BikeBiz Bicycle and cycling retail news
The UK electric bike market has grown with the arrival of another distributor player – 2×2 Worldwide.
The firm already brings Land Rover, Roux, Shogun, Bickerton and Montague Bikes to the trade and has now taken on Montague’s Boston E.
The project has been on the boil for 18 months and the product will arrive in the UK market in May.
“We’re very excited,” 2×2’s sales director Scott Hillyard told BikeBiz. “2×2 has taken six years looking for the right product to finally enter the electric bike market, and we feel our product has all the features and benefits we desired, along with cutting edge technology and a real differentiation from the herd.”
The Boston E is a folding e-bike, ideal for urban commuting. It is fitted with Bike+ Zehus patented technology that optimises the rider’s energy while biking –this technology provides an e-bike with KERS (Kinetic energy Recovery System) capabilities, according to the firm.
The Boston E features an all-in-one e-kit that fully integrates a powerpack (motor, batteries, electronics, bluetooth connection) in a compact rear hub. It is pitched as the only hub, up to now, that features Bike+ technology.
Range varies depending upon the mode chosen but in the highest assisted mode the minimum range is 30km (full assistance). “If you are more proactive and fully utilising Bike+ technology the batteries will never discharge and the hub will optimise your riding energy, decreasing your effort by 30–40 per cent. This is truly an e-bike that may never have to be re–charged depending upon your riding style,” the firm said. However, recharge time is approximately three hours.
The Boston E hub also features a LOCK function that locks the motor making the bike unusable, easily accessed through the smart phone and neat and easy to facilitate.
Hillyard enthused: “There are no flappy cables, no large unsightly batteries, a weight of 13.7kg – which is incredibly light for a full sized wheel electric bike, a battery that recharges whilst in use and of course it is a bike that wins countless tests as the most rigid, best in class and most ridable folding bike in the marketplace.”
The Boston E is fully adjustable. A smartphone application connects via bluetooth to the hub and once paired can be tuned to the rider’s preferences, showing information such as speed, the odometer, the road slope, the motor power, etc. It also allows riders to customise their ride by choosing the amount of effort they want to make. By moving a single slider it is possible to set the behaviour of the bike from full assistance to smart management of the bike (Bike+).
01827 331099 www.2x2worldwide.com
This article first appeared in the March edition of BikeBiz, which you can read online or download as a PDF for free.
