Upon the invitation of Ford Motors, we visited their Palo Alto Research and Innovation Center of Ford in San Francisco last week where they showed us their new line of smart e-bikes.
These e-bikes are part of Ford’s multi-modal urban mobility solution — an approach to solve the problem of city traffic and transport congestion.
These bikes are customizable, collapsible to fit t the back of the car and connected to a network with a companion app (called MoDe:Link) for navigation, weather condition, parking costs and road congestion. The MoDe:Me e-bike is the smallest of the pack.
The MoDe:Flex and MoDe:Pro are the more versatile version as it can be converted to road, mountain or city mode bikes by merely replacing the front and rear end of the modular bikes. The MoDe:Pro also comes with a “No Sweat Mode” by utilizing a 200-watt motor to help speed up travel up to 24kmph and a 9A battery that could last about 1.5 hours of use without pedaling.
The bikes are collapsible so it fits snugly at the back of a car (around 3 of them MoDe:Flex units when we tried) so drivers can just park their cars and use the e-bikes whenever there’s traffic congestion or their trip requires a different and more conventional mode of transportation.
The bikes are also equipped with sensors so the driver can track potholes and there’s an avoidance system at the back to detect other vehicles from the rear end.
Ford is still doing additional research and development on their e-bikes and the ones that were shown to us are still prototypes.
Bike = bicycle = a TWO-WHEELED vehicle. End of discussion.