Home » BMW’s Insanely Cool ‘CE 02 x Vagabund’ Electric Scooter Concept Has An Umbrella Hidden In A Fake Exhaust Pipe
- ByThomas Hundal
- August 2, 2024
- 4:39 pm
- 20 Comments
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Call me crazy, but I’m totally pumped for the electric age on two wheels. Sure, electric scooters and motorcycles won’t replace H2 and Streetfighter V4 S lunacy, but for zipping around the city, they seem nigh-on perfect. Some of them even have proper style, and although the BMW CE 02 x Vagabund Concept is merely a concept built on a production scooter, it might just have the most style out of the whole lot.
The regular BMW CE 02 is already an incredibly cool thing. Sure, it might be insanely expensive for an electric scooter with a top speed of 59 mph, but it also looks straight out of the early 2000s, with a blocky frame and just the right amount of silver plastic to look like it comes with a free copy of Jet Set Radio Future. However, all of the colorways are a bit dark, which is why BMW has teamed up with Vagabund Moto GmbH to put a lighter spin on things, with a little bit of skateboarding influence.
Right off the rip, the CE 02 x Vagabund takes a high-contrast approach, by keeping the black frame from the standard bike and then sprinkling in new white accents. The half-white wheels are wonderful touches, and I’m particularly in love with the new perforated white side panels, which look like PA system speaker grilles. Add in touches of brushed metal and a sand-colored saddle, and the results are simply classic.
Oh, and we haven’t even got to the really cool details yet. See that boombox strapped to the side? That’s a Teenage Engineering OB-4 Magic Radio, an incredibly expensive yet incredibly cool bookshelf speaker that carries a few tricks. Everything run through it gets stored on a rolling two-hour loop, and with controls on the enclosure, you can rewind, loop, slow down, or speed up tracks to keep the mix fun.
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Another neat touch is the fake exhaust pipe, which is actually an umbrella holder. Now, riding and holding an umbrella at the same time probably isn’t wise, but I can definitely see a use case or two for an umbrella once the rider de-mounts and removes their helmet, and convenient storage is always appreciated.
Oh, and one of the skateboarding-inspired touches I mentioned earlier? The footboards are covered in grip tape, a nifty departure from the rubber seen on pretty much all other foot boards. Needless to say, I dig it.
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Sadly, the BMW CE 02 x Vagabund concept is just that — a concept. While it wouldn’t be terribly hard to strap an OB-4 Magic Radio to your own CE 02 and paint the wheels white, bits like the umbrella holder and side panels would be harder to fabricate at home. If this one-off creation were to enter production, it would likely cost a fortune, but hot damn, isn’t it cool? Whatever’s in the water at BMW Motorrad, get a recreational-grade dose over to the automotive team, ASAP. We could use a little more whimsy in BMW showrooms.
(Photo credits: BMW)
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- BMW, BMW CE 02, BMW CE 02 x Vagabund, CE 02, CE 02 x Vagabund, electric scooter, electric scooters, Featured
Thomas is a Nu Rave-blaring, heel-toe downshifting, maple syrup-swilling, chassis-geeking, junkyard parts-hauling, floppy-haired Toronto-based scenester who's been writing about cars since college. His current fleet includes a 2006 BMW 325i with the six-speed manual gearbox and a 1999 Porsche Boxster with the five-speed manual.thomas@theautopian.comInstagram: @thomas.hundalTwitter: @thomashundal
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Ricardo Mercio
13 days ago
Seems to me like an advertisem*nt of how easy it is to customize a CE 02 and what kind of results you can get. Custom isn’t really custom if it’s production, so this seems aimed at inspiring people to dress up their own E-scooters their own way.
Look at what’s happened with the Honda Ruckus, that kind of scene is the stuff of dreams for a manufacturer.
That said, you can do so much more than this to an E-scooter, anything from stickers and rattle-can paintjobs or sharpie drawings through underglow, custom lights, handlebars or reupholstered seat, to sticking wood-grain veneers on the panels or bolting ammo cans to it as up-cycled storage boxes, or sticking a tiny display with a Raspberry Pi displaying a GIF onto any given surface like they do on gaming PC’s.
The CE 02 seems like a deliberate blank onto which a person with any given interest and skillset (or budget and internet access) can graft their hobby or personality. It’s a motorcycle, a scooter, an electronic, a big flat panel, a textile seat, and much more. Whether you’re a hobbyist mechanic, tech nerd, illustrator, painter, furniture-maker, skateboard enthusiast, leather-worker, or have money for stickers and branded bolt-ons, you can make an E-scooter your own. A lot of this also applies to cars and bikes and all that, but removable plastic panels combined with little to no road-worthiness regulation and low-stakes performance make it so easy and guilt-free to cut into it that you might as well even if you’re not that committed.
Last edited 13 days ago by Ricardo Mercio
1
Nick Thomas
15 days ago
All I want is for them to extend the seat out like, 3-4 inches so you can comfortably get a passenger on the back. Then I would be sorely tempted to get one.
Shop-Teacher
15 days ago
I’d really like to own one of these, but man the price.
2
Col Lingus
16 days ago
Needs ammo bags and add a couple of places for the Terminator wanna be types to carry their automatic weapons and military grade big caliber toys.
Suddenly see a possible cash cow here with the options list.
And a cow bell…
Last edited 16 days ago by Col Lingus
4
Shop-Teacher
15 days ago
Reply to Col Lingus
We definitely need more cowbell.
3
Cheap Bastard
16 days ago
Shame they couldn’t add a rear fender to go with that umbrella.
4
Spikedlemon
16 days ago
Reply to Cheap Bastard
The secret is to control the weather to only let it rain when you’ve dismounted the bike and put it under a cover so the rest of it, including that absurd radio, can stay dry.
2
Cheap Bastard
16 days ago
Reply to Spikedlemon
Yeah I dunno why anyone would bother with an expensive, bulky thing like that when a smartphone and a good speaker can do much better for less.
2
Lally Singh
15 days ago
Reply to Cheap Bastard
They wanted the TE design goodness to add to their concept.
1
Cheap Bastard
15 days ago
Reply to Lally Singh
Too bad TE couldn’t spring for grills for those speakers. They’re going to look terrible with squished in domes.
1
Vee
14 days ago
Reply to Cheap Bastard
Because the chase for efficiency strangles fun out of everything. A boombox is infinitely more cool than a smarthphone and a Bluetooth speaker.
1
Cheap Bastard
14 days ago
Reply to Vee
This “boom box” looks like something you could find in any good thrift store for $5. If a boom box is what you seek try there first.
Also it’s worth pointing out it was the chase for efficiency that lead to the transistor based boom box in the first place. Without transistors a comparable stereo would be three times the size, practically immobile by weight and fragility thanks to being full of full of power sucking vacuum tubes and run maybe half an hour on a heavy car battery.
So have some respect for the chase for efficiency.
Last edited 14 days ago by Cheap Bastard
1
Vee
14 days ago
Reply to Cheap Bastard
As with anything there’s a limit. Chasing efficiency beyond that limit leads to increasingly unappealing results. But that aside, the chase for efficiency isn’t what lead to the boombox. It was an effort to appeal that lead to the boombox. Having multiple features that were as much about their appearance as their function is what lead design for most of human history, and something that we’ve only abandoned in the last ten years or so. Think of the figurehead on the bow of a ship that acted as the dowel for the sternpost, or the enlarged decorative keystone in the center of an archway. Modern design meanwhile is based around wrapping the components in as little as possible to save cost in a constant pursuit of being more efficient about materials use during manufacturing.
Also I haven’t seen a $5 boombox in a thrift store or flea market in forever. Maybe an alarm clock radio combination with a carrying handle. But actual proper portable stereos are like fifty bucks minimum for the ones from the tail end of the ’90s while the proper ones from the mid 1980s can go for hundreds of dollars. A Sanyo M99 or MX series from the early 1980s is like $400 easily.
Cheap Bastard
14 days ago
Reply to Vee
This thing from teenage engineering has an FM radio and aux/bluetooth in. It will also record two hours of your music. That’s very little for $599. For that kind of money I expect more. Like grills so the speakers don’t get ruined.
No thanks. I already have a smartphone with FM, bluetooth, Pandora, headphone jack, Quad 32 bit DAC converters (that blow away anything from the 80s) and a SD card that can hold thousands of uncompressed CDs. I’m sure if I had the desire I could find an app to do whatever nonsense the teenage engineering box does, (for all I know some of the bloatware already does) and I can play it on a cheap portable speaker or my cheap thrift shop stereo both of which came with, you guessed it!: Grills.
“A Sanyo M99 or MX series from the early 1980s is like $400 easily.”
Here’s a M9990 by me for $100. The tape deck isn’t working but who uses tapes anymore? Anyway it might be a broken belt or maybe it needs cleaning. Either way you can probably wiggle that price down.
https://sfbay.craigslist.org/scz/ele/d/santa-cruz-beautiful-old-school-sanyo/7768809337.html
The chase to efficiency lead to the transistor without which the boom box would have been impossible. So yes, it did lead to the boom box and many other wonderful things. Like electronic ignition.
And further pursuit of efficiency has lead to better, cheaper batteries, much better than the “heavy duty” D batteries those old school boom boxes ran on. Batteries used to be expensive and one use only. Now you can run your boom box on rechargeables or super cheap alkalines.
Last edited 14 days ago by Cheap Bastard
Codfangler
14 days ago
Reply to Cheap Bastard
“Without transistors a comparable stereo would be three times the size, practically immobile by weight and fragility thanks to being full of full of power sucking vacuum tubes and run maybe half an hour on a heavy car battery.”
You have a good point here. Circa 1957, I saved up my allowance and bought a portable radio. The “regular” (vacuum tube) radio was not much smaller than my Mom’s makeup case. The transistor radio was approximately the size of a large smartphone today, except that it was, at least, twice as thick. It cost $40, as much as the gross pay of a minimum wage worker made in a 40 hour week. Within three years this radio was obsolete, which explains why tis was probably the only time in my life that I was an early adopter.
3
Cheap Bastard
14 days ago
Reply to Codfangler
I wonder how the sound compared. IIRC tubes and transistors have very different harmonic distortion patterns with some folks considering tubes to be “warm” and transistors “harsh”. I think modern electronics compensate for that but on those early models maybe not.
Codfangler
14 days ago
Reply to Cheap Bastard
The sound was not very good, I would describe it as cheap and tinny, but not too different from the sound of most relatively cheap radios I encountered at the time.
I have always, even at the age of 10, had a “tin ear” so I would have not been able to to recognize small differences in warmth and harshness. All I can say for sure is that was not nearly as nice a sound as the table model Grundig my parents bought a year or two later.
Cheap Bastard
13 days ago
Reply to Codfangler
I doubt it was your ear. It was probably the primitive electronics and cheap speaker. I’d also hazard a guess it didn’t have much amplification so to get loud enough to hear comfortably might have boosted it further out of its linear response range (e.g. more distortion). The Grundig, being a tabletop model would have had more power and a better speaker.
Just a guess though.
Last edited 13 days ago by Cheap Bastard
Banana Stand Money
14 days ago
Reply to Cheap Bastard
Name checks out.
Cheap Bastard
14 days ago
Reply to Banana Stand Money
Not really. I think anyone who values a dollar will question spending 599 of them for this speaker box. Its worth maybe $40.
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