Still in development, but certainly a step in the right direction. Seems a perfect runabout vehicle to get you to public transportation and to get groceries on the way home. Hopefully wider adoption can bring the price down. It would also function as a grid connected battery as mentioned in this "Living on Earth " segment. https://loe.org/shows/shows.html?programID=24-P13-00035
30k EUR or more… why? Or rather, what for and for whom?
I mean I LOVE to see alternatives to cars but… a fancy electric bike is less than 5k EUR, a electric cargo bike (with a 400kg a payload, e.g Urban Arrow) is around 7k EUR, a tiny electric EV from France Bagnole (from https://kilow.com which did e-bikes until now) seems to be 10k EUR … this is 3x or 5x (!) more for a much better top speed but also not a lot of actual space.
I understand the need for an electric bike (which I have) in cities but also in the countryside, going from a small town to a larger one where public transport exist but is very infrequent but … this, I don’t get. Who needs to reach 100km/h or more regularly and wouldn’t go for an EV “proper”. I briefly checked and a Nissan Leaf is in the same price range.
I’d be curious who is actually buying this and even more why they are preferring this over alternatives.
Apologies if I sound critical I’m just very surprised by the price and thus which market this is addressing.
Discussion is needed on this topic. At one point in the first video they actually talk about the price coming down once they can start mass production. My opinion from the sidelines is that the market for this product is still in the pre-Elon Tesla days when their first roadster was NOT cheap and handmade, and when it was more a proof of concept. Create the product to create the market. I wish them luck.
I didn’t try one so I can’t comment on it from first hand experience. At least on paper, including the claims that it is (which would make sense as France push for right to repair kind of laws) easy to repair, without a need for a specific Kilow “accredited” shop, makes is very tempting. If it’s true and a random person can buy an affordable small EV and fix it easily, possibly even at home, I believe in terms of democratization it’s going in the right direction. Eager to read reviews and see if it can become a trend.
PS: for a bit of personal context, I also cycle regularly in Bretagne (France) and Brussels (Belgium) which are both infamously renown for… the rain. Yes, it’s raining a lot there, and yet, with a helmet, jacket and optionally a pair of rain paints, you get wherever you need mostly dry. I’m not saying a complete right cover wouldn’t be nice but if the trade off is a much larger vehicle to park, might not fit on cycling roads and is multiple times more expensive, I’m not convinced. Maybe I’m just stuck in my “old” ways.