front to a tall neck and handlebars that are unusually wide — 580mm, compared to roughly 480mm for a Xiaomi 3, for example. It’s quite sizable, too, weighing in at 22kg, but that gives some advantages to the Bo.

Chief amongst those is its glorious design. There’s a style to the Bo that’s missing from the rest of the market. It’s sleek and sophisticated, and looks every penny the two grand it costs. But that beauty isn’t just skin deep.

The monocoque design provides a strong, long and stable platform to stand on. The footpad is an 11mm thick engineered elastomer made with anti-vibration foam and materials you expect to find in high-quality running shoes. It reduces road vibrations, eliminating the need for complex and expensive suspension systems. It’s not entirely successful at that, as it bounces along broken pavements and rough surfaces surprisingly jarringly, but on smoother surfaces, you’ll never feel the need for suspension.

Bo M E-Scooter: Safesteer

That thick stem also hides the Bo’s secret weapon: Safesteer. Described as a ‘dynamic steering stabilisation system’ that sets ‘the benchmark for control’, it’s fundamentally self-centring steering that gives the rider more confidence and removes much of the wobble — especially at low speeds and over potholes — that you find on regular e-scooters. While it’s not a good idea to try hands-free scooting, it’s definitely possible on the Bo M…

A pair of torsion springs inside gently returns the front wheel to a straight position, but never with enough strength to interfere with your inputs. With large 10-inch wheels with a natural centring dynamic, it makes low-speed scooting incredibly easy and makes crossing rougher terrain less daunting.

Bo M E-Scooter: Riding

Making riding less daunting is a good thing, as you can get some speed up on the Bo. The metal chassis houses a 1200-watt (or about 1.6hp) electric motor able to push the M e-scooter to 21 mph. It’s powered by a 655Wh Battery Pack that, in ideal conditions, is good for a 31-mile range. Bo promises that the power available makes most hills inconsequential, although our testing on the flatlands of Cambridgeshire meant we couldn’t put that to the test. Still, I’m no lightweight, and the 30Nm of torque available flung me around the rural streets with ease, and I can do that with up to 10kg of cargo hanging from hidden hooks in the neck.

The throttle is a little tough to modulate effectively, so maintaining a constant speed can be tricky, but Bo insists that there’s still work to be done on that before it opens the order book in November. It helps that the scooter doesn’t release full power until it’s rolling, so there’s no danger of it shooting off out of control.

You can go even further with some careful use of the regenerative braking. This uses the motor to slow the scooter, returning the gathered energy to the battery pack. Like the throttle, it’s not perfect — it’s more of an on/off switch than a controllable system, but it will eventually be developed to offer a smooth, adjustable level of resistance that could leave you never needing to touch the brake.

When you eventually run out of battery power, charging the battery to 80% using a regular three-pin socket will take about three hours.

E-Scooter Legality in 2023

Despite having an LED headlight, tail light, daytime running lights, and even a brake light, the Bo M isn’t legal to use on the road or the pavement. Or anywhere that isn’t private ground. However, that’s something it has in common with every other e-scooter on the market, as the law lags behind modern life.

We’ve seen trials of rental scooters in cities across the UK as the government works out how to legislate and control the scooters, and the good news is that there’s a proposal going through parliament to legalise all scooters. How long that will take is anyone’s guess.

Until the law catches up, they’ll remain illegal to use almost everywhere, and you’ll risk having the scooter confiscated and possibly even face prosecution.

Bo M E-Scooter: The Verdict

Put the legal aspect to one side — let’s assume they’ll be legal soon — and there’s much to like about the Bo M e-scooter. It makes every other scooter look like a child’s toy (and, in fairness, many are closely related to them) and offers a load of features you won’t find in its rivals. There’s built-in security, cargo carrying hooks, bright LED lights, a wide, stable platform to stand on, a powerful motor and impressive Safesteer technology.

However, it’s very heavy and doesn’t fold, making it incredibly tricky to put in a car, and it’s a tad pricey.

At £2,249, it’s going to be a brave buyer that sinks their money into the Bo, but it’s got enough technology that it can possibly, maybe, perhaps justify its price tag. And, as we slowly move out of expensive, polluting cars for short hops to a shop or cafe and into ‘personal mobility’ or active travel, there’ll be plenty of people willing to splash out a bit more to have something that feels more closely related to the cars they drive each day.

It’s better than its rivals, is likely to last longer, and looks achingly cool, and that might be enough to draw some to the Bo.

Model Tested: Bo M e-scooter
Average Joes Rating: ★★★★☆

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