This is the coolest thing I’ve seen this year! WANT!
A small company called Gocycle has been making those since 2009 and is arguably the brand to beat at the moment.
On the outskirts of Greater London, I had the chance to ride roughly five miles on the company’s all-new Gocycle GX. From afar, it looks almost identical to its predecessors, the low-end GS and flagship G3. The frame is basically a single bar that runs diagonally up from the crankset. The absence of a top-tube makes it dead-simple to walk up, swing your leg over and start riding, regardless of your stature and what you might be carrying in both hands. It’s an eye-grabbing look that Richard Thorpe, a former design engineer at McLaren Cars, has been refining for more than a decade.
Nestled inside the frame is a 300Wh lithium-ion battery. Gocycle says it will carry you up to 40 miles on a single charge, depending on the terrain and how you’ve set up the assistive motor. From flat, the e-bike takes seven hours to recharge or four with an optional fast charger. The battery is also removable and you can buy spares from Gocycle for £599/$899.
The bike is available to order now for £2,899/$3,299. It sits in-between the entry-level GS (£2,499) and flagship G3 (£3,499), both of which use the older and slower method of disassembly. The G3 is still the top-tier model, however, because it has predictive gear shifting, an adaptive daytime running light on the handlebars, and other ‘smart’ features not found on the mass-market GX. All three bikes, while expensive, are competitively priced with the electric Brompton (£2,595) and folding Hummingbird(£4,495). As always, you need to think of them as car replacements, rather than slightly more powerful bicycles, to justify the steep asking price.
Source: Gocycle GX via Engadget
