Another one of our highlights we enjoyed while covering CES this year, was our visit with Swagtron who had a number of new products to show off, some of which are enhanced versions of earlier models (electric bikes, skateboards, a surfboard and more), as well as a few new things as well. One of their new products was a go-kart (who doesn’t love that word?).
What is essentially a mashup between their hoverboard and a simple go-kart design, you get a cost effective go-kart that the average consumer could easily afford. In the past we have covered a number of similar solutions (ie, Crazy Cart by Razor), including various models from companies like Segway that come close in their own way. Most of these solutions typically start off around $500 and climb upwards into the thousands. Swagtron however, aims to be more reasonable with a price point of only $249–around the price of an Xbox One S.
It isn’t available just yet, but when it does release (sometime next month), and will feature the ability to travel up to 7 mph and cover around a 6-11 mile range before having to recharge again. This makes it great for kids that want to cruise around their culdesac/street and race with friends. It will take awhile before it hits a limit and needs to be plugged in, keeping them easily entertained for an entire afternoon.
A number like 7 mph doesn’t sound too fast, but your opinion changes once you’re riding one around. The movements are so quick, it feels like you are going faster than you really are. Also, since it features hoverboard technology, it packs a gyroscope that helps keep it on the ground. This latter part is difficult to train your brain on, since the front end begins to pick up off the ground during take-off. Although it doesn’t flip backwards thanks to the gyro, your brain quickly thinks otherwise.
As you can tell, we got to experience it for ourselves, thus we know the details quite well. One of our own had the privilege of taking it for a spin during CES 2018 last month. We had a great visit with Swagtron where we discussed the go-kart both on and off camera (as well as their other products for this year).
Again, it will be launching sometime next month (March) for the price of $249.99 (making it quite affordable), and will be made available throughout many of their online partners like Amazon, where they currently feature everything they have in their line-up.
You can bet we will bring you something in the future if we get our hands on one of these and really take it for a spin in the open world, not limited so much by foot traffic and other obstacles in such a tight area as a convention floor. We would love to really put it to a test to see how far it can truly go on a single charge. Until then, we have to wait till its release next month.
