After decades of ponderous milk floats, feeble golf buggies and those annoying squeaky-wheeled airport terminal transporters, electric vehicles have slowly transformed themselves into lean, clean driving machines. Now, at last, a similar metamorphosis is happening in the world of electric bikes.
Website the Guardian reports the past couple of years has seen a revolution in e-biking that will radically transform cycling as we know it, particularly in urban areas.
The underlying technology has been refined, improved and streamlined and e-bikes have become neater, more agile and a lot more fun to ride.
Most crucially the rechargeable batteries have become smaller and lighter and can now be secretly integrated into the bike’s frame. These days the only person who will guess you are getting some subtle pedal assistance as you surge away from the lights is you.
But while e-biking has been upping its game, folding bikes have been smugly resting on their laurels as if they’d already provided the answer to all our urban cycling questions.
Now manufacturers have realized they have to add electric capability to their folding machines if they are to catch this new wave. Earlier this year Brompton brought out its first folding e-bike, and now the Hummingbird has joined the throng.
