Cities are clamping down on cars. From London’s controversial ULEZ expansions to the Car-Free Livability Program in Oslo and right-wing fears about “15-minute cities”, motor vehicles are under attack in urban areas. One answer is the ebike, sales of which leapt 269% between 2019 and 2022 in the USA, with an expected market size of $2.69 billion in 2023. But what if you want the low footprint of an ebike, except in a package that’s safer and more protected from the elements, like a car? Norwegian startup CityQ reckons it has the answer – an ebike, but not as you knew it before.
The CityQ vehicle sits somewhere between an electric bike and the Citroen Ami, a “quadricycle” that doesn’t need a regular adult driving license in some regions. “We call it bridging between a car and a bike into something that’s missing,” says Morten Rynning, CEO and founder of CityQ. “Norway has the highest maturity and volume of EVs in the world. More than 80% of all cars sold are fully electric. But that doesn’t really solve the problem of congestion or parking issues. Norway is a good example of that. Everybody’s talking about electrification, but there’s a missing part to that and Oslo decided they want to shut down private car traffic.”
Greater flexibility than an ebike
The problem is that regular bikes don’t solve all urban transportation needs. “Up to 70% all of cyclists don’t cycle when it’s rainy or frosty,” says Rynning. “Two thirds of all cycling deaths in Oslo are during rain or frost. So just increasing the cyclist percentage wouldn’t work. It’s not just bad weather. You may want to bring children or some cargo, or you want safety and comfort. This is a global situation, not just Norwegian.”
Rynning asked himself what was missing. “Having two-ton EVs is not helping either,” argues Rynning. “It’s not sustainable, even though it’s better than a gasoline car. It’s still a lot of CO2 to make and you need a car charging infrastructure, which you don’t really find throughout cities. The answer is downsizing EVs to make them as light as possible. If you have a two-ton EV and you can make a vehicle in 100kg, that’s taking away 95% of the energy for moving it along the road.”
To make its vision a reality, CityQ is beginning with the commercial market. “I would like to start with a passenger version, but the need and willingness to pay in the cargo transportation space is higher,” says Rynning. “Cargo also needs a more robust vehicle, and you can go from a robust vehicle for B2B to a consumer product, but it’s hard to go the other way around. E-scooter sharing did the opposite and it was a failure. The whole business model of an e-scooter was to last more than four months and the average was around six days. Reliability is key.”
Still an ebike, so no registration required
The ebike market also has far less regulation than cars. In the UK, the main rules are a maximum of 250W of motor power and this must require pedaling to be delivered, otherwise the vehicle requires registration. “The homologation of a car is different in all countries, whereas a bike in Europe has one standard,” adds Rynning. “The difficulty with the bike is that it’s not supposed to carry a lot of weight. You need a very specific motor to be able to carry more weight and people, so we have two in the rear wheels. They have 220 Nm of torque that is technically almost four powerful mountain bikes. That enables this bike to climb a 20% gradient uphill with cargo so you can go into a parking garage without any problems. People are surprised by city ebikes that you don’t need to pedal much. This one requires almost nothing. It’s car-like levels of comfort, and that’s where we are revolutionizing ebikes.”
Another revolutionary feature is the absence of a chain. “A chain is a very old-fashioned invention,” says Rynning. “You don’t really want all these mechanical parts. If you’re sitting like in a car and you have motors in the rear, you have almost two meters between the pedals and two motors. You might have up to three chains to do that, and that’s going to be a nightmare in maintenance. We have a software-based drivetrain, which is very high tech, but enables us to go in reverse. It allows us to do software tuning of the feeling. I could decide whether I want a winter bike or a sporty bike. We can have regenerative brakes, which reduces the need for repair and maintenance.”
The CityQ design includes two swappable batteries delivering between 100 and 120 kilometers of range, depending on weather and topography. Each battery weighs about 11kg and offers a little over 1.4kWh, for a total of 2.8kWh. These are both sitting underneath the seat and can be removed like a suitcase to be taken away for charging. You still must pedal to deliver power, fulfilling the requirement of an ebike. There’s also a system like gears, despite the lack of a chain. “You can press a button and it delivers more power,” says Rynning. “We will also have an app. Initially this will be for locking and unlocking or seeing how much battery charge you have left. If your bike is stolen, we’re able to shut it down.” In the future, CityQ will use AI to help define driver profiles. “We will define it from topography as well as from your user setup.”
Initially, CityQ is launching the cargo version of its ebike, but there will also be a passenger version based on the same platform. “On top of the cargo bike we can add several types of boxes,” says Rynning. “We also have a pickup bed. We will only need small changes to make the passenger version. We try to change as little as possible, so it’s easy to make a line and then decide afterwards what kind of model to build.” The passenger version of the CityQ bike is intended for one driver up front and then two children or one grownup in the rear, but there is just enough space for two adults in the back as well. “The width of the vehicle is 89 centimeters, so not enough for two big adults, but normal slim people fit nicely in there.”
CityQ: changing the game for urban tranportation
CityQ’s aim is to reduce car traffic through micromobility. “But use this for so much more than you can with a bike or an e-scooter,” says Rynning. As this is a bike, it doesn’t need to undergo car safety testing like Euro NCAP, but CityQ is still focusing on maximizing this area. “There is an upcoming standard for safety, and we’ve been part of that expert group. It’s a big leap forward that we think of safety like a car. We have a skateboard system in the middle, in a metal frame that provides safety from the side and improves stability. Then we have doors, a cabin, even a bumper, and a seating position that’s safe. This also makes it easy to add seat belts. We’ve been working with a car manufacturer that specializes in this area to make the bike safe for the rider and child occupants, for pedestrians and for the vehicle itself. It’s not as safe as a car, but it’s just going 25 kilometers per hour and it’s so much safer than a two-wheeler or traditional cargo bikes.”
CityQ is also making its vehicles mostly in Europe. “European innovation in ebikes has been incredibly exciting to see in the last four years, with motors, batteries and wheels being created in an ecosystem,” says Rynning. “We have a battery from Aqua Energy in Germany and a motor from Huntsman. Abouts 80 to 90% of what we are making currently come from Europe.”
CityQ is already trialing its cargo bike with DHL in London and aims to launch the passenger version in the UK in July. “DHL has been doing early testing and they like it a lot,” says Rynning. “It has been very well received by the riders that otherwise would use a van. We also have a few in Berlin and Scandinavia being used for food delivery. We’re starting with the Norwegian postal service in Oslo.”
Once the cargo and passenger bikes have been launched, CityQ will consider further variants. “We would like to make a faster version,” says Rynning. “We have a patent for an off-road system. We’d like to help anyone that needs transportation, including elderly people and the disabled.” CityQ is also looking at specialist applications such as transportation on campuses, golf carts, and moving around large ships. “But urban transportation is where we feel the need is greatest. Our mission is in that area. This is not a bike. It’s not even a cargo bike. It’s a vehicle platform to fill the missing link of a super small light vehicle.”
The CityQ bike won’t be cheap, however. The expected price will be between £10,000 ($13,000) and £12,000 ($15,000), which seems expensive although other cargo bikes can be over £15,000 ($19,000). “We will need a leasing subscription-based model and flexible ownership is going to be important because this is not the only vehicle you’re going to need in the future. You might have a car and a regular bike as well.” CityQ is hoping the consumer version will be somewhere between £5,000 ($6,000) and £8,000 ($10,000) in two to five years’ time, around the same as Citroen’s Ami. That’s a lot more than a regular ebike, but a lot less than a car. It could be a gamechanger for urban transportation.
