Eurobike 2012: Bionicon

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Whether you ‘get’ Bionicon or not, it always has some good stuff to see at Eurobike. This year it showed a couple of ‘nearly ready to sell’ concepts that had people talking.

The first is a truly integrated dropper post. Instead of the dropper seatpost going in the seat tube, the seat tube is actually used as the outer of the dropper post. Obviously you’ll need a special frame, but it’s the kind of thing that might appear in some Bionicons in the future and that they might license out to other companies.

Post up...
Post down...

 

 

The control cable enters the front of the seat tube.

The post is cable operated and uses a mechanical three position system that offers fully up, 30mm down and fully down. This is 150mm or 6in. As the seat tube is already there, the post weight can be kept light and the target weight is 300g

 

 

And now we’ll move on to the E-Ram system. This is something Bionicon has developed and that looks pretty ready to go. The idea of it is a 250W electric pedal-assist system mounted around a standard BB shell. It’s not designed to zip you around everywhere, but more as a ‘climbing aid’ to help with those long climbs and deliver you to the top with enough energy to enjoy the descent.

The batteries live in a special rucksack

The E-Ram motor weights a kilo and the batteries weigh 2kg. The system is designed to be retrofittable to any bike with ISCG tabs.

 

The production one should have a slightly lower Q-factor

 

A thick cable and military connector joins the motor to the batteries in the rucksack. 2kg of batteries should give an hour of climbing aid.

 

 

 

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Chipps Chippendale

Singletrackworld's Editor At Large

With 23 years as Editor of Singletrack World Magazine, Chipps is the longest-running mountain bike magazine editor in the world. He started in the bike trade in 1990 and became a full time mountain bike journalist at the start of 1994. Over the last 30 years as a bike writer and photographer, he has seen mountain bike culture flourish, strengthen and diversify and bike technology go from rigid steel frames to fully suspended carbon fibre (and sometimes back to rigid steel as well.)

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