What if Apple made an eBike?
The rules of the game are as follows: you are a designer at Apple working on a project to build a bike that appeals to the company’s customer base, adheres to Apple’s design ethos, and sells as many units as possible.
This game has (design) nerd-sniped me; I’m writing this to stop myself from spending any more time thinking about it.
Is there a market? Someone once asked Steve Jobs if Apple were working on an eBook, and he said, ‘No, because no one reads books’. A slight exaggeration, but you get the point. So, does anyone ride a bike? That’s the wrong question; the question is: ‘Do people make journeys that they could do on a bike?’ The answer is yes. Management consultancy McKinsey are fascinated eBikes — a clue that there is probably some money to be made on them. McKinsey think around a quarter of the distance travelled by car in urban settings could be replaced by micromobiliy (e-scooters, eBikes, etc) — which seems low to me, but still a lot of journeys. They also estimate the market for micromobility is growing by about 13% a year and will be a $500 billion market by 2030. All this is before we think about the impact Apple making a move in this space would have — such a large player would attract customers who would not otherwise consider buying a bike. It could even start reshaping urban transport policies (looking at you, Uber). So yes, there is a market.
Why Apple? While there are many innovative eBikes for commuters, they are almost often utterly devoid of design finesse, festooned with ugly bundles of cables and built from fittings that you recognise from the hardware store — more or less prototypes. Sometimes, they are clever designs with hopelessly limited functionality. In short, commuter bikes often seem like novelty items.
This suggests an opportunity to bring some design sensibility to commuter eBikes, taking all the new tech out there combined it into a single mass-market product. VanMoof did try precisely this. It didn’t turn out well for them, I think because they didn’t have enough capital — a problem Apple is not likely to face. Their product didn’t do enough to address safety and security concerns, perhaps because they didn’t have the development budget.
Who would buy the Apple eBike? People living in urban or suburban areas because:
a) That’s where most people live anyway (~80% in developed countries)
b) That’s where cycling is most feasible
c) That’s what McKinsey think
They are going to be relatively wealthy (see cost below). Assumptions about age are unwarranted — in Holland, which has removed many barriers to cycling — the age groups that cycle the most are 12–18, followed by 70–75. Men cycle more than women, but Apple should seek to eliminate this effect.
Does it fit Apple customers? It’s health, it’s eco, it’s thinking differently —seems to fit the bill. Steve Jobs was a bike enthusiast. (Bicycles for the mind…)
What would they do with it? In the UK and the US, people commute about 50% of days, do a shopping trip about 50% of days, and make social trips about 50% of days. People tend to do longer trips to commute than for shopping or social visits. Very, very roughly, people spend about an hour a day travelling. In cities, many of these trips could be made on bike if we removed safety and security concerns. We’re looking for a bike that does one sub 20km trip per day.
What does it cost? Apple’s products are always priced near the top of the market — around $3500 for a bike — in line with some other Apple products. In this thought experiment, I’ve not treated cost as a strong constraint — at Apple scale, manufacturing is cheaper, and, again, we are aiming for the top of the market.
Design constraints
- Safety: The Apple Bike has to be safe and perceived as safe. In the UK, 68% of adults agreed with the statement ‘it is too dangerous for me to cycle on the road’. (Similar to the US) In fact, a sedentary lifestyle is far more dangerous than cycling; that does nothing to change the perception that cycling is risky, and if we don’t solve this, we aren’t going to sell bikes. There is an ethical dimension here to: women are more likely by about 20% to feel that cycling is too dangerous — so if we want our product to be inclusive, we must address the safety issue.
- Security: Expensive bikes are at high risk of being stolen, vandalised or having parts stolen. Our bike needs to be secure and perceived as secure. Relaxing with a $3,500 bike locked up outside is hard — no amount of GPS tracking or locking hardware can fully address that anxiety. You need to be able to keep the bike with you as much as possible — it needs to fold up, at the very least for storage in your home. (How many people in cities have a secure place to store a bike outside?)
- Hills: A single moderate hill is enough to turn a gentle cycle into a prohibitive feat of endurance. Let’s be realistic: Apple aren’t going to launch a product unless it works in San Francisco. It has to offer some electric assistance.
- Stairs: Many homes can be accessed only by stairs — especially in urban areas. It’s probably impossible to make a bike that’s a joy to carry up stairs, but a moderately fit person needs to be able to do it — this means we want the weight to be as low as possible.
- Transport compatibility: If you can take your bike on a subway, train or bus, its utility is massively increased. Again, it needs to fold and be light. Echoing the point above, you will likely encounter stairs if you are taking your bike on a train.
- Very low maintenance: Apple customers don’t adjust gears, inflate tyres or oil chains. A bike that requires oily rags and YouTube tutorials just doesn’t fit the bill.
Non-constraints
- Range. The eBike market has plenty of (heavy) bikes with a 60km range — presumably aimed at bike enthusiasts who go out on long rides. The Apple bike is for 25km round-trip commutes at the absolute maximum — it’s cycling for convenience. People who commute more than 25km aren’t likely to cycle anyway.
- Transporting children. Taking the kids to school is a moderately common reason for travelling, but we can leave it on one side for now — it introduces such specific mechanical requirements and makes the legal side much more complex.
- Unpaved roads. We’ve said our main market is urban or suburban travel.
- Cost & the law. Cost is discussed above. eBike laws are very complex and vary between countries. We can just assume that Apple will build a safe bike and persuade regulators to make accommodations.
Exploring the solution space
How does it fold? Folding allows us to store the bike inside, carry it up stairs more easily, and put it on public transport.
However, the way most bikes fold is not going to cut it for Apple. Brompton — who probably have the best reputation for folding bikes — claim their bike can be folded in 20 seconds. Realistically, it’s at least 30 seconds — its not something you want to do every time you nip into a shop. Apple products don’t ask users bend over and spend half a minute fiddling with latches and aligning pedals. Further, folding bikes typically result in a folded package that’s inconvenient. On a Brompton, the bike’s main wheels don’t work when folded, so it has to be rolled about on tiny, crappy, secondary plastic wheels.
Many folding bikes focus on collapsing into the smallest possible dimensions. I think they’ve over-indexed on this. Better to focus on speed of folding and folding down into an ergonomic package. Specifically, much of the complexity of folding is around reducing the height of the bike by folding down the handlebars and seat, but is how valuable is that? More research needed, but I speculate that the sweet spot is to allow the bike to fold into a rollable package with a footprint similar to a pram — something that shops and cafes already accommodate. This is a key area for research: Would users wheel their folded bike around a shop? Keep it next to them inside a cafe?
Three wheels. There are three advantages to having three wheels: 1) naturally stable when you get off, 2) it’s safer, 3) it can fold into a smaller footprint (because the third wheel can fit between the other two).
Stability — Bikes are fantastic design objects when you are moving. They are awful at rest — gracelessly falling over at every opportunity, ruining the paint in your hallway and getting entangled with other bikes. Building on the point above about folding, a three-wheel bike could fold into a naturally stable, easily manoeuvrable package.
Safety — having another wheel will give us shorter stopping distances — the importance of which is outlined in the ‘full self-driving’ section. It also makes the bike easier to ride for anyone who isn’t fully comfortable on a two-wheeled bike. Imagine the luxury of not putting your feet on the floor at traffic lights.
Three wheels… which way? You could have two wheels at the front (known as the ‘tadpole’) or at the back (‘delta’). Two wheels at the front is a more complex design to build because the front wheels have to steer and ‘tilt’ so you can go around corners. (Non-tilting trikes exist but tend to be much bigger.)
However, the tadpole is a safer design: if you think about the momentum of a bike moving forward, it’s more stable if you have the widest base of stability at the front. More importantly, as you stop, the weight of the bike shifts forwards, which means that the front wheel(s) have much more friction with the ground (75–90% more!). Two wheels at the front gives you the shortest stopping time. We’re Apple, we’re going to build the best version, regardless of complexity: two wheels at the front is the preferable tricycle arrangement.
Three wheels add a huge amount of weight to the bike, but it’s an idea our Apple team should explore for the above reasons.
“Digital Drive” — i.e. the pedals turn a generator, a cable takes the electricity from the generator to an electric motor, the motor drives the bike forward (badly named I think). Digital drive removes the trouser-ruining grime and maintenance complexity of gears and chains — which I think is a non-negotiable requirement for an Apple bike. (Belt drive removes the grease issue but doesn’t address some of the other points below.) Digital drive brings a lot of complex costs and benefits, which are hard to explore briefly, but here are some thoughts.
Right now, the tech is mainly aimed at cargo bikes, but we’re Apple so we can pour money into making a lightweight version for our eBike. It’s a big efficiency penalty — chain drive is 95% efficient, and right now, digitial drive would be lucky to get to 60%. However, digital drive is potentially cheaper to manufacture (no aligning complex parts across the bike), and more research might improve the efficiency towards 70%.
Electronic drive means we can control how the bike rides in software — big tech wants everything to be a software problem. Using the software, we can ensure you are always peddling at your optimum cadence, getting us back a bit of that lost efficiency. It brings all kinds of potential accommodating injuries, too, for example, making peddling less taxing for one leg than the other.
There are some possibilities around regenerative braking; however, it’s not as beneficial as it is in cars, just because bikes, when compared with cars, have such a low mass and high air resistance. Think ~5% gains from regen on a bike.
We can add a small battery to help accelerate off the lights or climb a hill. Because we have such strict weight limits, it can only be a moderate-capacity battery, though there could be an option for a heavier battery.
We also get a security feature — if the bike detects it’s being stolen (e.g. if your iPhone isn’t near), it can prevent peddling driving the bike along. Making a quick escape while pushing a bike is not so easy.
Removing the chain gives us more flexibility in how it folds.
(Also, could it be an exercise bike at home?)
Electronic brakes — again, possible but not common right now. We can now control braking in software. One key feature in that software would be guarding against throwing the rider over the handlebars — a source of anxiety for lots of cyclists. ABS for bikes does exist, and it reduces stopping distances. It also means we’ve eliminated all the brake and gear cables that make bikes so ugly and folding more complex. Again — we’re making everything a software problem.
Finally, we can put the brakes on if the bike thinks it’s being stolen. Now the thief has to carry it.
Full self driving — I’m kidding. But, using all the sensors developed for self-driving cars, it should be possible to detect and reduce the severity of the two most common bike accidents — someone opening a car door in front of you, or a car turning into your path. With electric brakes on three wheels, the bike could automatically apply the brakes and significantly reduce your speed or stop you before an impact while avoiding skidding. The AI here should focus on spotting lorries turning across your path, which is a very common cause of fatalities on bikes and very easy for humans to misjudge.
Solid tyres — Maintenance-wise, we’ve got rid of all the normal bike stuff around brakes and gears, lets get rid of flat tyres too. It’s a weight penalty, it’s not the pinnacle of efficiency, but solid tyres are getting better all the time, I think its quite likely the Apple bike would have solid tyres. A huge draw back with solid tyres is that they give a bumpy ride, but out bike has suspension through the tilting mechanism, so that might be mitigated.
The obvious stuff — Of course your iPhone is going to mount on the handlebars, give you maps, charge up etc. Of course, you’ll be able to track your bike on your phone. Of course, you’ll get all kinds of health and carbon reduction stats.
What does it look like?
Space grey?
Having removed so much clutter from the bike frame, we’d have the aesthetic potential to make something that starts to approach Apple levels of visual simplicity.
How does it charge?
USB C! It actually might not need much charging, it could top up the battery from the pedals while you are on the flat. Especially if you’ve used Apple maps to plan your journey, so it can optimise the charging profile.
You could also the battery while waiting at the lights by redirecting the energy generated from peddling away from the motor.
Does a design solution already exist?
Kind of, yes.
The Afreda S6 ticks a lot of boxes here. It folds up in two seconds (you lift a latch and pull the middle up — though I should say still think the telescoping approach pictured previously is an interesting option). It’s a tilting bike with three wheels. It doesn’t have pedals, but we can easily imagine adding them, especially because we don’t need a chain connection to the back wheel.
As with everything commuter eBike, it needs some design love in terms of its aesthetics. But it’s an interesting reference point. It sells for ~$2,000 and has a range of 60km.
The huge drawback is the weight — it weighs 30kg, double what we might want. Estimating, that could be around:
— 9kg of battery
— 3kg of motor
— 2kg of wheels
— 16kg of frame
We could get away with 3kg of battery and still meet our 20km range target even without pedal input. But we would need to add 2kg of pedals, so we’re still looking at a 26kg bike. We could also take two of the seats off (!) to save another ~1kg, not to mention make it look better.
Could our Apple designers knock another 9kg off that to get us down to a 16kg bike? We have about $1000 of headroom to spend on lighter materials, so, maybe?
Conclusion
Would it be a good idea to cram every possible bit of tech into one bike? Probably not, but it’s fun to explore.
Could someone with lots of capital build a commuter eBike that is much safer and more secure than those currently on the market? Almost certainly yes.
Would Apple building eBikes reshape cities? Maybe yes? It would certainly change perceptions of cycling.
Did I enjoy writing this haphazardly researched thought experiment? Definitely yes.
