Overview
Aiming to align the urban mobility with an eco-friendly approach, the town halls, municipalities, and regional governments of developed countries are promoting bike use via the stimulation of bike sharing services and infrastructure. Boosted by these policies, the use of e-bikes has grown globally due to its advantages in speed, effort, and appearance after use. However, the current e-bike models lack adaptability to the rider’s features and the type of ride, which forces a design made to satisfy the needs of the largest and most stable market segment: commuting riders, ignoring other potential segments.
Citybike is a new model of e-bike whose design is focused on the optimization of comfort and safety, aiming to increase use and include forgotten customers in the e-bike sharing scheme (such as persons with a high-risk perception during ride, tourists and older or impaired people).
This manner, Citybike will also promote the widespread modal shift towards cycling as a measure to overcome two of the European societal challenges in transport:
- a minimum 60% reduction of GHG emissions from transport by 2050
- to ensure the resilience of the European transport systems to meet the challenges of an uncertain world.