Brompton goes electric?

On Thursday I caught by chance the BBC Radio 4 business programme The Bottom Line. This is a programme of interviews of a small group of people in finance or business about their personal business practices. I normally switch off but this week one of the interviewees was Will Butler Adams managing director of Brompton.

At the beginning of the programme in his introduction Will Butler Adams said that Brompton are currently developing an electric propelled bike! He didn’t give details because this wasn’t the point of the programme but he did describe how the power would be linked to the pedals.

If you want to hear the interview here is the link to this weeks programme. It is available on BBCiPlayer. I can’t promise how long the link will last. The BBC keeps programmes for at least a week and sometimes longer.

I have looked on the Brompton website and there is no mention of the interview or this development.

Is this the new Big Idea?

Comments

Erik Sandblom said…
Is this the new Big Idea? Good question! I think electric assist can get more people cycling.

On the other hand I also think most people can cycle more than they think (at least with a little practise, say 15 minutes twice a day). Detractors to electric assist say the controller bits break and are hard to replace after a few years. In my blissful ignorance I suppose technology will take care of that. We shall see!
aedan said…
It's been on the cards for a while. My bikes make more electricity than they use.
Anonymous said…
It would be interesting to know about the timescale for this if you do hear anything. My partner, a journalist, did a feature on electric bikes recently. He contacted Brompton, who denied such a bike was planned, but now we seem to have it straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak. It would be nice if they were more forthcoming about it! I do hope they are not following the Apple model of staying nothing at all to generate a lot of hype:-)
GreenComotion said…
Brompton e-bike would definitely be interesting. I am gonna stick to my own engine though :)

Peace :)