As an entrepreneur working on a bicycle startup, Passion Bicycle, I’m constantly thinking of ways to innovate our company and differentiate from your typical online bike shop.
For now, most of our innovation is around being a great concierge service for customers, along with giving you a wonderful product. But at the same time, observing the new products that make bikes “smart”, would be awesome to introduce in the future. We’re not there yet, but I thought it would be neat to catalogue some of the cooler bicycle inventions I’ve seen in the past year.
So what I’ve learned so far in bicycle innovations?
Right now, I see three specific themes:
- Security: Preventing bike theft
- Navigation: Utilizing technology to take you from point A to point B
- Safety: How to ride your bike safely
Security
Every cyclist has that one story of how they got their bike stolen. It’s the worst feeling and a serious problem for any cyclists in any major city. That makes it a continuous trend area for better safety measures.
- Smart locks:
Lock8 and BitLock are the two pioneers in the smart lock space. Both of them launched Kickstarter campaigns in late 2013. Another company, Skylock, joined the competition in 2015.
Smart locks allow you to unlock your bike through an app, while notifying you when someone tries to steal your bike. Some also provide beeps and other alarms to scare thieves away.
- Invisible locks
If carrying a separate lock bothers you, these companies have the solution for you.
SeatyLock turns your seatpost into its own lock. Yerka Project turns a bike frame into a lock.
- GPS tracking:
Of course, if you think a smart lock is overkill, you can buy a GRP tracker like TrackR or Tilt. These track where your bikes are in conjunction with your bike locks.
My thoughts?
Many people, including yours truly, have been eagerly awaiting smart locks when the first concepts were released in 2013. Unfortunately, it’s taken some time to ship, with many coming out in early 2015.
It won’t be long before we really see whether they can get actual market adoption. It should also be interesting to see what their early backers say after having some time using smart locks. Hopefully, they can live up to their promise of good security.
In 2014, a lot of smart bikes started offering similar security features in their bikes. Will smart locks be a big threat to those smart bike startups in the coming future? It will be interesting to observe.
Navigation
Navigation hasn’t been an issue for motorists, what with built-in-navigation systems being the norm these days, and free mobile apps like Google Maps or Waze being quite common. Unfortunately, that’s not the case for cyclists, so we need to have something else to help us find our way on a bike.
The following products are trying to change that:
- Smart handlebar: Helios offers you a smart handlebar with built-in proximity and indicator lights. It can also connect to your phone with turn-by-turn navigation.
If you think a smart handlebar is over-kill, HammerHead offers you a small navigation device that attaches right to your handlebar. Connecting their app on your phone, it shows you where to go. Simple yet elegant solution.
Cobi is another impressive company, offering a connected bike system: a smart bike mount that pairs with your phone to give you a fully connected cycling experience. The founders previously worked on connected car solutions in Germany, and it seems their take on connected bicycles are just as impressive.
- Smart wheels:
When it comes to navigation, most cyclists do not like to climb hills. There are electronic bike options out there, but they are usually pricy and heavy.
Some entrepreneurs are solving this problem using smart wheels. Two companies, Copenhagen Wheel and FlyKly Smart Wheel, go for approximately $1000. Both assist you when you are climbing hills or when you have heavy legs from a long day.
- Smart bikes:
Vanhawks offers a connected carbon bicycle at $1200. A smart carbon fiber bicycle, with all the censors and apps integrated, is a bargain at this price (if they can deliver it). That potential though, speaks to its huge success on Kickstarter, raising over $800,000. The bike is full of sensors, helping you to navigate and alert you of any danger on your blind spots.
One smart bike project, duBike, that REALLY gets me going is the one from Baidu, aka the Chinese Google. Why is that exciting? For starters, their smart bike prototypes come with almost all the connected features other smart bikes have, like navigation, safety sensors and trackers.
The interesting part though, is they are not planning to sell these bicycles. Like Google’s Android platform, this project is about building a smart bicycle platform for manufactuers and developers.
My thoughts?
2014 was an exciting year. The release of Helios and HammerHead really got cyclists excited, and before long, smart bike projects likeVanhawks were exploding on to the market.
When bikes are connected with censors, they become more and more like cars. Bicycle makers can start to learn about their customers by collecting data from the bikes.
Of course, that then begs the question: when bikes are all integrated with chips, does it make it difficult for bike maintenance and repair? When we have more smart bikes on the market, we will learn how to solve those needs later on.
Safety
Riding a bike can be intimidating at times. After all, cyclists face steel cars zooming down the road.
Can innovation help? Take a look below:
- Indicator lights: Wouldn’t it be great if cyclists could indicate their intentions on the road, the same way motorcycles and cars do? Cycl thinks so. They cleverly think about how to add indication lights on a normal handlebar. No need to change anything else.
- Indication gloves and bands: Zackees and USEEME have different takes on indication lights. Typically, cyclists indicate turns using their hands. What if you added lights onto gloves or wrist bands? Sometimes a simple solution is the best.
- Smart handlebars and bikes: As I mentioned earlier, all the smart handlebar and bicycles have indication lights already integrated. Smart bikes even have sensors to notify you when danger is approaching on your blind spots.
- Car integrated bike detector
Cars all have computers which are becoming more sophisticated. Look at Tesla or Google’s self driving cars, and you’ll see innovation in automobiles has come a long way. Perhaps there are detection systems on cars that can geolocate bicycles, like what Volvo is working on.
Volvo is currently developing a helmet that communicates with proximity sensors in their cars. I love this approach and am happy to see other car makers thinking about cyclist safety.
My thoughts:
If smart bikes are the future, indication lights on your wrist band, gloves or handlebars seem like temporary solutions for the non-smart bicycle.
In IoT, device communication is a hot topic and many companies are already working on that, including Google’s Thread. When cars and bicycles recognize each other, will that decrease the accidents dramatically? I hope so.
Conclusion:
Bicycles have a pretty bright and exciting future. Thanks to the IoT hype, entrepreneurs can apply the latest sensors and technology to enhance cycling experience.
I love to see how bikes becoming more connected, for all these great reasons. But, many people, like me, love the simplicity of bikes in terms of their design and mechanics. Is it possible to get a perfect balance of both? I hope so.
At least, as an entrepreneur running a bicycle startup, it is something I’ll keep thinking about through 2015.
