Tom Mudra and Hans Tobias Schicktanz, two ebike designers from Germany,  have introduced teh “Mosquito”, a bike that  features a lithium-battery powered electric motor and which has a total range of about 37 miles.  It’s  top speed is  31 mph. What’s really cool, the frame cover of the Mosquito can be crafted from carbon fiber, wood or plastic.

Read more and see photos of the design here:

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London, England — Halfords has  reached an agreement with Urban Mover to be the exclusive online retailers of the Urban Mover range of electric bicycles.  They will be sold at Halfords.com. The range will still be stocked at IBDs in the UK, however.

The full range will be available online, including the £769.99 UM44L – the cheapest in the range.

TheUM26S Premium Folding Electric Bike, available for £929.99,  features five-speed Sturmey Archer hub gears, full suspension and an advanced Dahon folding mechanism, making the bike a perfect solution for inner city commuting or those with limited storage space.

The top bike in the range is at £1149.99 with the UM44S Hybrid. This model provides 40 miles from a single charge to the Panasonic Lithium battery.

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Iowa University — As part of the University’s Live Green initiative, staff at Iowa State University are commuting to work on electric bicycles. The company X-Treme Scooters, located in Newton, is loaning about 100 ISU employees electric bikes for the week (June 1, 2009). .

Bicyclists riding electric bikes

Rider Patty Gibler told an interviewer that she hopes the electric bike motivates her in a way no other bike has. She said, “I live close to campus. I’ve also wanted to bike and never had the motivation.”

She’s pedaling to work this week with about one hundred other Iowa State University employees.

The XE300LI is an extreme bike with a lithium battery that takes its rider about 25 miles with one charge, at a speed of 20 miles per hour.

The electric bikes cost between $1,200 and $1,500. X-Treme Scooters in Newton started selling the X-Treme bikes this year.

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KLD has a new engine for its electric scooter, and is launching its product in Vietnam.

In the past, electric scooters had a high price tag, a limited range, sluggish performance and the tendency not to work when they get wet!

KLD Energy Technologies, an electric engine company based in Texas, believes that its new electric motor can overcome all these problems. It is teaming up with Vietnamese motorbike manufacturer Sufat to produce an affordable electric-powered scooter that has a performance just as good as a normal petrol-powered bike.

Rather than working at making the battery more efficient, KLD improved the performance of the engine itself. They built an engine using nano-crystalline composite materials, which it believes is 10 times more efficient than traditional iron core motors, giving an output of 2500 hertz.

“We chose Vietnam [to launch the bike] because there are 22 million scooters in a country of 85 million people. That’s a lot of people riding scooters in a contained area and the pollution is a concern. All governments in southeast Asia are looking for solutions [to pollution problems], but so far there hasn’t been one. We believe that we’ve found that solution,” Christian Okonsky, founder of KLD Energy Technologies told CNN.

The KLD engine is compatible with any type of battery. Top speed of the scooter is about 55 mph, which is almost double that of many electric scooters and delivers twice as much torque, accelerating from 0 to 50 mph in ten seconds. The engine also doesn’t require a transmission.

“The nano-crystalline material was developed 20 years ago, but it was incredibly expensive and people couldn’t figure out how to use it in a motor. Even 10 years ago a computer, to run this kind of high frequency engine, would have been more like the size of a desk top computer. The magnets we use today that cost 20 cents 10 years ago would have cost $4 to $5,” said Okonsky.

By the end of the year KLD expects 2,000 scooters a month to be produced by Sufat, with its electric engine. The projected retail price is around $1500, only slightly more than Sufat’s existing bikes that sell in Vietnam for between $800 and $1250.

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Ultramotor A2B

April, 2009 — Ultra Motor Ltd. has launched in The Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany and the UK . The people behind the company – CEO Joe Santana (photo left) and President Joe Bowman – both have a background in the financial/investor sector. Santana also holds an interest in a company that produces windmills.

Santana’s interest in electric vehicles developed from his relationship with the windmill compnay, which eventually brought him team up with Ultra Motor and Joe Bowman. He brought his extensive background in engineering, marketing and management to Ultra Motor in October 2008.

Ultra Motor Ltd. is a globally operating Light Electric Vehicle (LEV) company, which was founded seven years ago. They started out in the US and Indian markets, and have now expanded to Europe.

Ultra Motor’s e-Bikes are different from the ones we are used to.

According to Joe Bowman: “We think from scratch as we need to be innovative. So, we don’t have e-Bikes that are in fact bicycles with e-kits bolted on them. Our designs are focused on making vehicles that stand out and are between bicycles and scooters.”

Ultra Motor takes care ofthe design, marketing and branding; their e-Bikes (as well as e-Scooters) are manufactured in Taiwan.

The A2B Metro is currently Ultra Motor’s top model. It has a box-shaped frame and almost all cables neatly tucked inside. There is an overall weight of 31.1 kg. It comes with a lithium ion power pack that enables a total range of about 35 kilometers; with an extra power pack this is extendable to about 70 kilometers. The recommended consumer price is about 2,300 euro.

Ultra Motor also offers a bicycle-styled e-Bike which retails for about 2,000 euro. This will soon be followed with a third model specifically targeting European markets.

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