A First Glimpse of the Brompton Electric

Brompton released their electric bicycle last week.

There have been electric Brompton kits on the market for some time, so it's not unfair to say that this is a solved problem.  By most accounts, these kits work well.  They void your warranty, of course, and once your expensive modified bike, if anything goes wrong, getting support would likely be much trickier than taking the bike to your nearest Brompton shop.  Most solutions have involved a motor on the front wheel and a battery in the front bag.

A first-party solution from Brompton has been on the cards for several years.  So what were you hoping for from the Brompton Electric?  A neater solution to the question of where the battery goes, perhaps.  Easy support from a trustworthy and (relatively) large manufacturer.

Brompton said that did not release a bike as there were massive challenges to solve and to do this they brought in the Williams F1 team to work on the development.  This strongly indicated that their eventual product would be a major leap in technology.

Now that the bike is out there, the scale of the improvements made seems to be quite small.  The famous fold has been retained, that's good, in fact the main part of the bike has seen no change whatsover.  There's an electric motor on the front wheel, there's a bag on the front containing the battery which is attached to the bike in the same way that bags have always been attached, but now this connector connects the battery too.  Apparently this part has been done in a much neater way than in third-party solutions.  The bike has a "very low resistance freewheel".  The battery can charge USB devices.  It powers the bike's light too.  That's all cool, but is that the extent of the technological jump?

A non-electric Brompton can be yours for around £800 if you're happy with the base specification.  A conversion kit from http://www.nanoelectricbikes.co.uk/ costs £759.  The Brompton Electric has lights that are powered from the main battery, which is a perfect solution as long as your battery doesn't run out.  They're high quality lights, so this is quite valuable.  Somehow however the Brompton Electric costs from £2,595 to £2,755.  One expects that Brompton will be able to get away with it as their brand is so strong and their fans are so fond of their bikes.  This targets it at a small niche in the market and one can only hope that the price will come down once prodution is ramped up.