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Scootility was founded by Antonio Loro, a Vancouver-based urban planner with a focus on emerging transport technologies and trends. In addition to e-scooters and other micromobility, he has also worked on matters related to automated (or "autonomous") vehicles, on which he conducted the first urban planning research in Canada, providing a nuanced perspective amid the escalating techno-hype. In his work in the micromobility space, Antonio saw that in order to realize the potential of e-scooters, not only is there a need for smarter planning and regulation of scooter-sharing, there is also a need for radically better vehicle design.

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In short, he saw that someone needed to design and build a safer, tougher, more versatile scooter. A utility scooter.

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This is where it would be handy to be an engineer; not having that luxury, the only way forward was to start learning. So Antonio dove directly into the R&D process to develop a utility scooter, one that incorporates numerous novel aspects—the space-efficient design, the steering system, the assembly methods, and more—resulting in a scooter that provides ample cargo space in a compact form, and that's safer and still a joy to ride. Along the way, he drew from his transport planner perspective on what urban dwellers need for an e-scooter to serve as a truly useful vehicle.

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Plenty of CAD and precisely fabricated parts and backyard mechanic toil later (minimizing costs was vital), the simplified first prototype proves the concept of the utility scooter (see some footage here). (Prototyping was made possible by support from Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada.) And just wait till we bring an engineering team on board to refine the design and flesh it out with more unique features to make it even more useful...

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