Connect with us

Published

on

Electrek returned to Eurobike again this year, and as usual, the show was dominated by electric bikes. If you’re an old school curmudgeon that has dug in his heels trying to slow the forward pedaling motion of e-bikes, that might leave you dismayed. For all of the rest of us, it was a great chance to see hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of companies showing off new e-bikes, e-bike gear, and sometimes unrelated yet equally cool transportation… things.

The shows sheer vastness makes it impossible to cover even a small fraction of its entirety, but below you’ll find several of the standout features we saw at the show.

FUELL Flluid-2 and Flluid-3 e-bikes

First of all, a big thank you to FUELL for sponsoring our Eurobike 2023 coverage this year. It made it possible for us to check out the show and get an extended experience testing out the new Flluid-3 as well as talk to the team about the new Flluid-2 on display.

Both bikes are quite simillar, with the main difference being that the Flluid-2 has dual batteries for 2 kWh of capacity while the Flluid-3 comes in a step-through frame. Otherwise, quite similar.

They both rock the new Valeo Cyclee mid-drive motor with built-in gearbox, offering the possibility of predictive automatic shifting. I experienced that automatic shifting, which you can read more about in detail here, and it was pretty darn awesome. You can also put the bike in manual electric shifting mode, but I enjoyed letting it do both the thinking and the acting for me, allowing me to simply pedal.

The rest of the FUELL Flluid-2 and Flluid-3 are equally impressive, as they should be for bikes that start at $5,495. The massive 1 kWh and 2 kWh batteries offer max ranges of over 100 miles and 200 miles (160 km and 320 km), respectively. Most people don’t need that much range, but it adds peace of mind, plus the ability to turn charging into a weekly affair.

The bikes also feature Gates carbon belt drives, quality hydraulic disc brakes, GPS-location for anti-theft, strong racks, tight hugging fenders, Pirelli tires, and more. Basically, they look like they were designed a motorbike designer, because they were. These bikes answer the question, what would happen if Erik Buell built electric bicycles.

Rayvolt and eXXite

I always love seeing Rayvolt at an e-bike show because frankly I think they build the most beautiful electric bikes. Everyone else is competing for second place when it comes to artistic design meets engineering.

These e-bikes are just stunning. Barcelona-based Rayvolt combines Catalonian leatherwork with brass accents and bright colors to create beautiful rolling works of art. And having tested many of these bikes myself, I can tell you that they ride as good as they look.

The bikes are also quite high tech, being some of the first to offer features like backwards pedaling to activate regenerative braking.

Rayvolt’s sister brand eXXite was also at the show with its much more modern but equally nicely designed e-bikes.

I recently got an XS folding e-bike from Exxite and am excited to have that review coming soon. Suffice it to say, when it comes to uniqueness, no one can touch these companies.

Ellio

I only recently learned about Ellio while at Micromobility Europe a couple weeks ago, but the company definitely caught my attention. Their bikes use a combination of a mid-drive motor to power the rear wheel and a front hub motor to create an all-wheel-drive e-bike.

The company just unveiled the Ellio Max that uses the company’s signature two-wheel-drive, combining it with a 1,150 Wh battery for long range and a 45 km/h (28 mph) top speed for fast commuting.

It’s a bit pricey at €7,995 (approximately US $8,700). But it’s also got a Gates belt drive, hydraulic disc brakes, automatic electric shifting, stem suspension, optional seatpost suspension and other high end features.

eurobike 2023 ellio

Yadea e-bikes

Yadea is a massive two-wheeled EV manufacturer from China that is perhaps better known for its electric motorbikes and scooter. But this year they showed up at Eurobike in force with several new electric bicycle models.

The Innovator is a 250W folding electric bike. That may not sound like much power… and it’s not. But the bike has some nice features, like a mid-drive motor, hydraulic disc brakes and a neat frame design.

The company also showed off its heavier Trooper 01. That 45 km/h (28 mph) speed pedelec bike uses a motorcycle-style design akin to a SUPER73 type of e-bike. A 750W motor and dual suspension combine to make this into a fierce looking offering in the category.

Benno

Benno was at the show with an impressive looking display that put an airstream camper trailer in tow behind its e-bike.

It was just a static display and there’s no telling how well it would work in practice. But one thing is for sure: you better put that e-bike in Sport mode!

Greenway batteries

Greenway is a fairly large battery supplier that builds lithium-ion batteries for many of the top e-bike manufacturers. There’s a chance your e-bike has a Greenway battery and you just aren’t aware of it.

But what really caught my eye was their powerstation e-bike battery combo. Basically, it’s an inverter hub that lets you dock your e-bike battery to either charge it or use it to power other devices.

The company representative explained that it’s also a great way to reuse old e-bike batteries that have dropped below their 70% end-of-life rating. At that level, most e-bike batteries are considered replacement worthy, yet the battery still has some good life left in it for static uses just like this. Reduce, reuse, recycle!

Mahle

While we’re talking about e-bike battery power stations like the Greenway option, Mahle was showing off their own version called the e185 range extender battery and Energy Hub combo.

The range extender battery, which works with Mahle’s X20 e-bike system, is designed to fit into any standard water bottle holder on an e-bike and add 170 Wh of capacity. According to the company, that can boost the bike’s range by up to 60 km (36 mi). At just 1.1 kg (2.4 lb), it weighs the same as a one liter water bottle.

The battery also comes with a neat charging dock known as the Energy Hub to make it easier to juice back up after a long ride. You can even use the hub to turn the range extender battery into a powerbank for charging your phone or other devices. The only downside is that it has a single USB-C port, meaning you can either juice it up or juice up something else from it, but not at the same time.

Ducati e-bikes

It’s always great to see Ducati’s e-bikes in person, as these are super high-end electric mountain bikes.

They’re technically largely Thok bikes, with Ducati lending some branding value, but that doesn’t mean these aren’t beautiful machines with high-end parts!

Tern HSD

Tern recently updated its HSD with a new generation for the model, bringing one of the more mid-priced options in its diverse line of heavy-hauling cargo bikes into 2023 with a bang.

The bike includes a number of improvements based on customer desires as well as an upgraded Bosch powertrain.

The new Tern HSD includes the new Bosch Smart System and several upgrades to the design. Its 400 lb (181 kg) weight rating is one of the highest in the industry, and Tern actually tests that in accordance with certified laboratory testing. It’s not a guesstimate weight rating like many of the lower cost e-bike companies out there.

I had a chance to tests out the new HSD myself, and I’ll be sharing those thoughts more in-depth soon in a dedicated HSD article, so be on the lookout!

Engwe

Engwe was at Eurobike with a few models I’ve seen before and a few that were new to me. The company’s X24 and X20 have added smaller diameter wheels to the popular Engwe X26 platform.

The design has a complicated and frankly somewhat confusing triple suspension setup that ensures both the main rider and the rear passenger each get their own suspension for a more comfortable ride.

I’m looking forward to testing one of these out to see what that feels like in practice.

Comodule

I’ve always got to shoutout Comodule, some of the coolest micromobility folks in the business. They make the connected software that runs many of your favorite bikes and used in companies like Riese & Müller, SUPER73, CAKE, and more.

Their Äike T scooter was also on display, showing off the world’s first USB-C charging e-scooter.

I’ve got an Äike T waiting for me to do a full in-depth testing soon.

Myboo

Ok, I’ll be honest and say that I don’t really know much about these Myboo bikes. But they use beautiful bamboo construction and that’s enough for me to drool over them.

Muli

This is one of the coolest designs for a small format cargo bike I’ve ever seen – especially for a front loader cargo bike.

The front basket has an ingeniously simple design that allows it to pop open and close in an instant. When you need a cargo bike, you’ve got plenty of cargo space. But when you don’t want the extra bulk, it transforms back into a “normal” bike that is no wider than a typical city commuter e-bike.

Plus the entire thing is made in Europe. Pretty cool!

Acer

Consumer electronics company Acer (yes, the laptop maker) showed off several of its new electric bikes at Eurobike. The one that really caught my eye though was the ebii, which is getting ever closer to production.

I love seeing companies that aren’t known for bike design take a stab at it. The result is sometimes odd but other times results in really innovative designs like this.

This is one I’ll definitely keep following on its path to production.

Solar scooter

This one isn’t an e-bike at all, but rather a solar-powered scooter. The company’s S80 Solar Scooter is quite literally covered with photovoltaic cells. They’re on both the floorboard and the steering tube.

The Chinese factory’s representatives at the booth explained how the scooter works, offering somewhere between 35 to 70 watts of solar power to recharge the scooter. Considering the 468 Wh battery on board, that means a full recharge takes between 7 and 14 hours of sunlight.

In other words, you can probably get between half to a full charge per day when the scooter is parked outside.

I’m definitely looking forward to getting my hands on this one for testing.

Kilow

While we’re on the subject of things that aren’t bikes, I might as well bring up Kilow. This French company seems to make e-bikes and e-scooters too, but the thing that really caught my eye was their quadricyle.

It looks like something between a Jeep and Moke, but is designed to operate at street-legal speeds for quadricycles in Europe, meaning it won’t have as many regulatory hurdles as “real” cars.

I also love the model, “less is more”!

Tenways Cargo One

Tenways has always been synonymous with budget-level city commuter e-bikes, at least in my mind. But the company showed off an interesting kid-carrying front loader cargo e-bike that show.

The worldwide debut of the Cargo One puts Tenways into a different category entirely, not just in bike style but also quality of design and manufacture.

This isn’t a simple slap-it-together single speed e-bike. Instead, this is a much more ambitious family cargo e-bike.

Cixi

I’ve saved the weirdest for last, folks. Meet Cixi.

This looks a lot like an Arcimoto FUV from the outside, with its dual front wheel setup and 120 km/h (75 mph) top speed. But not only is this a leaning three-wheeler, but it’s also technically a “bike”. Or at least it has functional pedals that are apparently hooked up to some type of generator to register pedal input. Thus, the rider can pedal to control the vehicle’s power output.

It’s a pedal assist electric car, if I’ve ever seen one. Or perhaps a pedal assist three-wheeled electric motorcycle. I guess I don’t know what it is. But it’s definitely weird, and so I love it!

That wraps up our Eurobike 2023 roundup. What was your favorite (or least favorite) from the bunch? Let’s hear your thoughts in the comment section below!

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

Continue Reading

Environment

Orange EV revives Freewire tech, gives it the best name in the business

Published

on

By

Orange EV revives Freewire tech, gives it the best name in the business

When innovative EV charging startup FreeWire shut its doors last year, it looked like its clever, infrastructure-light EVSE concept might vanish along with it. Now, Orange EV has taken up the cause, and it’s bringing the battery-based charging tech back with an all-new name. Meet the Orange Juicer. (!)

The FreeWire concept was, if you’ll forgive the effusiveness, fantastic. Basically, they integrated a li-ion battery back into a vertical cabinet that could be effectively “trickle charged” with a standard 110 or 220 AC connection, then “dump” that charge into an EV very quickly – enabling up to 200 kW of DC fast charging without the need for expensive utility and infrastructure.

But, while most people the FreeWire concept might have great for rural gas stations that rarely saw EVs and didn’t need constant access to hundreds of kW of power, the engineers at Orange EV saw something different.

As more customers accelerate adoption of Orange EV trucks and electrify other site equipment, we’ve seen infrastructure upgrades cause serious holdups,” Orange EV founder and president, Kurt Neutgens, told Charged. “The Orange Juicer solves that challenge, giving fleets a fast, scalable and cost-effective charging platform that utilizes existing on-site power.”

Advertisement – scroll for more content

“Fast” is the key word here. As the lower TCO and improved uptime promises of Orange EV’s electric terminal tractors get proven out again and again by customers like DHL and YMX, more companies are turning to Orange to help electrify their operations – but getting adequate charging to their truck depots has slowed that growth.

“Limits on grid capacity are the most significant source of delay, especially when installing DC fast chargers,” writes Esther Conrad, Research Manager for the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University. “Multiple jurisdictions, both large and small, reported long delays on the part of the utility to provide adequate electricity to a site. Timeframes can be on the order of months or even multiple years for large installations.”

Months or years is more than enough time for a skittish customer to second-guess an expensive vehicle fleet purchase, so Kurt Neutgens did what he apparently does best: found an engineering solution that was laser-focused on the problem, and acted.


Orange EV formed a new division called Optigrid, bought FreeWire’s battery-backed DC fast charging back from the brink, and repackaged it as the Orange Juicer to specifically address the problems facing fleets struggling to get adequate grid power to their sites.

The result is an EV charging solution that’s perfect for the way terminal trucks operate, and one that can be up and running in a matter of weeks instead of months or years.

“Fleet operators are tired of waiting on infrastructure that doesn’t match their electrification schedule,” said Tyler Phillipi, CEO of OptiGrid. “The Orange Juicer gives them the power to deploy today, with charging performance that rivals high-capacity systems but requires just a fraction of the grid input.”

The first Orange Juicers are expected to reach customer sites in Q4 of this year.

Electrek’s Take


No matter what you call it… …yard dog, yard truck, terminal truck, hostler, spotter, shunt truck, yard horse, goat, mule … …Orange EV pure electric trucks deliver.
e-Triever terminal tractor; via Orange EV.

Despite the progress made in recent years, there are still some wacky assumptions being made out there – from the idea that you must have on-site DC fast charging to successfully deploy an EV fleet to the even wackier notion that you need a dedicated charger for each EV. Orange, on the hand, doesn’t make such sweeping statements. Instead, they’re listening to customers’ needs, understanding what really needs to happen in order to successfully deploy their products, and delivering a better TCO with lower costs … even without government incentives.

“In a two-shift operation over a 10-year period, our customers are experiencing a $500,000 benefit per truck,” Neutgens told Freight Waves. “That’s full price, no incentives.”

Over at The Heavy Equipment Podcast, we had a chance to talk to Kurt ahead of last year’s ACT Expo for clean trucking. On the show (available here), Kurt explained how his experience at Ford helped inform his design ideology, and that the Orange EV was designed to be cost competitive with diesel options, even without subsidies.

Give it a listen, then let us know what you think of Orange EV’s holistic electrification solution for logistics fleets in the comments.

SOURCE | IMAGESOptiGrid, via Charged EV, FreightWaves.


If you’re considering going solar, it’s always a good idea to get quotes from a few installers. To make sure you find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing, check out EnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. It has hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high-quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use, and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and share your phone number with them. 

Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisors to help you every step of the way. Get started here.

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

Continue Reading

Environment

Why one government is giving women free pink electric mopeds

Published

on

By

Why one government is giving women free pink electric mopeds

The Sindh government in Pakistan has just launched a bold new initiative aimed at transforming mobility for women: a fleet of free pink electric scooters for female students and working women. Called the Free Pink EV Scooty Scheme, the program is designed to offer women across the province a safer, more dignified, and cost-effective way to get to school or work without relying on crowded, often unsafe public transportation.

Like many countries in the region, Pakistan is a deeply patriarchal society, not historically known for gender equality or freedom. That has meant that despite women technically having equal standing under the law, they often face significant challenges accessing safe and reliable transportation, let alone gaining higher education or entering the workforce.

Announced by Sindh Transport Minister Sharjeel Memon, the initiative goes beyond transportation to empower women seeking to enroll in education or join the workforce in the nation’s second-largest province.

Eligible participants include women who are permanent residents of Sindh, hold a valid driver’s license (car or motorcycle), and are either employed or in school. Winners will be selected via a public, lottery-style balloting system conducted in front of media and overseen by multiple government departments. To ensure safety, selected applicants will also need to pass a road skills test before riding off.

Advertisement – scroll for more content

“We have ensured a transparent and merit-based selection process so that the maximum number of women can benefit,” said Sindh Minister of Transport Sharjeel Memon, who emphasized that the project will cut commuting costs, save time, and increase safety for women on the move.

Image via: Sindh Government Facebook

But the program doesn’t stop at just handing over keys. It includes full registration, insurance, helmets, and even rider training. Riders will also have access to an expanding network of EV charging stations throughout Sindh, making this a fully supported electric mobility solution.

By investing in personal electric transportation for women, the government hopes to improve access to education and employment, reduce reliance on gas-powered public transport, and promote sustainability. It’s a major step for a region where mobility remains a significant barrier to opportunity for many women, and one that may serve as a model for similar programs across the Middle East, South Asia, and beyond.

Electrek’s Take

I think the fact that electric scooters are being used as a tool to provide transportation equality and increased accessibility is a great thing here, and highlights the importance of these types of vehicles in the broader mobility ecosystem. The whole “let’s give the women a bunch of pink scooters” definitely sounds like an idea thought up by a man, but I think their hearts were in the right place.

In much of Pakistan, especially in conservative and rural areas, women face significant challenges in accessing safe and reliable transportation. Public transport can be overcrowded, unsafe, or socially restrictive for women, which in turn limits their access to education and employment opportunities. By offering these free e-scooters, the government is trying to empower women with greater autonomy and freedom of movement, thereby increasing their participation in both the academic and economic spheres.

There are obviously huge strides that still need to be made in many similar countries in order for women to feel safe when out of the home, let alone have access to employment and educational opportunities, but it sounds like this program is working towards addressing those issues.

Note: The lead image is AI-generated, but then again, so is the Sindh Government’s image. So we’re just sort of sticking with the theme, there.

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

Continue Reading

Environment

Altman, Huang and the last-minute negotiations that sealed the $100 billion OpenAI-Nvidia deal

Published

on

By

Altman, Huang and the last-minute negotiations that sealed the 0 billion OpenAI-Nvidia deal

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI (L), and Jensen Huang CEO of Nvidia.

Reuters

ABILENE, Texas – Sam Altman had a deadline. OpenAI’s CEO was headed to Texas to unveil his company’s next big infrastructure push, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang wanted in on the action.

Through a series of hurried negotiations, late-night calls and last-minute contract tweaks, the two giants of artificial intelligence struck a $100 billion partnership on Monday, hours before Altman boarded his flight to Abilene, a city of about 130,000 residents roughly 180 miles west of Dallas.

It helped that Huang and Altman had been part of President Donald Trump’s state visit to the U.K. a week earlier, allowing the president to be briefed on the agreement days in advance. 

The deal, which Huang described to CNBC as “monumental in size,” marks a watershed moment in the tech industry, as capital and influence are increasingly concentrated in the hands of the two companies closest to the heart of the artificial intelligence boom.

Huang now presides over the world’s most valuable public company, worth nearly $4.5 trillion after gaining $170 billion following Monday’s announcement, while Altman runs the most prominent startup on the planet, valued at half a trillion dollars.

OpenAI’s ascent to the forefront of generative AI has relied on Nvidia’s high-powered graphics processing units (GPUs). Now the companies are more intimately linked than ever, as they plan to carve a path to jointly building the next wave of AI supercomputing facilities.

“You should expect a lot from us in the coming months,” Altman told CNBC’s Jon Fortt in an interview at Nvidia’s Silicon Valley headquarters on Monday. “There are three things that OpenAI has to do well: we have to do great AI research, we have to make these products people want to use, and we have to figure out how to do this unprecedented infrastructure challenge.”

Altman and Huang negotiated their pact largely through a mix of virtual discussions and one-on-one meetings in London, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., with no bankers involved, according to people close to the talks who declined to be named because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

The arrangement calls for Nvidia to invest $10 billion at a time in OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. As the buildout unfolds, Nvidia will also supply the cutting-edge processors powering a host of new data centers.

While OpenAI gets more intimate with Nvidia, it has to maneuver through a number of high-stakes relationships with other key partners.

OpenAI only informed Microsoft, its principal shareholder and primary cloud provider, a day before the deal was signed, the people familiar with the matter said. Earlier this year, Microsoft lost its status as OpenAI’s exclusive provider of computing capacity.

The pact also comes less than two weeks after a disclosure from Oracle indicated that OpenAI agreed to spend $300 billion in computing power with the company over about five years, starting in 2027. At the start of the year, OpenAI joined Stargate, a multibillion-dollar project announced by President Trump and backed by Oracle and SoftBank, to build out next-generation AI infrastructure.

Going forward, all of OpenAI’s infrastructure projects will fall under the Stargate umbrella.

Representatives from Microsoft, Oracle and SoftBank didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Nvidia and OpenAI provided scant details about where and when the buildout will take place, other than to say that the first of the 10 gigawatt sites will go online in the back half of next year.

Executives said they’ve reviewed between 700 and 800 potential locations since unveiling Stargate in January. In the months that followed, they fielded a flood of proposals from developers across North America offering land, power, and facilities. That list has been narrowed as OpenAI weighs energy availability, permitting timelines, and financing terms, the company said.

In Monday’s announcement, OpenAI described Nvidia as a “preferred” partner. But executives told CNBC that it’s not an exclusive relationship, and the company is continuing to work with large cloud companies and other chipmakers to avoid being locked in to a single vendor.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Nvidia CEO, Jensen Huang arrive to attend the State Banquet during U.S. President Donald Trump’s state visit, at Windsor Castle, in Windsor, Britain, September 17, 2025.

Phil Noble | Reuters

For Nvidia, the investment in OpenAI is historic in size, but it’s just a big piece of a rapidly expanding portfolio.

Last week, Nvidia put $5 billion into Intel as part of a joint venture to co-develop data center and PC chips with the troubled chipmaker. Nvidia also said it invested close to $700 million in U.K. data center startup Nscale, a move that resembles Nvidia’s backing of U.S. AI infrastructure provider CoreWeave, which held its IPO in March.

Tranches of money

The financing structure for the OpenAI deal is designed to avoid hefty dilution. The initial $10 billion tranche is locked in at a $500 billion valuation and expected to close within a month or so once the transaction has been finalized, people familiar with the matter said. Nine successive $10 billion rounds are planned, each to be priced at the company’s then-current valuation as new capacity comes online, they said.

The relationship between Nvidia and OpenAI long predates the launch of ChatGPT in 2022.

Back when OpenAI was still a small nonprofit research lab and Nvidia was best known for building graphics chips for video games, Huang personally delivered his company’s first DGX supercomputer to OpenAI’s office in 2016. At the time, the startup was located in San Francisco’s Mission District, in a building that’s now home to Elon Musk’s xAI.

Almost a decade and trillions of dollars in value later, Huang and Altman are perhaps the most significant power players in the tech industry.

In October of last year, Nvidia formalized its financial stake in OpenAI, joining a $6.6 billion funding round that valued the company at $157 billion. A month later, in Tokyo, OpenAI executives met with SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son to brainstorm what to call their next phase of expansion. Out of that session came “Stargate,” a codename that has since become shorthand for OpenAI’s most ambitious buildout plans.

Stargate now encompasses every major deal for compute capacity, including this week’s partnership with Nvidia. Securing the rights to the name required some careful maneuvering, but OpenAI has embraced it as the banner for its long-term infrastructure strategy.

OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar: Biggest issue we face is being 'constantly under compute'

The $100 billion commitment from Nvidia represents only part of what’s required for the planned 10-gigawatt buildout. OpenAI will lease Nvidia’s chips for deployment, but financing the broader effort will require other avenues. Executives have called equity the most expensive way to fund data centers, and they say the startup is preparing to take on debt to cover the remainder of the expansion. 

As OpenAI’s compute necessities increase, a big question is where the company will host its workloads, which have to date been largely housed in Microsoft Azure. Taking the work in-house would push OpenAI closer to operating as a first-party cloud provider, a market led by Amazon Web Services, followed by Azure, Google and Oracle.

Executives have openly floated the idea, suggesting it may not be far off. Some even indicated to CNBC that a commercial cloud offering could emerge within a year or two, once OpenAI has secured enough compute to cover its own needs. For now, demand for training frontier models leaves little capacity to spare, but OpenAI isn’t done looking for new opportunities.

As Altman and Huang hammered out details of the arrangement that was announced this week, OpenAI’s infrastructure team was in Tokyo meeting with SoftBank’s Son to discuss broader financing and manufacturing support.

The parallel talks underscored the scale of Altman’s ambition, and the web of global players now involved in bringing it to life.

WATCH: OpenAI restructuring clears hurdle

OpenAI restructuring clears hurdle

Continue Reading

Trending