Vodafone gets a scoot on with Yamaha IoT deal

Scooters, the ginger step-brothers of the car, have been given the IoT treatment by Vodafone.

The UK operator has signed up with Yamaha to take IoT beyond the alliteratively-pleasing connected car, towards the cumbersome-to-pronounce ‘connected scooter’.

Yup, that’s a thing, and Vodafone is bringing its embedded telematics system to a fleet of Yamaha TMAX SX and TMAX DX models. The principle of connecting scooters to the internet is not quite as gimmicky as it would first sound, however, because Vodafone’s solution is apparently meant to make thieving the things a friggin’ nightmare.

Vodafone will protect each scooter with a stolen vehicle tracking and recovery service, which uses a network of secure operating centres across the country to manage alerts around the clock, while working with police to recover any half-inched scooters across the whole continent.

It can also alert the owner when the bike’s battery is running low. See, not so gimmicky at all! The ‘My TMAX Connect’ app also lets the rider toot the horn and flash the blinkers remotely. Ok, that bit is a little gimmicky – but could be useful in dark carparks so long as it doesn’t get totally misappropriated by scooter-revving 16-year-old wide boys just begging for their first ASBO.

We really are living the 500CC IoT dream.