The highly engineered piece of machinery shown here is the Afreda S6, a tilting, folding, three-wheeled electric scooter. Designed to be easy to ride, easy to fold, easy to transport, and easy to store, Afreda says its the first such vehicle in the world.

The S6 is the sixth generation of a concept that began life in 2017, and the second generation to be available to the public. The S5, available since May of 2019, sold over 5,000 units. This gave the company the confidence to continue evolving the product into the S6, which is being marketed as part of an Indiegogo campaign that runs until July, 2022.

The Afreda S6 open and folded. Photo: Alfreda

From the beginning, Afreda recognized that the e-scooter and personal mobility market is already quite saturated, so their concept would need to be unique. They concentrated on two main aspects of the machine—ease of use, and portability. Folding bikes are common, but two-wheelers can be daunting for some riders. Three-wheelers are available, but they tend to be bulky and cumbersome. Their solution started life as the S1, the world’s first folding three-wheeler electric scooter.

Central to the concept is the tilting front end. Similar in concept to Piaggio and Yamaha designs, the parallelogram linkages provide independent vertical movement between the front wheels, allowing the bike to lean into corners while maintaining ground contact with both front wheels. Similar to the Piaggio (and unlike the Yamaha Niken), the parallelograms can be locked out, allowing the scooter to stand on its own without falling over.

Photo: Alfreda

The folding mechanism appears quite well designed, allowing the scooter to be folded and unfolded in about a second. The tilting front end and folding aspects of the design are demonstrated in a YouTube video on Afreda’s channel.

Propulsion is via a motor in the rear hub, 250 watts for European models, and 500 watts for North America, providing top speeds of 35 or 40 km/h (22 and 25 mph) respectively. The S6 comes equipped with either a single or dual 48V/7.8-Ah lithium battery, with a claimed charging time of 4 hours and a range of 60 km with the dual batteries.

For more information, visit https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/afreda-s6-a-fold-in-1s-reverse-3-wheel-e-bike#/.