Zero ai: Bo does not use Ai to write, because we believe you’ve come here to research the human experience of scooting on Bo - not to speak with an Nvidia GPU. That may mean that some of our language has errors, and which we feel is a price worth paying.
As we wrote in a previous article Bo isn't just a scooter; it's our fight against cheap, throwaway products which are engineered to the lowest cost possible. We loathe vehicles that seem designed to fail as soon as they are out of warranty.
The Bo team is old enough to remember when products were built with pride - to last a lifetime - and we want to bring that ethos to these useful new electric vehicles.
Premium e-scooters cost more upfront, so what benefit does that bring and how do the long term economics compare? I've written this article to break down the ownership experience, performance, durability and total cost of ownership (noting our obvious bias - with examples based on the Bo M2)
We do get it: spending over $2k on an electric scooter feels like an investment - especially when you can grab something off Amazon for three hundred bucks. Since we new cost parity was never going to be possible, the Bo aim had to be to deliver the best vehicle possible in it's category: any scooter between $1,500 and $3,000.
That said, sticker shock is real! and the Bo team never set out to build something gratuitously high priced; our aim was simply to build the best. Now - after years of riding, and after burning through multiple budget scooters - we are confident that the ownership experience, safety and long term financial outcome validates treating yourself to a high quality vehicle. 
The Bo Model M range currently starts at $1,990. A typical budget scooter runs $300-$1000. That sounds like a huge gap, but to start with the basics - budget scooters tend to last 6-18 months of regular commuting before either the battery fades, something structural cracks, or a component fails that costs more to fix than replace the whole vehicle.
Even if we imagined that the riding experience and safety were the same, that would mean you’re buying a new one at least every year or two. The whole motivation of the Bo team is to deliver products that will still be bringing you joy - and are still serviceable! - in decades.
Tl;dr: After two or three crappy chinese brand scooters have bit the dust, your Bo should still be looking great.
We're so certain in how solid the frame is, we gave the Model M an industry-first seven-year chassis warranty - a policy we are confident will never need to be used. 
To be clear, Segways are not meant to bend there...
However, simply trading on the long term durability mathematics misses the entire point. Daily performance is where you actually feel the difference. That unique Monocurve frame doesn't just last longer - it delivers solid, confidence inspiring handling every single yard you ride.
Stepping back-to-back from a standard scooter onto Bo is a disaster: you'll never be able to accept the floppy, flimsy experience that Segway or Xiaomi offer again.
This extends to every component. For example, the Model M’s 672Wh BoSafe battery and 40 mile range doesn't just mean a typical rider can go all week on a couple of charges - it also means constant monitoring from the Battery Management System when charging and discharging the battery.
Budget scooters with low quality battery cells and no battery monitoring suffer from range dropping faster as the battery degrades and fades. Within tens of charges you can see a meaningful reduction in how far you ride. That isn't just annoying - it's also scary: what exactly is going on in there for such rapid weakness to be possible.
To give you a sense of the scale of this - a typical $500 scooter will have a total build cost (from factory) lower than the cost of the Bo battery on its own. By the time we have selected good, safe battery cells - plus a hard metal casing - plus cell sensing for voltage, and temperature - plus UL certification - plus BMS (Battery Management System) it simply is not possible to produce at lower cost. The question then becomes one of what you are willing to accept.
Tl;dr: one of the main downsides of a cheap, low price scooter are weak components that rapidly lose performance and risk setting fire unexpectedly. Personally, while we do use them for benchmark testing we avoid having them in our homes.
BoSafe Battery has built in BMS monitoring
Safety is part of it, but riding performance and fun is a key upside of higher end scooters also. Obviously there are some hectic extreme scooters - you can spend $4000-7000 easily - which will running up to ~80mph, but really that's overkill.
What we're talking about is the sort of accessible, satisfying, muscular performance that makes your local rides a joy. Truthfully those extreme sports scooters make every ride terrifying. The aim at Bo - and the advantage of having budget for a higher end, higher amperage motor - was to crush hills without the desperate slowdown you get from a budget motor. We want punchy performance, even if we're slightly on the heavier side. We want to win the traffic light drag race, even when the other guy is on a weapons-grade ride.
The only way to achieve that is a higher quality stator which magnetises more readily, a coil of finer, higher quality copper that runs more efficiently, and an aluminium casing that wicks heat away and keeps the whole assembly healthy when you're pumping more amperage through it. There's no shortcuts - you have to spend.
It's a compact package to keep 1530Watts in, hence the aluminium casing.
Compared to batteries and motor power, riding pleasure is much harder to put a number on, yet it matters more than anything else.
Steering stabilisation makes every ride relaxed, and saves you from that pothole you didn't notice. Zero maintenance drum brakes and regenerative e-ABS stop you reliably in the wet. An 800-lumen headlight actually illuminates the road, rather than meekly flashing about like a low-end maglight. IP66 weatherproofing means you ride through rain without worrying about electrical faults. A budget scooter with vague brakes and a dim front light is a different proposition entirely when you want to race back from an evening out.
There's nothing on paper that will make sense of these additional features (and add to the price of the scooter). After all, when you look at the spec for a budget scooter and for Bo, both say 'front light'. It is the reality of that user experience which suddenly makes sense of the value.
Feel confident and enjoy every ride
Finally, it is worth considering how maintenance costs can quietly accumulate on cheaper scooters. Flimsy tyres get flats fast, cheap disc brake pads wear out within weeks, and low cost thin plastic mudguards crack and fall off. Because the are designed with a throw-away mentality, the servicing costs of even basic repairs quickly becomes more than the scooter is worth.
One of the guiding principles with the Model-M is that it should never let you down, and we wanted it to be the only scooter you had any chance of seeing in the auction houses of 2040, 2050 - much as is the case with vintage vehicles today.
We worked to build a future classic. This means the vehicle has to be super easy to service and maintain - something no other scooter brand appears to have put effort into achieving. It may seem a future concern, but when service items that would write-off a cheap scooter land it suddenly makes Bo look like a great option. 
The majority of servicing items can be easily completed at home
We will caveat all of this by saying for weekend riders who’ll use a scooter a few times a month to mess around the local streets, a budget option might make sense. But for anyone who wants a vehicle they can rely on, who is commuting daily, wants to be able to depend on their scooter in all weather, the premium investment quickly pays for itself in riding pleasure, reliability, safety, and the simple fact that it keeps working.
There is also an important nuance for buyers considering scooters in the $1500-3000 category: premium vs performance. There are many scooters at this price point which can claim better raw 'performance' than the Bo Model M1 / M2. By that we mean more range, more speed.
However, that increase in performance does not come with a corresponding increase in quality. They are designed and engineered in the same Chinese factories, to the same quality standards and targets as a $500 scooter. Cheap scooters on steroids, effectively.
Everyone is now familiar with this in the automotive sector - a Mercedes sedan does not get meaningfully more range or speed than a Malibu, however it is now broadly understood that the price differential is a factor of durability, ride experience and residual value. Bo is simply the first example of this - increasing quality rather than outright performance - in the scooter sector.
OJM.
If you're interested in reading more - Link to Articles
If you'd like to look at Bo M more closely - Link to Model M
If you'd like to read about The Turbo Land-speed scooter - Link to Turbo