Bird reveals its own e-bike as it moves into bikesharing

Bird is moving beyond scooters and into the bikesharing market. The company has revealed its own e-bike, which it plans to roll out in several countries this year.

The Bird Bike’s motor can help you glide up hills with up to a 20 percent grade. It can hit a top speed of 15.5 miles per hour and it has a range of up to 56 miles on a single charge. Other features include a storage basket on the front, an LED headlight and taillight, a digital display and voice prompts, a built-in cable lock and a step-through design.

The bike also has Bird’s geofence technology, which will stop or slow the motor in designated areas. An onboard diagnostics system will monitor each bike’s condition, while there’s a dual kickstand and a tip detection feature.

Bird Bike

Bird

Bird founder and CEO Travis VanderZanden said the bike is designed for longer trips of around three to five miles and that the Bird Bike program will expand the company’s “serviceable addressable market size by 5 billion trips per year.”

“Shared scooters helped lay a critical foundation for a transportation future that’s both electric and multimodal,” he said in a statement. “Together with our new, comprehensive bikeshare program that pairs our state-of-the-art vehicles with custom local integrations, Bird is uniquely equipped to meet the eco-friendly mobility needs of cities, riders and small businesses alike, both now and into the future.”

The company will bring the Bird Bike to certain cities in North America, Italy, Spain, Germany, Ireland and France in 2021. Each bike has a QR code that you can scan to unlock with the Bird app. Pricing hasn’t been revealed, but it will vary by market.

As with the scooters, Bird’s network of fleet managers will manage care and operations for bikes in each locale. The company plans to team up with cities that don’t already have a shared bike or scooter network or that want to supplement their current programs.

It’s a smart time for Bird to move into bikesharing, where it may compete with the likes of Lime and Lyft. The world is opening back up as we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, and people are starting to move around much more than they have over the past year. Having more mobility options will come in handy for many commuters.

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