In case you didn’t notice, there’s a bike boom happening: over 1.8 million people tried our bikes and scooters for the first time last year. Ebikes are pulling a new group of riders onto active transportation by helping them get to their destination faster, and climb hills and bridges without breaking a sweat, no matter their physical ability. They’re also a sticky product for our current riders: we’ve found that once they try them, more often than not they take out an ebike whenever it’s an option. In fact, our ebikes saw two to three times as many rides per bike as our classic pedal bikes across our systems last year. There’s no signs of the bike boom slowing down...and neither are we. Enter our next generation ebike.
"Using our learnings as the largest ebike operator in North America, we set out to make the world's best shared ebike with a beautiful modern design, industry leading safety technology, and a low carbon footprint," said David Foster, Head of Transit, Bikes and Scooters at Lyft.
Our in-house industrial design team spent the past two years developing and refining the new ebike through multiple prototypes based on feedback from a diverse group of riders to create a bike that is truly built for everyone. The next generation of Lyft ebikes is a joy to ride with a sleek form-factor, a smooth and adaptive motor, as well as improved ergonomics to accommodate a larger range of riders. The new modern design integrates personalized features with a built-in speaker system, new lighting effects and improved safety features like on-board sensors and retroreflective paint.
We built a bike optimized to need fewer repairs and battery swaps, and to withstand being out on the street year-round for ten thousand rides over the course of its life. That will mean lower operating costs and will help reduce its environmental impact. It’s also station-charging capable, a feature we will be piloting in the next few months.
Bike Features
Smart & Adaptive Design
Intuitive: The new ebike has a seamless, single gear transmission that is tuned perfectly for all speeds and grades of road, not requiring any manual or automatic transitions.
Sleek: Modern form-factor with the battery and all cables integrated into the frame of the bike.
Power and finesse: The bike’s motor is stronger than our current model, at 500 watts, which will allow the bike to add more power, but only when you need it, for example on hills and bridges.
Industry-Leading Safety Features
Beacon: A powerful illuminated light ring known as the LED beacon brings even more distinct recognition and visibility to the ebike at night - similar to cars - to create our unique and recognizable light feature.
Retroreflective paint: We custom designed a new type of paint that is retroreflective like street signs, illuminating bikes at night and keeping riders visible.
Safety sensors: Our on-board safety sensors self-monitor every sub-system, including brakes and batteries, ensuring riders will have a more reliable bike in a state of good repair.
Hydraulic brake: Top-of-the-line rear hydraulic brake, meaning riders can more safely achieve a smoother stop with less force and it will require less frequent maintenance.
Best-in-Class Rider Experience
A Bike for all sizes: Improved design to be more comfortable for a three inch wider range than its predecessor, with an improved seat clamp for adjusting to your height.
Built-in tutorials: LCD screen and speaker will give riders instruction for unlocking, parking, and more.
Longer rides: Battery capacity improved to 60 miles on a single charge, meaning more bikes available to consumers at stations and fewer operations trips to replace batteries.
After thousands of hours of testing and tinkering, we're just about ready to put the new ebikes into the hands of our riders. We’re beginning a public beta test on our Bay Wheels system launching next week where we will be releasing dozens into our stations for anyone to try. The public beta testing will help us understand how the bikes perform in the wild and provide learnings to our operations and maintenance teams that we can share across our markets. Once the bike is ready for the masses, we will officially begin to phase it in, starting with Divvy in Chicago later this year!
