Electric Bike Company merges with Integral Electrics following Pedego partnership
Several well-known players in the US electric bicycle market have recently joined forces in creative ways. Electric Bike Company, known for its local manufacturing in Southern California, has just announced a major merger with Integral Electrics, an e-bike brand uniquely designing electric bicycles for women and other short statured riders.
Both Electric Bike Company and Integral Electrics have carved out interesting niches in the industry. EBC has become famous for its extremely customizable electric bicycles. Riders can choose everything from the specific paint color to the combination of components and even the material choices – locally manufactured wooden fenders, anyone?
With multiple assembly locations across Newport Beach in Southern California, the local production has allowed EBC to respond quickly to one-of-a-kind builds that are designed by customers on its website or in any of hundreds of dealer locations around the US. The extreme customization has lent itself well to a market where customers often want to create unique bikes that show off personality and character.
Integral Electrics has also found itself an underrepresented market, but this time with a focus on female riders. The brand focuses on making cycling more accessible, regardless of a rider’s gender, height, or cycling experience. The company’s e-bikes are built to fit a wider range of riders, carry multiple children, and make cycling easier for everyone.
The company’s founder and CEO Laura Belmar started Integral Electrics back in 2023 along with co-founder Paul Freedom, relying on her own experience struggling to find a cargo e-bike that she could comfortably ride with her children. A serial entrepreneur with successful ventures already under her belt, Belmar followed her instincts and tapped into that underserved market.
Now Integral Electrics and Electric Bike Company are merging under a single brand, with Integral Electric’s designs joining the EBC family. EBC has several famous models available, but the brand has long skewed more in the direction of cruisers and comfort bikes. The addition of Integral Electric’s cargo bikes and trikes will help further round out the diversity of models offered.
“Integral’s emphasis on female riders and on cargo e-bikes is a welcome addition to the EBC family,” said EBC founder and CEO Sean Lupton-Smith. “We want to stay on the cutting edge of where the e-bike market is headed, and Integral’s innovative approach helps push us forward.”
And with EBC’s local manufacturing, those bikes will be made closer to home than ever. “Building in the USA also has distinct safety advantages,” explained Belmar. “From my first visit to Electric Bike Company’s California factory, I have been indelibly impressed by the emphasis on quality and safety. Shipping bikes fully built and inspected is so much safer for customers. Electric Bike Company has already achieved one of our long-held aspirations. I’m honored to be part of this team.”
In a climate of tariff uncertainty, the ability to build and assemble bikes locally is becoming even more advantageous. “As tariffs, regulation and competition put pressure on the e-bike industry, Sean’s focus on customization and safety at Electric Bike Company was prescient,” added Freeman. “As we look around the industry, it’s clear that he has built a business that is well-positioned to meet this moment.”
As part of the merger, Belmar will assume the role of President and Chief Commercial Officer at EBC, and Integral Electrics’ Advisor Michael Edwards will join the EBC board.
The news of the merger follows quickly behind another major EBC partnership that saw Pedego ink a licensing deal with the brand to leverage EBC’s customization strengths to produce unique customer-designed Pedego e-bikes.
In addition to rolling out EBC’s Design Wall at many of Pedego’s stores, allowing customers to visually construct any e-bike combination right there in real-time on a large touchscreen, the partnership adds Pedego’s 150+ stores to EBC’s 250+ dealer network, giving customers access to one of the most extensive e-bike sales and service networks in the country.
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EV charging veteran ChargePoint has unveiled its new charger product architecture, which is described as a “generational leap in AC Level 2 charging.” The new ChargePoint technology designed for consumers in North America and Europe will enable vehicle-to-everything (V2X) capabilities and the ability to charge your EV in as quickly as four hours.
ChargePoint is not only a seasoned contributor to EV infrastructure but has established itself as an innovative leader in the growing segment. In recent years, it has expanded and implemented new technologies to help simplify the overall process for its customers. In 2024, the network reached one million global charging ports and has added exciting features to support those stations.
Last summer, the network introduced a new “Omni Port,” combining multiple charging plugs into one port. It ensures EV drivers of nearly any make and model can charge at any ChargePoint space. The company also began implementing AI to bolster dependability within its charging network by identifying issues more quickly, improving uptime, and thus delivering better charging network reliability.
As we’ve pointed out, ChargePoint continues to utilize its resources to develop and implement innovative solutions to genuine problems many EV drivers face regularly, such as vandalism and theft. We’ve also seen ChargePoint implement new charger technology to make the process more affordable for fleets.
Today, ChargePoint has introduced a new charger architecture that promises to bring advanced features and higher charging rates to all its customers across residential, commercial, and fleet applications.
ChargePoint unveils maximum speed V2X charger tech
This morning, ChargePoint unveiled its next generation of EV charger architecture, complete with bidirectional capabilities and speeds up to double those of most current AC Level 2 chargers.
As mentioned above, this new architecture will serve as the backbone of new ChargePoint chargers across all segments, including residential, commercial, and fleet customers. Hossein Kazemi, chief technical officer of hardware at ChargePoint, elaborated:
ChargePoint’s next generation of EV chargers will be revolutionary, not evolutionary. The architecture underpinning them enables highly anticipated technologies which will deliver a significantly better experience for station owners and the EV drivers who charge with them.
The new ChargePoint chargers will feature V2X capabilities, enabling residential and commercial customers to use EVs to power homes and buildings with the opportunity to send excess energy back to the local grid. Dynamic load balancing can automatically boost charging speeds when power is not required at other parts of the connected building structure, enabling efficiency and faster recharge rates.
ChargePoint shared that its new charger architecture can achieve the fastest possible speed for AC current (80 amps/19.2 kW), charging the average EV from 0 to 100% in just four hours. That’s nearly double the current AC Level 2 standard (no pun intended).
Other features include smart home capabilities where residential or commercial owners can implement the charger within a more extensive energy storage system, including solar panels, power banks, and smart energy management systems. The new architecture also enables series-wiring capabilities, meaning fleet depots, multi-unit dwellings, or even residential homes with multiple EVs can maximize charging rates without upgrading their wiring configuration or energy service plan.
These new chargers will also feature ChargePoint’s Omni Port technology, enabling a wider range of compatibility across all EV makes and models. According to ChargePoint, this new architecture complies with MID and Eichrecht regulations in Europe and ENERGY STAR in the US.
The first charger models on the platform are expected to hit Europe this summer followed by North
America by the end of 2025.
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Environment
Tanking oil prices could more than double Saudi Arabia’s deficit to $75 billion and threaten spending plans: Goldman Sachs economist
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Johnnygreig | E+ | Getty Images
Crashing oil prices triggered by waning demand, global trade war fears and growing crude supply could more than double Saudi Arabia’s budget deficit, a Goldman Sachs economist warned.
The bank’s outlook spotlighted the pressure on the kingdom to make changes to its mammoth spending plans and fiscal measures.
“The deficits on the fiscal side that we’re likely to see in the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] countries, especially big countries like Saudi Arabia, are going to be pretty significant,” Farouk Soussa, Middle East and North Africa economist at Goldman Sachs, told CNBC’s Access Middle East on Wednesday.
Spending by the kingdom has ballooned due to Vision 2030, a sweeping campaign to transform the Saudi economy and diversify its revenue streams away from hydrocarbons. A centerpiece of the project is Neom, an as-yet sparsely populated mega-region in the desert roughly the size of Massachusetts.
Plans for Neom include hyper-futuristic developments that altogether have been estimated to cost as much as $1.5 trillion. The kingdom is also hosting the 2034 World Cup and the 2030 World Expo, both infamously costly endeavors.
Digital render of NEOM’s The Line project in Saudi Arabia
The Line, NEOM
Saudi Arabia needs oil at more than $90 a barrel to balance its budget, the International Monetary Fund estimates. Goldman Sachs this week lowered its year-end 2025 oil price forecast to $62 a barrel for Brent crude, down from a previous forecast of $69 — a figure that the bank’s economists say could more than double Saudi Arabia’s 2024 budget deficit of $30.8 billion.
“In Saudi Arabia, we estimate that we’re probably going to see the deficit go up from around $30 to $35 billion to around $70 to $75 billion, if oil prices stayed around $62 this year,” Soussa said.
“That means more borrowing, probably means more cutbacks on expenditure, it probably means more selling of assets, all of the above, and this is going to have an impact both on domestic financial conditions and potentially even international.”
Financing that level of deficit in international markets “is going to be challenging” given the shakiness of international markets right now, he added, and likely means Riyadh will need to look at other options to bridge their funding gap.
The kingdom still has significant headroom to borrow; their debt-to-GDP ratio as of December 2024 is just under 30%. In comparison, the U.S. and France’s debt-to-GDP ratios of 124% and 110.6%, respectively. But $75 billion in debt issuance would be difficult for the market to absorb, Soussa noted.
“That debt to GDP ratio, while comforting, doesn’t mean that the Saudis can issue as much debt as they like … they do have to look at other remedies,” he said, adding that those remedies include cutting back on capital expenditure, raising taxes, or selling more of their domestic assets — like state-owned companies Saudi Aramco and Sabic. Several Neom projects may end up on the chopping block, regional economists predict.
Saudi Arabia has an A/A-1 credit rating with a positive outlook from S&P Global Ratings and an A+ rating with a stable outlook from Fitch. That combined with high foreign currency reserves — $410.2 billion as of January, according to CEIC data — puts the kingdom in a comfortable place to manage a deficit.
The kingdom has also rolled out a series of reforms to boost and de-risk foreign investment and diversify revenue streams, which S&P Global said in September “will continue to improve Saudi Arabia’s economic resilience and wealth.”
“So the Saudis have lots of options, the mix of all of these is very difficult to pre-judge, but certainly we’re not looking at some sort of crisis,” Soussa said. “It’s just a question of which options they go for in order to deal with the challenges that they’re facing.”
Global benchmark Brent crude was trading at $63.58 per barrel on Thursday at 9:30 a.m. in London, down roughly 14% year-to-date.
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