Keeping up with more Schwalbe news, I spent the last weekend in the German city of Koln at the Intermot motorcycle trade show. Having been at the past 4 EICMA’s in Milan, I’ve never been to Intermot due to it’s biennial event status. I was told it would be smaller, less important, etc. But I was pleasantly surprised with the amount of walking I still had to do to view the entire show.

Of course the reason I was there to begin with was my baby, the product of my GOVECS project, the Schwalbe scooter. This year GOVECS isn’t presenting as GOVECS, it’s presenting the Schwalbe scooter and it’s doing so as the GOVECS Group. But you wouldn’t notice that if I hadn’t told you that just now. Our booth is all about Schwable. It’s all yellow, retro looking, and it awesomely showcases the scooter that’s going to be a game changer in the electric mobility come summer 2017.

I will write about other stuff found at Intermot in the next post, keeping this Schwalbe only. In Germany, Schwalbe has as very symbolic status. Everyone one knows it, and everyone loves it. It is as important as Vespa in Italy, or Jeep Willis in the States. It’s part of the history, of the German communist era DNA, but now, it’s mostly considered really really cool.

Throughout the show it seemed that pretty much every other person visiting our booth either owned a Schwalbe at one point, or still owned a Schwalbe today and was really happy to see it come back again. Albeit in a slightly different iteration. An all electric iteration.

Our scooter has a top speed of 45km/h, and that’s a big “No-no” with the hardcore Schwalbe crowd. That’s because back in the ’70s and ‘80s the L1e scooter category that was in place allowed scooters to travel up to 60km/h. The L1e regulation has been updated since then, and we’re forced to electronically speed control our scooter to just 45km/h. That was pretty much the only issue people found, and it really is only going to affect us for a short time since an L3e (100km/h?) scooter is coming soon afterwards.

In either case, the show was a smashing success and I can’t believe how much talking, presenting, and walking we had to do at our booth this year. Can’t wait to get it released next year!