This may be the most elegant e-bike ever

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Faraday Cortland is the ultimate electric bike to power your commute in style.

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Biking to work has its perks. It helps reduce gas emissions in the environment, sometimes it’s faster than public transportation and it’s cost effective. The only downside is arriving to the office dripping in sweat. A small San Francisco-based team has created a solution to your commute with a bike that lets you ride in style and with ease — sweat-free.

All familiar to the hills of San Francisco, Adam Vollmer and his team wanted to build a bike that is fast and easy to ride in dense urban areas without riders breaking a sweat. With that in mind, they created Faraday Cortland, an elegant electric bicycle that doesn’t sacrifice the looks, feel and experience of bike riding.

The Faraday Cortland builds on the team’s award-winning design of the classic Porteur. This step-through bike has a higher capacity battery for 25 miles of assisted riding, updated software and a more efficient motor. Despite it being an electric bike, the Cortland maintains the look of a classically designed bike and weighs only 40 pounds, making it easy to mount and dismount. Cortland has a built-in LED headlight and taillight, perfect for riding at night especially after a long day at work. This bike is great for leisure riding on the weekends and is family-friendly with its child-seat compatible rear rack and front rack for groceries.

Like its namesake Michael Faraday, inventor of the electric motor, the Faraday Cortland operates on a powerful 250W motor, with a 350W peak. With an ATxmega32A4U at its heart, this set of wheels runs on a custom 43V, 290Wh removable Panasonic lithium-ion battery pack and the handle bar has a display to show battery life. It boasts a maintenance free drive train, consisting of a Shimano Alfine internally eight-speed geared hub and Gates carbon fiber belt drive, eliminating the possibility of getting grease stains on your clothes. The Cortland is an elegant bike, but tough. The body is a durable steel frame and Tektro hydraulic disc brakes for a smooth ride and bamboo fenders to keep the rider dry.

The Faraday team is also offering add-ons such as an auxiliary battery pack to double the Cortland’s range to over 40 miles, a GPS tracking device and an app for ride track and route mapping.

Ready to conquer your commute sweat-free? Head over to the Faraday Cortland’s Kickstarter page, where Adam and his crew are well above their $100,000 goal. In making things even more simple, bikes will be delivered fully assembled, no bike mechanic needed. Shipments are slated for July 2016, just in time for summer.

CMYK 4.0 is a smart, foldable electric bike for your morning commute

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This smart electronic bike will let you know the fastest, easiest and safest way to work.

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Are you among the millions of city dwellers that ride a bike to work in the morning? If you’re looking to make your commute from home to the office a bit more efficient, then CMYK 4.0 may be for you. Created by New York City-based startup Brooklyness, the foldable electronic bike will automatically reroute you should there be any construction, traffic jams or pothole-filled streets in your way.

The smart bike is packed with several features including advanced hardware and mobile integration. CYMK 4.0 is equipped with a gyroscope and an accelerometer to analyze the terrain and map the road, a cadence sensor to determine how fast you are pedaling and to adjust parameters for a smooth ride, a built-in heart rate monitor on its grips to track performance, and an Atmel MCU to process the information gathered by each of its sensors.

An accompanying app is tasked with crunching the collected data and displaying it on your smartphone over Bluetooth. What’s more, the e-bike boasts a phone charger directly on its handlebar so you can power your mobile device on-the-go, a 24V lithium battery, and a 250W motor that allows for 30 miles of assisted riding on a single charge.

Not only does the e-bike’s embedded sensors determine the condition of the road as you ride it, upon getting to their destination, the app will prompt you to answer a few questions about the traveled course. The more people riding, the more data that can be garnered to generate a map of the best routes to take. This can help you decide which way to go in order to avoid Greenwich Village’s cobblestones, for example.

Its app also enables you keep tabs on performance by measuring things like calories burned, average heart rate, and peaks and lows so you can target which areas of your daily commute to increase speed. Aside from your smartphone, a web-based dashboard lets you take a closer look at battery rate of discharge, charging time and how power consumption changes along your route. You can even plan your commute and socialize with other cyclists to organize a group ride or to receive helpful advice.

Designed with safety and security in mind, the CMYK 4.0 includes an electronic lock that will sound if the bike is ever moved, an RFID tag for easy locating, app-controlled headlights for visibility, and laser beams that project a virtual lane on the road. Beyond that, the two-wheeler is super portable, weighing just 25 pounds and can be folded up to make for easily carrying on public transit or stowing away at work.

Looking for a new means of transportation to work? Hurry over to CMYK’s Indiegogo page, where the Brooklyness team is currently seeking $30,000. However, you’ll have to wait until March 2016 for delivery.

Stay safe and stylish with this futuristic e-bike lighting system

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A Maker has created a colorful bike lighting system that can be easily controlled with your smartphone. 

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Philip Verbeek — who many of you may recall from his impressive littleBits and LEGO creations — has developed an innovative, app-controlled bicycle lighting system. Inspired by the city of Masdar, the Maker and eight other designers decided to dream up the electronic two-wheeler of tomorrow.

The aptly named IOMbike is equipped with visual indicators for drivers sharing the road, as well as easy-to-use, interactive steering capabilities. Responsible for the electronics, Verbeek embedded a series of LED lights inside the handlebars. Not only does this enhance the over aesthetics of the futuristic ride, but allows for cyclists to stay safe and visible at night.

Verbeek’s advanced lighting system boasts left and right turn signals along brake lights, much like the recent Kickstarter campaign for the Lumos smart helmet. Aside from that, it even includes various disco modes for a little extra pizazz. Switching between modes is done by simply pressing a red button located alongside the hand grips or by connecting the IOMbike to your smartphone using the IOMbike’s accompanying Android app.

At the heart of the unit lies an ATmega328P, while a Bluetooth module enables wireless communication between the bike and the app. What’s more, riders can unlock all sorts of different features such as a speedometer and odometer.

“The idea is to give feedback to the user and let them control their IOMbike,” the Maker concludes.

Want to take a closer look at the next-gen e-bike? Head over to the project’s official page here, or watch it in action below.