Groundbreaking Cytronex C1 Stealth lightweight electric bike kit sneak preview and mailing list

Cytronex will be exhibiting at Eurobike for the first time from 31st August to September 3rd.

Come and see us in the Open Air Grounds East stand 314B

We will be demonstrating new Bad Boy models which contain some of the features of the forthcoming Cytronex C1 kit and talking to European dealers and customers about the new product.

For more details and to register your interest in Cytronex C1 please contact us.

At an incredible 13.6Kg including the bottle battery, the Cytronex Powered Cannondale Capo is the world’s lightest electric bicycle, after only the Cytronex Powered Cannondale Super Six. The light weight allows an excellent power to weight ratio and makes it the ideal fast commuter bicycle for use in towns and cities. There is only one button to think about, and no gears so it senses your speed and provides power to match, resulting in both fast acceleration and excellent range. To see the review by Wired Magazine click here, full review also available from A to B – click here for details. Electric bicycles never looked so good!

The Capo is also availiable with Flat Handlebars, at the same amazing price!

View all Reviews and Articles…

Cytronex was chosen by Gadget Show because it is fitted to existing bicycles with very little visual impact and without affecting the quality of ride – the water bottle battery provides effective disguise, the motor is about the same size as a hub dynamo and the system runs silently.

After consulting with Cannondale, Cytronex decided to electrify a Cannondale Super Six for the race. The resulting electric bike weighs in at just 12.9Kg – lighter even than the Capo. For Cytronex the object of the exercise was not to demonstrate that the system can transform us into professional cyclists, but to show that anyone can now enjoy cycling, and more to the point, that anyone can use a bicycle for effective transport. You can watch the race by clicking on the link below:

The Gadget Show hill climb challenge

Cytronex designer, Mark Searles comments “Time spent crawling to work in a car is dead time, part of your life being wasted that can add up to many weeks every year. It makes perfect sense for busy people to get the exercise they need on the way to work. It’s a whole lot more fun than the gym and Cytronex is designed to allow the rider to use as much, or as little effort as they wish. What’s more, many of our customers find that they can get to work faster than they ever did in the car!”

Mark has first hand knowledge of this because the company has been so busy in the last year that he has almost no time for sport. He is still using the company’s second ever prototype to cycle to work, although he does also have the new Cytronex Powered Cannondale Super Six model for days with fine weather.

Cytronex fit their system to a wide range of bicycles, from hybrid bikes and city single speed bikes like the Capo (available in flat bar or drop handlebar versions) right up to top of the range road racing bikes like the Super Six.

Cytronex Web site:

http://www.cytronex.com

To buy a Cytronex Powered bicycle:

http://www.no-hills.com

Cytronex Powered Cannondale Capo

Cytronex Powered Cannondale Super Six

A truly new technology feels like magic. (Anybody who uses an iPhone will know this effect). So picture this: you’re cycling along in a lightweight single-speed bike. You’re enjoying the way a one-speeder transfers your legs’ power to the tarmac with minimal efficiency losses (a transmission, in contrast, costs you around 10% in efficiency).

But then you see a steep hill. Normally, you’d be forced to stand on the pedals, or to dismount. But on the Cytronex I was taking through hilly Winchester in countryside England, what I did was press a button on the right-hand side of the handlebar. And lo, what felt like the hand of God gave me a push, and I just went up that hill. Like magic, indeed!

The Cytronex concept is simple. Take a quality, low-weight bike, for example as made by Cannondale. (There is no substitute, as Cytronex’ Mark Searles says, for lightness). Add an electric hub motor to the front wheel. The clincher is a battery that looks like a standard bicyclist’s water-bottle, and is easy to insert or remove. The result: a normal, efficient bike you’ll pedal without electric support on level ground and up light gradients, and that doesn’t weigh you down with unnecessary ballast (the Cytronex package weighs 5 KGs). But when you hit a hill, or encounter a headwind, you can retrieve the motor’s 180 Watts of electric assistence.

Other e-bikes are more complicated and heavier; in fact, Cytronex claims to make the lightest electrics in the world. Electric bikes can be of two kinds. Firstly, there are the quasi-mopeds, complete with twist-grip throttles. Millions of Chinese people use these, and they have their obvious purposes, but you won’t find yourself pedaling much on these heavy machines, even if you can. Then, there are the so-called pedalecs that employ a sensor which knows how hard you are pedalling: push harder, and the electric motor provides more assistance. Pedalecs can be OK-looking, but at least in Europe, they are in danger of being stigmatised as senior-citizen transport.

No such danger in the case of Cytronex. The hub motor is inconspicuous, and the battery is ingeniously stealthy. You wouldn’t look like you own one just because you’re too lazy to pedal a normal bike or too poor to own a car. Cytronex’ main raison d’etre is to increase your driving radius. As Searles says, “I wanted to enable more people to commute by bike”.

Cytronex offers a range of bikes equipped with its electric system. In addition to the single-speed Genesis Day One,
I test-drove a gearshift-equipped Cannondale Synapse as well, and it worked beautifully, albeit without the simplicity of the single-speed one. For seriously hilly terrain though, a shifter is surely better.

Searles is also working on a package which will enable any well-trained bike mechanic to install electric components to a range of bikes — even onto pre-owned ones. Initially planned for late 2009, this seems to be a bit more complicated than expected: some bikes are not well-suited to electrification. Expect Cytronex kits to reach the market in 2010.

In late November, I visited Cytronex in Winchester for some test rides and for a quick Q&A session with company owner Mark Searles.

Q: Tell me about the batteries you use, please. You mentioned they have an even better power-to-weight ratio than Li-Ion.
A: The battery cells themselves are supplied to us by a large manufacturer and we are the only electric bike system to use them. Obviously the lithium chemistries have great potential, but they are not quite there yet. Some have very good discharge characteristics but poor energy density, others have poor discharge rates but high energy density. We use a speciality NiMh cell which has an excellent combination of the two. It doesn’t mean we aren’t looking at lithium of course but we believe in following proper cycling principles of low weight and high efficiency so the battery has to pack a big punch in a small size.

Q: I noticed there is no regenerative braking.
A: When I first researched the electric bicycle industry I thought regenerative brakes were a great marketing idea. Sadly, unless the customer lives in the mountains, it is just marketing. Firstly, bicycles regenerate energy naturally by freewheeling – you cycle up a hill, then the bicycle freewheels down the other side reclaiming the energy. Secondly, bikes that regenerate have the motor intrinsically linked to the wheel instead of using a freewheel like our system. This has two problems: firstly they don’t have gears and are therefore big and heavy and secondly on an average journey you lose far more energy turning the motor when you aren’t using power than you gain in the few percent of a journey spent braking.

Q: How much weight does the Cytronex system add to a bike?
A: Five Kilos, but you can remove the battery and switch the front wheel to the standard wheel (without a motor) in about one minute. The bike then weighs a few hundred grammes more than the original bike. The battery weighs 2.1KG and the hub motor 2.5 KG.

Q: What about cost?
A: The system adds around nine hundred Pounds to the price of a bike. An exchange or supplementary battery costs 195 Pounds.

Q: The battery is good for three hundred charging cycles and you mentioned that a customer should get used to the idea that it is a consumer durable, not a long-term investment. Is that difficult for your customers to accept?
A: Not at all, our bikes pay for themselves often within a year where customers use them instead of the car to work, so £195 replacement battery cost is not considered unreasonable. However we do recognise that it is part of the running cost of your bike so we keep the price as low as possible.

Q: Will you be exporting your bikes?
A: At the moment, our strategy will be to export conversion kits, and to train people to install and maintain them. The idea being that the customer can choose the bike they want in their local bicycle shop and then have Cytronex fitted by the shop. Right now, demand is a lot higher than our supply — I myself test-ride every model we have, which is rather time-consuming. Our focus is on developing our technology, but at some point we may well expand our manufacturing capacities. In any case, we’ll be sticking to a “made in the EU label”: outsourcing to China is not an option.

The Cytronex Powered Cannondale Super Six

Modern Times Ltd is well placed to capitalise on the growth in the ebike market having launched the first bikes to look and ride like conventional bicycles last year. Their Cytronex power assistance and lighting system is fitted in Winchester to existing quality bike brands like Cannondale, Genesis, Ridgeback and Claud Butler. To achieve their trademark “invisible assistance” the battery looks like a water bottle, the motor is about the size of a hub dynamo and the electronics are concealed. The result is that only the rider knows the bike is electric and when the power is switched off the ride is almost identical to the same bicycle before the system was fitted.

Now Modern Times has gone a stage further by producing ultra light single speed bikes designed for city commuters. The Cannondale Capo and the Genesis Day One are easily light enough to be lifted into an apartment or the office. Single speed bicycles are now very popular in cities across the UK and Modern Times say they have proved to be very well suited to power assistance, a view that is shared by the well regarded industry magazine – AtoB which has a review of the Capo in the August/September 2009 issue.

The new Cytronex single speed system removes the key disadvantages of single speed bikes by adding powerful hill climbing and fast acceleration, and exploits the efficiency advantage by keeping speed in the optimum efficiency range for both rider and motor. A sensor continually monitors pedalling speed so that just the right amount of power is applied to give smooth, silent thrust and an average range of about 25 miles per battery charge. The battery can be recharged from empty in just 1.5 hours using around 2p’s worth of electricity.

The Capo and Genesis are very simple to use – the power is left off for low speed control such as weaving through traffic, assistance is turned on with the thumb switch for fast acceleration and hill climbing. From a standing start the power kicks in after just one pedal stroke and quickly whisks the bike up to the optimum speed, which is ideal for getting away from traffic lights fast.

The single speed bikes add to the company’s current line up of 5 bikes, including the Cytronex Powered Cannondale Synapse Flatbar which at just over 15Kg is possibly the lightest multi geared electric bike in the world.

Cytronex power assisted bikes cost from £1295 and are also available to purchase through the government’s Cycle to Work Scheme which gives cycle commuters a big saving on the cost of a new bicycle. See www.cytronex.com for details or call 01962 866122.

Cytronex Powered Cannondale Capo Electric Bike

Cycle to Work

Why not buy your Cytronex powered electric bike tax-free under the Cycle to Work Scheme? Your employer can use the documents on our Cycle to Work Scheme page and purchase directly from our site, saving you VAT, personal tax and National Insurance.