Minimotors and the birth of the hyperscooter class: from Goped distributor in Busan to OEM foundation of the performance segment (1999–2026)

In the previous six historical profiles we covered Razor and the birth of the children’s class, Wim Ouboter and Micro Mobility AG as the Swiss premium, Bird as the pioneer’s trap of the sharing class, Lime as the category-surviving sharing model, the Xiaomi M365 as the canonising apparatus of the consumer market, and Segway-Ninebot as the shared engineering-manufacturing denominator of the consumer/sharing segment. All six profiles describe the low- and mid-power half of the industry — from 100 W in the children’s Razor E100 to 700 W peak in the Ninebot ES2. In that half the industrial logic is mass economy, IP54, the 25 km/h EU cap, and 8.5″ wheels.

But the electric-scooter industry has a second half, with fundamentally different physics: machines with two hub motors, total power of 3 to 12 kW, batteries of 1,000–5,040 Wh, speeds of 50–120 km/h, and weights of 25–82 kg. This is the hyperscooter class — and it has one engineering-manufacturing founder: the South Korean company Minimotors of Busan, with its flagship brand Dualtron. Symmetrically to Segway-Ninebot, the OEM denominator of the consumer and sharing segment, Minimotors is the OEM denominator of the performance/enthusiast segment. Most serious Chinese and European competitors — Kaabo, NAMI, Apollo, Inokim — either copy Dualtron’s engineering decisions or buy the controllers and displays (EY3 / EY4) from Minimotors directly.

This section is a dedicated profile of the company that created an entire class of vehicles now present in the off-road scooters article, in the motors article, in the suspension and IP-rating article, and in the controllers and BMS article. Understanding Minimotors’ history explains why every modern hyperscooter shares the same architecture: BLDC hub motors, sine-wave controllers, hydraulic suspension, 13″ pneumatic tubeless tyres, and a price range of $4,500–8,500.

1999: Busan and motor boards

Minimotors Co., Ltd. was founded by a Korean entrepreneur in 1999 in the South Korean port city of Busan. The company’s initial focus was the sale and manufacture of motor boards (gas-powered roller boards, the gas-powered ancestors of electric skateboards) and scooters for seniors (three-wheeled electric machines for older people). (Minimotors — Dual-tron about, EverybodyWiki — Minimotors, Smartwheel — Minimotors redefining its brands)

The company gained scale quickly: in 2000 Minimotors became the No. 1 seller of motor boards in the Korean domestic market (Rider Guide — Ultimate Minimotors Dualtron Scooter Guide). This was no accident of geography — Busan, a southern port city with a hilly landscape, was a natural market for motor boards: for short rides through hilly neighbourhoods where a classic bicycle physically exhausted the rider. In these first years the company worked on gas-powered platforms from Goped (the Californian American manufacturer that has been producing gas-powered standing scooters since 1985 as an adult analogue of motor boards).

This established a key line of inheritance: the hyperscooter as an engineering class inherits not the bicycle architecture (as the consumer M365 or the Ninebot ES2 did) but the architecture of gas-powered standing scooters, with a thick chassis, a low deck for the stance, a long stem, and a motor in the rear wheel. Every modern Dualtron is, in effect, a direct electric descendant of the 1990s Goped machines.

2006: the Goped partnership and Silverwing

In 2006 Minimotors signed an exclusive distributor contract with Goped Inc. (California, USA) for the Korean market and simultaneously launched its own electric product under the Silverwing brand — an electric scooter for seniors (EverybodyWiki — Minimotors, Dualtron Nordic — Minimotors history). Silverwing was effectively the first in-house electric development by Minimotors: a three-wheeled apparatus with modest power (300–500 W), a soft seating position, a low deck, and ergonomics optimised for people with limited mobility.

This is an important detail in the brand’s genealogy: Minimotors did not start with performance scooters — on the contrary, its early product portfolio targeted accessible micromobility for adults. The shift into the hyperscooter class would happen only 15 years later, but the engineering school of motor and battery management would mature well before Dualtron.

2009–2010: incorporation and entry into electric motorsports

In 2009 Minimotors went beyond micromobility and entered electric motorsports — launching a four-wheeled electric all-terrain vehicle (ATV) (Smartwheel — Minimotors brands). This was not a mass-market product, but it was critical for technological growth: an ATV demands significantly more powerful BLDC motors (1–2 kW), more complex controllers, and wider batteries (60–84 V instead of the prior 36–48 V). The engineering denominator produced here — management of dual hub motors and high-voltage lithium packs — would become the direct platform for Dualtron six years later.

In 2010 the company was formally incorporated and moved its HQ from Busan to Ilsan (Gyeonggi-do) (Rider Guide, Dualtron Nordic). Ilsan is a satellite city of the Seoul Capital Area, 21 km north-west, where the company gained access to a more qualified engineering base (the Korea National University of Science and Technology has campuses nearby) and to the main export routes via Incheon International Airport. Structurally, this move played the same role that Segway-Ninebot’s relocation of HQ to Beijing did after 2015: a departure from the regional market into the global one.

2014: Speedway — the brand of accessible premium

In 2014 Minimotors launched a separate sub-brand, Speedway — Dualtron’s “younger brother” aimed at the accessible premium segment: single- and dual-motor models with 600–1,600 W of power and pricing in the $1,200–2,800 range — less than the high-end Dualtron but above the consumer M365 / ES2 (Smartwheel — Minimotors brands, Dualtron Nordic). Speedway 4, Speedway 5, Speedway Leger Pro, Speedway Mini 4 — these are the classic models that became the typical “first premium machines” at the entry points into the hyperscooter ecosystem.

This move is strategically important: from 2014 Minimotors maintained a two-tier architecture — Speedway for entry and Dualtron for the top. This is a different philosophy from Segway-Ninebot (where every model — from the ES1 to the GT2 — sits under one brand), and it is closer to the Lexus-Toyota automotive logic: one corpus, two brands for different socio-demographic segments.

September 2015: Dualtron MX and EX — the world’s first AWD electric scooter

In late September 2015, Minimotors brought to market the world’s first production electric scooter with two hub motors and all-wheel drive (AWD) — the Dualtron. Two models were launched initially: the Dualtron MX (with a smaller-capacity lithium-ion pack) and the Dualtron EX (with a larger pack) (EverybodyWiki — Minimotors, Dualtron Nordic, Rider Guide). This was an engineering-revolutionary moment for the industry: until Dualtron, every electric scooter had a single motor in a single wheel, which limited them to either front-wheel drive (like the M365 and ES1) or rear-wheel drive (like the ES2). The Dualtron transplanted the dual-hub-motor architecture from electric bikes into the standing scooter, simultaneously creating a new power class — 3–5 kW peak — which had previously been out of reach.

The name Dualtron is an English neologism: “dual” (two-motor) + “-tron” (a typical technological suffix referencing Tron, MegaTron, BotTron). The brand was positioned from the start as global rather than Korean: all labelling, manuals, and the website ship in English with optional Korean. In response to the patent risks unfolding in parallel (Segway vs Ninebot in 2014), Minimotors registered Dualtron as a separate trademark in global jurisdictions.

2017: Dualtron Ultra and the emergence of “hyperscooter” as a concept

In 2017 Minimotors released the Dualtron Ultra — the off-road flagship of a new generation: dual BLDC hub motors totalling 2,400 W rated, a 2,072 Wh LG battery, up to 80 km/h top speed, 74-mile range, hydraulic suspension, and 11″ pneumatic tubeless tyres (Rider Guide, Dualtron Ultra 2 — Dualtron Shop). Ultra became the first model of the hyperscooter class — that is, an electric scooter that, technically and architecturally, is closer to a motorcycle than to a scooter (apart from the lack of a seat and mirrors). At 36 kg and $3,800–4,200, it sat outside the mass market, but it created a new niche for buyers who had previously been considering electric motorcycles or cargo-class e-bikes.

The word “hyperscooter” was not in circulation at this moment — it appeared in active rider slang only later, roughly from 2019–2020, partly through the rise of YouTube channels like Electric Scooter Guide and Rider Guide, which began comparing the Dualtron Ultra, Thunder, and Storm on the same tracks as 125–250 cc motorcycles. But the engineering class that would later carry this name was created by the Dualtron Ultra in 2017.

2018: Dualtron Thunder — the 5,400 W reference

In 2018 Minimotors took the next engineering step — the Dualtron Thunder, the first electric scooter with 5,400 W of total peak power (dual 2,700 W hub motors, a 35 Ah LG pack, up to 49 mph / 80 km/h top speed, with regular records of 53 mph / 85 km/h for lighter riders) (Scooter Guide — Dualtron Thunder review, Dualtron USA — Thunder 3 page). Weight 43 kg. Retail launch price $4,990–5,490.

Thunder became the architectural reference for the entire industry for four to five years. Every later hyperscooter — the Kaabo Wolf Warrior 11, the NAMI Burn-E, the Apollo Phantom, the Weped GTR — is compared against the Thunder as the “zero point” of the class. In the commentary community of ScooterHacking, ESG, and the specialised rider forums, the formula “if it can keep up with the Thunder, it’s a real hyperscooter” became the de-facto classification test.

A separate important detail is the EY3 controller-display that debuted on the Thunder. This is a proprietary Minimotors development: a digital LCD display with UART protocol, integration with sine-wave controllers, and ride-mode settings. As described in the controllers and BMS article, the EY3 became an industry standard — the Chinese Kaabo, on its Wolf Warrior 11, literally uses the EY3 from the Thunder via direct sourcing from Minimotors, with no in-house alternative (Rider Guide — Kaabo Wolf Warrior 11 review).

2019: Eagle Pro and the broadening of the line-up

In November 2019 Minimotors announced the Dualtron Eagle Pro — an off-road machine of the middle class between Ultra and Thunder: dual BLDC motors of 1,800 W rated each / 3,600 W total peak, a 60 V × 22.4 Ah = 1,344 Wh battery on LG cells, up to 75 km/h top speed, 80 km of range, weight 26 kg, load up to 120 kg (ebikescooter — Dualtron Eagle Pro 60V 22.4Ah, Wee-Bot — Dualtron Eagle). Eagle Pro is positioned as an enthusiast machine for experienced urban riders who are not ready to pay $5,000 for a Thunder but want more than the Speedway models.

In parallel, the company rolled out the Dualtron Spider and Dualtron Spider 2 (from 2021, BLDC motors with a magnesium-alloy housing, carbon handlebars, peak power up to 3,984 W, weight 26.2 kg, a 60 V × 30 Ah battery for 100 km of range) (Dualtron USA — Spider Max, Dualtron Shop — Spider Max). Spider is a light hyperscooter with an emphasis on weight: for those who want a dual-motor architecture without the 35–45 kg compromise of the Thunder. And the Dualtron Mini as a light commuter at 1,450 W, 27 mph / 45 km/h, 22 kg, with 9″ pneumatic tyres and dual (quadruple-spring) suspension — positioned as a premium alternative to the M365 for everyday commuting (Scooter Guide — Dualtron Mini review, Minimotors USA — Dualtron Mini).

This produced a complete line-up from $1,500 to $6,500 under the single Dualtron brand — from Mini for daily commuting to Thunder for off-road. Speedway, as a parallel brand, fills the $800–2,500 rungs for newcomers.

Autumn 2021: the dual release of X Limited, Storm Limited, and Thunder 2

In autumn 2021 Minimotors simultaneously announced three next-generation flagships — the Dualtron X Limited, Dualtron Storm Limited, and Dualtron Thunder 2 (VORO Motors — Dualtron Three-quel: Pre-order X2, Storm Limited). This was the most significant product wave in the brand’s history — and it coincided with the post-COVID peak of demand for personal mobility in Europe and North America.

The Dualtron X Limited is a new technological ceiling: dual 6,000 W motors (= 12,000 W total peak), 50 A square-wave controllers (70 A in Boost Mode), an 84 V × 60 Ah = 5,040 Wh LG 21700 battery, 65+ mph / 105+ km/h top speed, 105-mile / 170 km range, NUTT 4-piston hydraulic brakes with ABS and 160 mm disc rotors, 950 lb/in coilover suspension with 19-point adjustment, 13×5″ tubeless tyres, EY4 colour LCD with BLE app compatibility, weight 82.5 kg (Dualtron USA — X Limited, Rider Guide — X Limited review). This is architecturally closer to a motorcycle than to a scooter — and the $7,990–8,990 price confirms it.

The Dualtron Storm Limited is a performance commuter with record range: 84 V × 45 Ah LG battery, up to 136 miles / 219 km of range, up to 74.5 mph / 120 km/h, dual 11,500 W peak motors, 12″ tubeless RSC tyres, 45-step rubber suspension, an integrated steering damper (a stem stabiliser for high-speed cornering), NUTT hydraulic brakes, and a ludicrous mode for extra boost (VORO Motors — Storm Limited, Rider Guide — Storm Limited review). At its 2021 release the Storm Limited earned a reputation as “the fastest retail electric scooter on the market”.

The Dualtron Thunder 2 is an upgrade of the original Thunder from 5.4 to 10 kW: 72 V × 40 Ah LG, up to 10 kW peak power, and refined sine-wave controller electronics (Scooter Guide — Thunder 2 review, Minimotors NYC — Thunder 2).

2022–2025: EY4, IPX7, swappable batteries, Thunder 3

Through 2022–2024 Minimotors moved the entire top model line-up to the EY4 LCD display — the next generation of controller-display with a full-colour 4×2″ LCD, BLE app compatibility, IPX7 water-resistance, and OTA updates. EY4 debuted on the X Limited, then moved to the Storm UP, the 2024 New Edition Storm Limited, and the Spider Max (VORO Motors — EY4 display for Dualtron, Dualtron UK — Storm Limited New Edition EY4). This is architecturally the same as Mi Home for the Xiaomi M365, but for the performance segment: one central display, one ecosystem of app settings, one BLE stack across every model.

In 2024 Minimotors released the Dualtron Storm UP — the first Dualtron with a swappable battery (72 V × 35 Ah Samsung, ~140 km of range, EY4 IPX7 display, a removable battery that can be charged separately from the machine) (Dualtron Nordic — Storm UP). This is symmetrical to the way the 2019 Segway-Ninebot Max G30 set the reference for a sharing apparatus with a swappable battery — but in the performance segment this is a different engineering challenge: the battery itself weighs more than 12 kg, and its swappable design requires reinforced contacts and thermal protection.

In 2025 the Dualtron Thunder 3 appeared as the closing model of the cycle: a 72 V × 40 Ah battery on LG 21700 cells, 62+ mph / 100 km/h top speed, a 100-mile / 160 km range, NUTT 4-piston hydraulic brakes with integrated cooling and 160 mm rotors, a formal IPX5 certification, fully redesigned high-efficiency motors, and an updated EY4 display (Dualtron USA — Thunder 3, EcoReco — Dualtron Thunder 3, Boosted USA — Thunder 3). Thunder 3 closes the “sub-flagship” frame, delivering 80 % of the X Limited’s performance in a corpus that is half the size.

The ecosystem around Minimotors

Beyond Dualtron and Speedway themselves, a distinct ecosystem of parallel brands and distributor structures has formed around Minimotors, without which the hyperscooter segment is hard to grasp as a whole.

Weped — the Korean spin-off of 2014. Weped’s founder is Sang Wook Jeon, who created the company in 2014 with the explicit aim of “changing the centuries-old scooter industry”. Weped is the only Korean company that develops, manufactures, and finishes electric scooters entirely in-house, without OEM partnerships (Weped Global — About us, Weped Australia — Our Story). Its top models GTR, SST, and Sonic are direct hyperscooter competitors to the Dualtron Thunder and Storm, with an emphasis on even more extreme power (4 kW continuous total in the SST). In family-genealogy terms Weped is a younger Korean competitor to Minimotors, born from the same Seoul / Gyeonggi-do hyperscooter ecosystem.

Kaabo — the Chinese challenger of 2013. Zhejiang Kaabo Electronic Technology Co., Ltd. was founded in 2013 and began with electric balancing wheels and unicycles, moving into the hyperscooter segment from 2017–2018 with the Wolf Warrior 11 (Rider Guide — Wolf Warrior 11 review). Structurally, the Wolf Warrior 11 is a value alternative to the Dualtron Thunder: it borrows the EY3 controller-display directly from the Thunder (via direct sourcing from Minimotors), adds its own chassis, and trims the supply chain slightly. In 2021 Kaabo released the Wolf King GT and Wolf King GTR as direct response models to the Dualtron X Limited and Thunder 2 — with a similar dual-motor pair of 2,000–6,000 W, a similar architecture of EY-series displays, and a price label $500–1,200 below the corresponding Dualtron. Kaabo is today present in more than 30 countries across Europe, the Americas, and Africa.

VORO Motors — the global distributor from Singapore to the USA. Founder Melvin Lian created VORO Motors in 2015 in Singapore as a premium retail distributor of electric scooters. In 2019, on 5 November 2019, the Singapore Land Transport Authority banned electric scooters from all footpaths, effective 1 January 2020 (with an advisory period from 5 November to 31 December 2019) (Mothership SG — E-scooters permanently banned from footpaths Nov 2019, The Online Citizen — LTA to ban e-scooters on all footpaths). This effectively eliminated the retail market in Singapore and forced VORO Motors to move operations to the United States, where the company became the principal American distributor of Dualtron and obtained exclusive access to pre-release models (the Storm Limited in 2021, the X Limited, the Thunder 2). VORO is now the largest hyperscooter retailer in North America, with its own post-warranty support and parts warehouses.

Other regional distributors. Minimotors today has sales centres in Korea, Singapore, China, France, New Zealand, Australia, and Russia (Dualtron Nordic — about). Key regional distributor brands: Dualtron Nordic (Sweden / Denmark / Norway), Dualtron UK (United Kingdom), Dualtron Shop (Europe), Fortunati (Italy), Smartwheel (Canada / USA), Minimotors USA (since 2018, via VORO Motors), Minimotors NYC (New York, a regional sub-distributor), Wee-Bot (France).

Why Minimotors closes the OEM-foundation frame of the industry

If Segway-Ninebot is the OEM denominator of the consumer/sharing class (the M365, ES2, Max G30, GT2 — all machines whose weight and price are optimised for mass retail and municipal sharing permits), then Minimotors is the OEM denominator of the performance/enthusiast class. Symmetrically:

• The engineering school. Segway-Ninebot came out of robotics and the self-balancing segment; Minimotors came out of motor boards and gas-powered Goped machines. Both schools are inevitably reflected in the architecture of their scooters: Ninebot keeps its bicycle roots (a narrow deck, a light chassis, a frame-bounded battery); Minimotors keeps its gas-powered roots (a wide deck for foot placement, a low centre of mass, a long stem for high-speed control).
• The distribution philosophy. Segway-Ninebot is direct-to-consumer via mi.com / Amazon / the Segway Store and B2B sharing contracts with Bird/Lime/Spin/Lyft; Minimotors is regional premium distributors (VORO Motors in the USA, Dualtron Nordic in Scandinavia, Fortunati in Italy), which emphasise service and parts rather than the mass channel.
• The engineering reference. The Ninebot ES2 and Max G30 are the engineering reference for sharing Gen1–Gen2 apparatus and the consumer commuter. The Dualtron Thunder and Storm are the engineering reference for the hyperscooter class: any new machine in the 5 kW+ class is compared on the YouTube channels of ESG and Rider Guide against the Thunder as the “zero point”.
• The OEM role for competitors. The Segway-Ninebot factories in Changzhou and Shenzhen are the source of ~80 % of the world’s sharing fleet, including machines under the Lime, Bird, Spin, and Voi brands. Minimotors, through the EY3 and EY4 controller-displays, is the engineering source for a significant share of Chinese hyperscooter apparatus (the Kaabo Wolf Warrior 11 and Wolf King GT both borrow the EY series). This is not counterfeiting — it is a formal sourcing partnership that reduces R&D costs for competitors and simultaneously reinforces Minimotors’ position as the architectural denominator.

Without Minimotors there is no contemporary hyperscooter segment, just as without Segway-Ninebot there is no contemporary sharing segment. These two OEM companies are two sides of the same engineering-manufacturing architecture of the industry: one for mass mobility at 250–700 W, the other for the performance segment at 3–12 kW. Between them runs the entire spectrum of modern electric scooters, from the $400 Bird-spec M365 platform up to the $8,900 Dualtron X Limited on its 12 kW dual-motor 84 V architecture.

In the next section of the guide, the detailed material on controllers, BMS, IoT and telemetry shows how Minimotors’ EY3 and EY4 architecture and Segway-Ninebot’s displays form two parallel control ecosystems. The suspension and IP-rating article shows how the hyperscooter class, from the 2017 Dualtron Ultra to the 2025 Thunder 3, inverts the engineering logic inherited from Goped. The off-road scooters article provides the full modern classification of hyperscooter apparatus, where the Dualtron Thunder 3, X Limited, and Storm Limited remain central reference points.