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Transportation United States Technology

Swedish Startup To Bring Pogo Sticks To San Francisco as E-Scooter Alternative (cbslocal.com) 187

Posted by msmash from the not-the-onion dept.
San Franciscans may soon be able to bounce their way around town, if a Swedish-based mobility company has its way. From a report: Last month, start-up company Cangoroo announced plans to deploy hundreds of pogo sticks in select cities to directly compete with electric scooters as a transportation option. Cangoroo officials said they plan to first launch their pogo sticks in the Swedish cities of Malmo and Stockholm sometime this summer. After that, they would deploy the sticks in both London and San Francisco. On Friday, Cangoroo CEO and co-founder Adam Mikkelsen said his company chose San Francisco as one of its launch cities because of its reputation as place of innovation. He added that Cangoroo could start deploying anywhere between 100 and 200 pogo sticks in San Francisco as early as late summer or possibly in the fall. [...] The launch of hundreds of e-scooters last year in the city by a handful of companies quickly drew the ire of residents who complained the dockless scooters were being thrown on sidewalks and blocking walkways.
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Swedish Startup To Bring Pogo Sticks To San Francisco as E-Scooter Alternative More

Swedish Startup To Bring Pogo Sticks To San Francisco as E-Scooter Alternative

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  • Wish I was still local (Score:5, Funny)

    by blunttrauma ( 601130 ) on Monday June 03, 2019 @09:47AM (#58700258)

    I would get a cooler of beer and a lawn chair, and try and find a good spot to watch things go horribly wrong.

    • Make sure to set up a camera!

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by OzPeter ( 195038 )

      I would get a cooler of beer and a lawn chair, and try and find a good spot to watch things go horribly wrong.

      Based on this story from NPR Why An ER Visit Can Cost So Much — Even For Those With Health Insurance [npr.org] the pogo sticks will only be the start of things going wrong.

      Yeah. So this patient, his name is Justin. He was a community college student in northern California, was walking down a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco one day. And there was a pole hanging off the back of the bus that wasn't where it's supposed to be. It essentially flew off the back of the bus, hit him in the face and knocked him unconscious.

      And the next thing he knows, he's waking up at Zuckerberg San Francisco General, which is the only Level I trauma center in the city. He ends up needing a CT scan to check out some brain injuries. He needs some stitches. And then he's discharged. He ends up with a bill for $27,000.

      It turns out that San Francisco General doesn't deal with health insurance. So even if you have it they send you the bill directly.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by jwhyche ( 6192 )

        Those escooters are all over Nashville. One of the morning radio shows does a morning ER report on the number of scooter accidents. But, yes, this is going to be comedy gold when some fat ass American tries to go hopping down the street one. Comedy Gold.

      • It turns out that San Francisco General doesn't deal with health insurance. So even if you have it they send you the bill directly.

        Good. Direct billing is what allows them to play stupid bullshit games with prices and outright make fake payments on fake and trumped up charges.

        Everyone needs to be charged the same price for the same services.
        When they hospital charges an amount and the insurance pays it, there needs to be an actual transfer of funds in that amount. Eliminating direct billing will go a long way to make that happen.

      • Yeah. So this patient, his name is Justin. He was a community college student in northern California, was walking down a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco one day. And there was a pole hanging off the back of the bus that wasn't where it's supposed to be. It essentially flew off the back of the bus, hit him in the face and knocked him unconscious.

        And the next thing he knows, he's waking up at Zuckerberg San Francisco General, which is the only Level I trauma center in the city. He ends up needing a CT scan to check out some brain injuries. He needs some stitches. And then he's discharged. He ends up with a bill for $27,000.

        "Hello, 911? I was attacked in the street and abducted... they did a bunch of weird things to me and now they're demanding I pay them 27 grand before they'll let me go."

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Seems like an April 1 post. Something seems inherently wrong about this.

      • In fact, it's reminiscent of one. Car & Driver magazine used to publish a "review" of an off-the-wall vehicle in the April issue, showing every test and rating method they normally apply to sports cars...notable issues included a steam locomotive, a Mercedes-Benz garbage truck and the Goodyear Blimp. One memorable item was the Hop Rod, an internal combustion pogo stick. The plunger at the bottom was a piston, and it would launch you four or five feet per hop.

    • This has to be an Onion story!

    • My lawyer sense is tingling.

  • The Onion? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by OffTheLip ( 636691 ) on Monday June 03, 2019 @09:48AM (#58700266)
    Seems like a litigation nightmare in the making.

  • this has to be a prank, right? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Monday June 03, 2019 @09:48AM (#58700270) Homepage Journal

    If pogo sticks had value as commuter transportation, people would be using them already, because they are so very portable, and inexpensive. But it takes more energy to pogo somewhere than to walk. Since they are relatively cheap (especially in City-dweller terms) everyone who wants one already has one.

    • These must be gas powered pogo sticks, or maybe small amounts of cordite

    • If pogo sticks had value as commuter transportation, people would be using them already, because they are so very portable, and inexpensive. But it takes more energy to pogo somewhere than to walk. Since they are relatively cheap (especially in City-dweller terms) everyone who wants one already has one.

      Indeed. This venture is destined for failure. I wouldn't worry about Pogosticks cluttering streets like the scooters. It may have initial novelty value but is quickly going to go belly up.

      • If pogo sticks had value as commuter transportation, people would be using them already, because they are so very portable, and inexpensive. But it takes more energy to pogo somewhere than to walk. Since they are relatively cheap (especially in City-dweller terms) everyone who wants one already has one.

        Indeed. This venture is destined for failure. I wouldn't worry about Pogosticks cluttering streets like the scooters. It may have initial novelty value but is quickly going to go belly up.

        OR it catches on big time and then you have to deal with pogo sticks vs space hoppers XD

      • To be honest, I would not be surprised if this is just a class project. Ie, freshman level business you get assigned to come up with a product concept and present it. Then someone sees this and assumes it's a real thing, the idea passes around several people, and eventually a news outlet reports on it.

    • It's called marketing. Had you ever heard of this company before? I'm sure its more than I'd want to spend, but the pogo stick I bought for my oldest is about done in for my youngest.

      • It's called marketing. Had you ever heard of this company before?

        No, but now I'm pretty certain I wouldn't want to invest money with them or do business with them. If you don't have anything useful or intelligent to say, why would you want to call attention to yourself?

    • My guess is they are going after the tourists. It's the fun thing to do in San Francisco.

    • Pogo Sticks were never a form of transportation. For the non-street performer the best I have seen a person was move 10 feet on the Pogostick until they fell off.
      I have seen more people using unicycles for transportation then Pogosticks
      Being that once you are in the air, you have no control of your stick, when it lands you have a split second to redirect your weight

      • This whole thing sounds like another silly 4Chan hoax, except it's not. Next thing to try, riding your pet kangaroo.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by GWBasic ( 900357 )

          It reminds me of when I used to go around the Valley telling people I was running a business selling vibrating toilet seats. I used to claim that "they vibrated at the brown note" and that I "crowd-sourced funding from little old ladies who didn't like eating prunes."

          You'd be shocked at how many people believed me.

        • It could actually be a hoax. I tried to get some details on this and found nothing except the original news story.

        • This whole thing sounds like another silly 4Chan hoax, except it's not. Next thing to try, riding your pet kangaroo.

          Yeah, maybe that's their long-term plan, they're just trying to get attention for the purpose of raising seed capital. They're going to do a ride-sharing service based on riding in the pouches of giant mutant marsupials. It'll be called Kangaroober.

      • Add movable control surfaces and a form of thrust--that will solve that problem!

      • Being that once you are in the air, you have no control of your stick, when it lands you have a split second to redirect your weight

        No wonder you fell off and developed a new trigger.

        Fact: You can only control the stick while it is the air. You have to alternate between controlling your weight distribution while on the ground and moving the stick while it is in the air. Otherwise you crash and burn.

        When I was a kid we'd race them all the way around the block, or up and down a hill.

    • The company behind this is a marketing company https://www.allabolag.se/55916... [allabolag.se]
      I'm amazed how many media outlets can't be bothered to spend 5 seconds on research.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Zmobie ( 2478450 )

      I'm more curious to know the clearly insane chain of events that took this from drunken idea that some swedish dudes came up with at 3:19 AM to a fully funded company trying to launch a few hundred of these expensive pains in the ass in several cities. I mean seriously, most people can't hardly jump on a pogo stick for more than a few feet, and they think people are going to use these regularly enough to sustain their revenue past 'joke'? The investors must have just looked at each other and said, "You kn

    • How could this possibly go wrong? Let me count the ways...

      1) Pogo onto an innocent person's foot.
      2) Hope for shock-proof laptops or whatever said Pogo-er has as personal cargo
      3) It's a long trip down those subway stairs if you make a mistake.
      4) Look out for open man-hole covers and drain grates.
      5) Ping and Pong come to mind.
      6) Banana Peels

      I'm sorry, but I can't take this "start-up" seriously.

    • OTOH it is exceptionally easy to add an electric motor to a pogo stick.

      A regular scooter uses a Brushless DC (BLDC) motor. The motor spins in a circle. You can easily build the same motor so that instead of a circle, it goes up/down over some distance. In the case of a pogo stick, you only have to power in one direction, with a spring for the other.

      You could even make it self-balancing by adding a powered joint.

      Good for commuting? Probably not. Good for tourists? Possible. Tourist children will beg their pa

    • My first thought was the wartime Disney short, Victory Vehicles [youtube.com] as represented by Goofy. Pogo stics were the winner!
    • but calling it a transportation method probably lets them skirt around all sorts of rules.
    • Wheeled transport (like scooters) is inherently limited by the size of the wheels. A wheel cannot go over an obstacle more than half the wheel's height. When an obstacle hits the front of a wheel at half height or greater, the wheel generates no upward force when rolling forward, so cannot move over the obstacle. You need to manually lift the wheels up over the obstacle.

      OTOH a walking or jumping motion can overcome obstacles larger than half the height. It's why the military funded research into Bost [bostondynamics.com]

    • I think it is some form of marketing trick. They want it to be stupid enough to go viral and ... profit?

      I found this:
      https://youtu.be/TKtHMFUvXY4 [youtu.be]

      Notice how the actors in the video aren't moving forward at all when jumping on their sticks.

      After a bit more digging I'm pretty sure this is just a marketing stunt. The website https://cangoroo.tech/ [cangoroo.tech] says it is part of https://oddcompany.se/ [oddcompany.se] which is a marketing firm... sorry... "creative communications agency". I'm guessing this is just a stunt to market themsel

  • What the hell (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 03, 2019 @09:49AM (#58700274)

    This is peak millenial

    • Re:What the hell (Score:4, Informative)

      by Nidi62 ( 1525137 ) on Monday June 03, 2019 @10:28AM (#58700596)

      This is peak millenial

      San Francisco pogo tours with a complementary avocado toast lunch?

    • 'Peak Millenial' is when they reach the point where they become too dumb to reproduce... afraid we're not quite there, yet.

  • Swedish april fools? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    So is there like a Swedish April fools day? Are we eating the onion? Who's trolling who with this story?

  • I would like a self-balancing unicycle stick with a kick-scooter style wheel (i.e. not too big). It doesn't take much space, it could be telescopic so it's even more portable, and you wouldn't have to think about how to break in mid air if something comes in front of you unexpectedly.

    • I would like a self-balancing unicycle stick with a kick-scooter style wheel (i.e. not too big).

      No, you wouldn't. It might be cool in a perfect world, but in the real world there are cracks, lips, and the like that you have to roll over, and all of that stuff is effectively bigger when your wheel is smaller.

  • No (Score:2)

    by Danathar ( 267989 )
    No. I am not riding a pogo stick.

  • Too much tension in the air (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Monday June 03, 2019 @10:05AM (#58700388) Journal

    Let's not jump to conclusions. I know some are hopping mad about this proposal, but we should bounce around ideas before springing into action.

  • They have to be trolling (Score:5, Insightful)

    by esperto ( 3521901 ) on Monday June 03, 2019 @10:10AM (#58700428)
    There is no other explanation, nobody would be stupid enough to create a company of this.

    If e-scooters are a huge safety hazard already, imagine starting a company who's device can impale the user? and besides, what would be the advantage? are those self-balanced autonomous pogo sticks? do they jump immense heights and can go over buildings? do they achieve great speeds and can go on highways?
    Those guys are either trolling or conning an investor with more money than sense.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hipp5 ( 1635263 )
      I can see people stupid enough to create a company of this. What I can understand is people being stupid enough to finance a company of this.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MTEK ( 2826397 )

      imagine starting a company who's device can impale the user?

      Feel sorry for the dog whose owner tries to "walk it" with a short leash.

    • actually most americans would die of cardiac arrest after four minutes of use. And in midwest and south 400 lbs. blubber wads on two legs would just go downwards since the spring couldn't bounce their weight. then they'd topple and be lying on the sidewalk like a beached whale. all those rotting land whale carcasses will make the morning commute unpleasant.

  • Product Rotations (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 03, 2019 @10:14AM (#58700460)

    In two years I'm going to release shoes to these cities. When people get tired of jumping, they'll be able to grab a pair of shoes, put them on, and easily walk to their destination. These won't have the same annoyances since they'll be stored on overhead wiring instead of left randomly around sidewalks. The users opting for the more expensive elite subscription will be able to upgrade to running shoes to get around even faster.

    I'm looking for 3 million in initial funding. You can be part of the revolution in transportation and help change the world. Join here: kickstarter.com/top10/most-likely-to-succeed/95483-natural-transportation/donate.html When this works out, we'll also release educational training videos on skipping and provide jump ropes for those who need their personal space to feel safe walking around in public. Safety is our #1. We get rid of it everytime we enter a bathroom.

  • It's a scooter, move it out of your way.

  • Brilliant! (Score:5, Funny)

    by jdharm ( 1667825 ) on Monday June 03, 2019 @10:22AM (#58700544)
    Pogo sticks! Of course! This is obviously the solution to the rash of E.R. visits that have resulted from the scooter craze.

  • It takes a while to master a pogo stick, as kid falling down and crashing often isn't such a big deal, but for adults...well hilarity will ensue, as will many many lawsuits

  • I went out on a date with a girl, a bit late. She had so many friends. I brought my pogo stick just to show her a trick. She had so many friends.

    Unannounced twister games, all players with no names. They lined up double quick, but just one pogo stick. Everyone gets to play, runaway, exposé. It was so exotic, but just one pogo stick.

    • Watch out though. Run into someone and...

      They're going to build a prison for you and me to live in!

  • ... then I predict a sharp increase in the male patronage of streetside cafes.

  • Is it April 1st again?

    This is an amazingly stupid idea on so many levels.

    I predict that pogo stick-related injuries will skyrocket. Also, business attire is NOT well-suited for using a pogo stick.

    It's a very inefficient way to travel- slow and dangerous and not very controllable. I also I don't see how you could carry a briefcase or bag while using one. Finally, it just looks stupid to be bouncing up and down on a pogo stick.

    "Yeah, I'll come right over. Just let me find a pogo-stick...."

    Are we sure this isn

  • ...It reveals a new "stupidest thing I've ever heard" just about once a week.

  • I'm actually pretty good on a pogo stick, and I would never try one on Frisco's hills.

    (Are the cool kids still calling it Frisco? I don't even know how out of touch I am.)

  • ....ripped this to shreds this morning. This company better get their liability law attorneys on standby, because this will be a sue-fest especially dealing with California.

    • ....ripped this to shreds this morning. This company better get their liability law attorneys on standby, because this will be a sue-fest especially dealing with California.

      No one is getting sued as there is no pogo startup. It's a marketing company doing a bit of advertising of their marketing skills. 5 seconds of research is plenty https://www.allabolag.se/55916... [allabolag.se]

  • This is an exciting idea. What is their current valuation? $10B? $20B? If Tesla has a $34B valuation this is surely about right.

  • reuse pogo energy and add a build in phone charger!
  • Such an obvious joke / hoax. Surprisingly, the folks responsible didn't even pick a name for which they could reserve the domain.

    Cangoroo.com is parked by a speculator.

  • Hoo boy (Score:3)

    by Impy the Impiuos Imp ( 442658 ) on Monday June 03, 2019 @11:17AM (#58700956) Journal

    Wouldn't they skid and wipe out on an artistic pile of poop?

  • If you can't see this is sarcastic humor aimed at the ridiculousness of e-scooters, then you're way too serious.

  • ...that SFO couldn't get more ridiculous.

  • This is a bit obvious. I think they can do better. Maybe silly walks? Naa, done before. Hmm.

  • Can't wait! (Score:3)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Monday June 03, 2019 @11:56AM (#58701300)

    Pogo Sticks To San Francisco as E-Scooter Alternative

    All the dangers of an E-Scooter plus the speed, inconvenience and exertion of hopping.
    Can't wait to use them on slippery pavement in the rain and/or on those wonderful San Francisco hills.

    • Obviously this is a fake thing (if not then pity investors and riders).

      That said, it would be cool to see a pogo stick race up Lombard Streets switchback.

      5 people per round, lowest overall time (or farthest distance if no one finishes) take it all. Foot on the ground you are out. I'd put in $20 to watch that. Oh, and have very solid injury liability protection (do this "at your own risk").

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • Don't accept a can of soda from anyone who decides to try out this new transit craze. But at least your morning shake won't settle on the way to work.
  • 1. Australian firm "Bird Flew My Assfast" is proposing using trained emus as local, organic transportation carriers.
    2. A Norwegian ice-skate manufacturer has started construction of underground tunnels coated on the inside with ice. Lift stations will connect the tunnel with street-level traffic. Commuters will travel in the icy tubes on skates, sleds, inner-tubes or skis.
    3. Elon Musk has proposed personal jet packs using much more powerful versions of his flamethrower.

  • It's a prank (Score:5, Informative)

    by 14erCleaner ( 745600 ) <FourteenerCleaner@yahoo.com> on Monday June 03, 2019 @03:27PM (#58702978) Homepage Journal
    ODD Company of Sweden, the parent of this "company", is a PR firm that plays tricks on the media with strange things like this. https://oddcompany.se/ [oddcompany.se]

  • Someone is going to get rich on youtube videos.

    Despite the competition, I think this is the stupidest idea of 2019

  • This has got to be the most goddamn stupid idea I've ever heard of. So stupid it must be a joke.

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