Intra Drive: Sustainable UK Made e-Gearbox to seek crowdfunding

What do you do when you sell your bike company – known best for its bike packing rigs designed to go round the world?Steven Shand, formerly of Shand C …

By stwhannah

Get the full story here:

https://singletrackworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/intra-drive-sustainable-uk-made-e-gearbox-to-seek-crowdfunding/

“Fits Shimano EP8 mounts” sounds like a great thing. I would love to have aftermarket options for getting a gearbox on an e-bike that did not originally have it.

The argument against internal gears was always the inefficiency. Whether 5% or 15% it feels bad under pedal. On an e-bike inefficiency frankly doesn’t matter so the idea of having everything hidden away from the mud is great. As for crowd funding, no thanks. Buying shares which give me a stake sure, but charity – there are more noble causes.

The Crowcube funding will be an equity crowdfund campaign

In other words you are getting shares for your money. Of course, you still need some sort of exit strategy to be able to cash in those shares otherwise you can have a paper fortune that can never be turned into cash.

The argument against internal gears was always the inefficiency.

And the expense. And the gear range/gaps between gears.

And the gear range/gaps between gears.

Thats not an issue with a rohloff

Sadly the biggest issue I see with Intradrive is that they’ve already been beaten to market by Pinion. After that I’m struggling to see a USP, maybe just the Shimano mounts compatibility? I’d actually be up for putting some money in (for the little difference what I could put in would make) to support the local company, but I don’t think they’ve actually told me why I should

Shame that there is no (well not announced or visible) UK based bike manufacturer/designer involved – having a brand at least involved in some form might be beneficial to then in terms of raising awareness.

as they targeting cargo also, that might help.

But fingers crossed as I personally committed to not buying an e-bike until i reach 50 and a decent motor/gearbox was available.

So the dude from Shand isn’t suggesting a UK Manufacturing or design-base to you?

I like the idea if it UK-made and is being designed to be repairable. Saying that, it isn’t something I’m particularly interested in so being UK-made isn’t making me think I should be looking at it as something I want or need.

Hope it works though as given the number of failed Shimano motors, this could be a nice way to get more units sold…

So the dude from Shand isn’t suggesting a UK Manufacturing or design-base to you?

I thought Steve Shand had sold Shand? Happy to be be corrected.

I was thinking more like Bird, Privateer, Orange etc, – I suspect their volume is greater than a places like Shand

I think he has, but that doesn’t stop his wealth of knowledge and skill being very useful and valued.

I’d guess Orange are likely to be keen if they have a prototype with the motor. I think Bird’s Ethic brand were being designed around the Shimano motor, but then got told there was a 2 year waiting list before new orders were being taken, so this might prove useful to them.

However, like everything new and unknown, it is a gamble, so I suspect a few people are doing a bit more digging around to make sure it feels right before jumping in.

All based on my armchair-defined knowledge of this kind of stuff – I’m absolutely clueless on it so just clutching at things that may make sense.

shimano motor mount is great idea. but only if they sell the cable adaptors so you can retrofit.

if they did i`d defo have one!

Tell us more about when Steve Shand sold Shand. That one seemed to be kept under radar (or I  was not paying attention!).

Or did that happen years ago (ties to the Trillium ‘thing’) but he still builds Shand bikes, bit as an employee?

Steve Shand sold in 2017. AFAIK, he has no longer has any connection with Shand Cycles

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/SC409534/officers

 

This concept is great, I’ve heard mixed feedback on the Pinion version, and something build in Scotland, to cope with Scottish mud would be great. Surely it wouldn’t be that hard to get some UK framebuilders on board, Bird, Cotic, Orange, Deviate, etc all either have, or are working on Ebike designs.

The ability to retro-fit to Shimano Fittings is a good plus point as I think we’ll see many useless frames due to broken motors over the coming years, however, that needs to be cost-effective to fit & the cost of making a motor is currently massively grater than a frame. I don’t think it will be, and this is really a red-herring.

I think we’ll see many useless frames due to broken motors over the coming years

Is there an opportunity here to offer a BB conversion kit where the fitment of ‘acoustic’ 🤢 cranksets would allow these ‘dead’ frames a new lease of life? The battery compartments could be repurposed as frame storage locations for the insertion of pies and other picnic essentials.

Is there an opportunity here to offer a BB conversion kit where the fitment of ‘acoustic’ 🤢 cranksets would allow these ‘dead’ frames a new lease of life?

I think more likely will be companies who can CNC a new case and pop all new electrics and electronics in there.

I’d guess Orange are likely to be keen if they have a prototype with the motor

With the mount compatibility of the Intradrive, it looks like Orange’s input is roughly zero at this point. That’s just a standard frame

@Edukator

As for crowd funding, no thanks. Buying shares which give me a stake sure, but charity – there are more noble causes.

That’s exactly what this is. It’s not charity, it’s an equity raise. You’d be buying shares in the company. Equity crowdfunding is a really easy and efficient way to raise money in smaller chucks from a lot of investors without the overhead of share agreements for each person involved. It’s very different from crowdfunded platforms like Kickstarter where you effectively put some money in to allow the business to bring a product to market and you get something back in return (like a cheaper version of the product or some kind of lower value incentive).

With the mount compatibility of the Intradrive, it looks like Orange’s input is roughly zero at this point. That’s just a standard frame

this was the last press on it:

https://bikerumor.com/orange-intradrive-gearbox-ebike-phase-mx/

remember speaking to Orange chaps at Ardrock 2022 – they wouldn’t say much positives or negative and bike wasn’t there, don’t recall seeing it either at this years event?

Orange had a Phase MX with an IntraDrive unit at Eurobike. They’ve been testing the latest pre-production driveunit at their HQ this summer.

Tell us more about when Steve Shand sold Shand. That one seemed to be kept under radar (or I  was not paying attention!).

Or did that happen years ago (ties to the Trillium ‘thing’) but he still builds Shand bikes, bit as an employee?

Steven Shand here!

I sold the majority of my shares in Shand Cycles at the end of 2017. I stayed on, running the business for a little while before leaving as an employee but taking on contracting/consulting work with them. Although I am still a minority shareholder, I have no current, direct link with Shand Cycles at all. I work as a design consultant among other things for various brands (including Intra Drive). I also still build frames as Willow Bike http://www.willowbike.com

@ceept

Can you link to the Pinion info – the initial ride feedback I’d heard sounded like a dislike of the motor tuning rather than the concept or execution.

It sounded to me as if Pinion’s power delivery was more like the Orbea Rise custom firmware (with a power delivery curve that gives much more at higher cadences and requires you to actually change gear and ride the bike) than the ‘motor bike like’ instant power delivery at any cadence that something like a Bosch motor gives (which gives loads of power as soon as the pedals start moving). Except if you put it in boost mode…

that’s something that could be customised in an app based on user preference – not that there was an issue with the motor or gearbox element.

No harm in more competition in motors/gearboxes (theres Shimano/Bosch/Fazua/Yahaha/Brose in non gearbox) but crowdfunding is a minefield, even if the company is successful. (eg I don’t think theres been any way for Brewdog crowd investors to ‘cash out’ despite their growth and there are some well publicised high value ‘tech’ crowdfunds (an expensive coffee machine comes to mind) that delivered nothing.  Will this just be a “share” or a ‘pre-buy’ of a first gen gearbox (with no come back if you never actually get one)

crowdfunding is a minefield, even if the company is successful. (eg I don’t think theres been any way for Brewdog crowd investors to ‘cash out’ despite their growth and there are some well publicised high value ‘tech’ crowdfunds (an expensive coffee machine comes to mind) that delivered nothing.  Will this just be a “share” or a ‘pre-buy’ of a first gen gearbox (with no come back if you never actually get one)

This particular crowdfunding platform is a simple equity purchase. You’re buying shares in the business. The business will have a valuation and there will be an amount that we will look to raise, this will determine the percentage of shares that will be available to investors. The amount of money each investor puts in will determine the number of shares they will get and so the percentage of the business they will own. It’s not uncommon in these kinds of scenarios to have hundreds of individual investors with invested amounts of anywhere from £10 to millions of pounds. Managing these individual investors can be onerous, especially to a smaller company, using a crowdfunding platform means that all of these individual investments are managed through the platform as if they were a single investment. This is good for the business (Intra Drive) but also good for the investor as it opens up the ability to invest smaller amounts of money without the expensive administrative costs that would normally prevent someone investing.

There’s no concept of getting a ‘first version’ or indeed any kind of product. That’s not the type of crowdfunding this is.

How you get your money back is exactly the same for this as any other investment. Either through the payment of dividends paid from profits (assuming the type of shares available are dividend-paying) or through selling the shares at a later date.

It’s also worth pointing out that many people invest in these kind of ventures speculatively and without the notion of making money as the primary reason. Often people like the idea of being able to help bring a new product to market, to then follow that product and know they had a small part to play. This is especially true for companies in the renewables or ‘green’ sectors.

 

@seventy – I’m loving the willowbike ethos.  It captures a lot about modern ‘economies’ and the conflicts.  I wasn’t originally very sure about the ‘sustainable’ branding on IntraDrive as that did feel a bit like a modern version of adding an Eco tag but I’m loving that they are fitting into an existing frame mount and if they are committed to spare parts over a sensible specified time frame then that is fantastic.   Good luck with all that stuff.  Cowboy bikes seems to have done very well through Crowdcube

How you get your money back is exactly the same for this as any other investment. Either through the payment of dividends paid from profits (assuming the type of shares available are dividend-paying) or through selling the shares at a later date.

In a classic share issue there are voting rights attached to shares. Will this be the case? Without voting rights a share isn’t worth anything because the directors of the company can pay themselves the salary they want but decide not to pay a dividend.

Crowdcube are who Atherton bikes used for their funding as well.

In a classic share issue there are voting rights attached to shares. Will this be the case? Without voting rights a share isn’t worth anything because the directors of the company can pay themselves the salary they want but decide not to pay a dividend.

I can’t/won’t talk about the specific mechanics of this particular raise, you’d need to examine the details on the CrowdCube page. But generally, share types with voting rights attached are rare in this kind of investment round where there’s little or no chance that a single investor (or group of investors in this case) will hold a majority of shares (assuming equally weighted voting rights). The ability to vote becomes pointless.

 

Obviously anyone looking to invest in this kind of thing needs to be doing their own due diligence but if I were in the position to put (more) money into the brand, I’d not be concerned about voting rights unless my stake was likely to give me a substantial portion of ownership. And if that was the case, I’d probably not be doing it through CrowdCube but approaching Intra Drive directly.

@b33k34, sorry, just catching up with this.

I heard some really negative comments bout the pinion gearbox-motor when chatting to a UK based designer at a demo day. Really crunchy & not smooth to shift apparently. My impression from him was that it probably needs some kind of clutch to shift, or mapping to reduce power when it gets a shift request in order to allow it to shift smoothly.

Dan from bird has been more complimentary about it when chatting on the bird owners fb group. IIRC, he said it was better in higher years than low gears, which maybe kinda sounds similar to crunchy under load.

I’m still trying to workout what is sustainable about a toy for us all to play on our bikes with? There is nothing green or sustainable about our hobby anymore than F1 is green and sustainable. It’s just marketing bs

I assume its in comparison the using a car – not great though. Hoping that when the pitch is launched there’ll be a bit more about what makes this stand out from Pinion

I’m still trying to workout what is sustainable about a toy for us all to play on our bikes with?

Compared to fossil fuel powered transport, the environmental impact of a bike is tiny.

There is nothing green or sustainable about our hobby anymore than F1 is green and sustainable. It’s just marketing bs

As a hobby? Not sure there’s any such thing as a sustainable hobby*

As a mode of transport any bike is vastly more sustainable than eg a car. E bikes, especially ones which are repairable, retrofit-able, durable and easy to use are more likely to get people out of cars and onto bikes than a meat bike. [there’s a much longer discussion there but it’s nothing really to do with this thread]

*other opinions on what constitutes sustainable are available. And since they don’t agree with me, are obviously wrong.

I’m still trying to workout what is sustainable about a toy for us all to play on our bikes with? There is nothing green or sustainable about our hobby anymore than F1 is green and sustainable. It’s just marketing bs

Some Mr Gotcha in this

I’m still trying to workout what is sustainable about a toy for us all to play on our bikes with? There is nothing green or sustainable about our hobby anymore than F1 is green and sustainable. It’s just marketing bs

If you’re talking specifically about the Intra Drive stuff then I’m not sure anyone has claimed that the sport/hobby is in itself green or sustainable. The point is that if we move beyond the question of “does anyone actually need this in the first place?”, and assume that what we all buy has to be manufactured in some way, then having an eye towards making that manufacturing process as green and sustainable as possible has to be a good thing no? Almost every brand/company now has some kind of sustainability policy and how effective this is is down to where it sits in the list of priorities amongst the other policies in place in that business. In some case it will sit low because otherwise it will hit shareholders in the pocket and in some cases it will sit high up in the list of priorities when it comes to decision-making.

I know from being inside Intra Drive that the focus and priority on sustainability is very, very high. High to the point that it can be frustrating to get things done. This mostly manifests itself in two ways. Firstly how/where we source materials/components in the supply chain and secondly design for future repairability/servicing/longevity and re-manufacturing if appropriate. I have no doubt that if we slackened our attitude towards the sustainability side of things, we would be further along on the route to market and our final price-point would be lower. How important all of this will be to our customers is something we’ll know soon enough.

As a hobby? Not sure there’s any such thing as a sustainable hobby

If my hobby (or set of hobbies) puts a small enough amount of load on the planet that if everyone else on the planet gave up their hobbies and took up the same as mine this would result in a net decrease in damage to the planet then surely that’s sustainable?

So if all the powerboaters/motorbikers/light aircraft hobbyists switched to mountain biking that would be a net benefit wouldn’t it?
On the other hand if the knitters/ramblers and runners (local paths only)/bridge players switched to mountainbiking maybe they’d increase their environmental impact?

… then surely that’s sustainable?

On the other hand if…

I think you answered your own question there.

No hobby can truly be sustainable, nor any product made for it. By its very definition it is a pointless activity purely for your own pleasure.

However this product seems to fit shimano motor mounts if I understand correctly. The enabling of re-use/repurposing of existing shimano motored mtb frames (and to a lesser extent, ones already designed) is a noble attempt to reduce the wastage and throwaway incompatibility of the young emtb market.

Arguably a gearbox drivetrain will also reduce the full life impact of a bike with it fitted, compared to the usage and wear (and possible damage) on a traditional drivetrain.