How does a veteran bicycle maker like Raleigh survive an increasingly crowded e-bike market? By promising more oomph, apparently. The company has revamped its strong-selling Motus hybrid e-bike line with more power and range. The base Motus now starts with a 400WH Bosch Active Line motor (up from 300WH) and, accordingly, a bump from 60 miles to 80 miles of range. You shouldn't have as much trouble blasting up a hill or completing a lengthy commute. You can also expect four levels of electric assistance, a seven-speed gear system and hydraulic disc brakes.
More demanding riders have more options, of course. The Motus Tour and Motus Grand Tour both have the choice of either a derailleur or hub gearing, and they pack integrated front and rear lights as well as a wheel lock. The Tour and Grand Tour both pack sleeker, easily removable Bosch PowerTube batteries, while the top-end Grand Tour includes both a larger 500WH battery and a brawnier Active Line Plus motor. Raleigh claims up to 100 miles of range.
All the bikes are available in the UK and Ireland with either a crossbar frame or an easier-to-mount low step design. Expect higher prices in return for the added performance, however. The 'entry' Motus starts at £2,199 (about $2,987), while the Motus Tour begins at £2,499 for a derailleur version and the Grand Tour costs £2,699. The hub versions of the Tour and Grand Tour add another £100 to the price. They're slightly pricier than the models they replace (the previous Motus started at £1,900), but the additional outlay could easily be worthwhile if your bike is your chief mode of transportation.
Peloton today launched Lanebreak, a new series of workouts that mimic a racing game for its connected stationary bike. Riders get behind a virtual wheel, race down a multi-lane highway and gain points for higher levels of output and resistance. The fitness company briefly beta tested Lanebreak last July, and is now launching the new mode as a software update to all Peloton bikes in the US, UK, Canada, Germany and Australia.
Unlike the majority of other Peloton workouts, there’s no instructor on Lanebreak offering encouragement throughout the ride. Instead, riders can choose from a selection of different pop-centric playlists to listen to in the background, featuring the likes of David Guetta, David Bowie, Bruno Mars and Ed Sheeran.
For Peloton riders who are bored with the usual slate of instructor-led classes, Lanebreak adds a change of pace. It’s also the first new program that the fitness company has added to their fitness library in a while, following a major expansion in 2020 that included barre, yoga, pilates and strength training classes.
The fitness company, once a darling of the pandemic, has now run into financial woes due to a decline in demand. Earlier this month, Peloton replaced its CEO and laid-off roughly 20 percent of its workforce in an effort to streamline its expenses. But despite its struggles on Wall Street, Peloton's incredibly loyal customer base has a 96% one-year retention rate. The bikes are a large upfront investment, and few Peloton riders want the added hassle of reselling and moving their $1,495 bike. While it’s unlikely that Lanebreak will recruit new Peloton riders, it’ll add some variety to a fitness library that, for some seasoned riders, has become stale.
Zwift is bringing together some of its more dedicated cyclists for another competitive riding event. On February 26th, the workout platform will host the second UCI Cycling Esports World Championships on a course set on a virtual version of Central Park in New York City.
Riders will complete two laps of the 22.5 km Knickerbocker route. The course features some glass roadways that are suspended above the park to add more elevation. Pay close attention and you'll see flying taxis zipping around too.
The competitors will all use the Wahoo Kickr V5 Smart Trainers. Zwift says these intelligently respond to climb gradients as well as simulated drift from other riders.
Since this is a virtual event, Zwift is able to shake things up a bit from traditional road races. Riders will have seven chances to pick up Mario Kart-style PowerUps during the race. They can deploy these at strategic times to temporarily increase the draft effect, boost aerodynamic efficiency or reduce the bike's weight.
Around 180 riders will compete across the men's and women's races. The winners will each receive a physical and digital championship jersey they can wear for sanctioned esports races and activities and while their avatar is active on Zwift. The event will be broadcast on Eurosport in Europe and on GCN+ and Zwift's YouTube channel around the world.
Zwift notes that all users had the chance to secure a spot in the UCI Cycling Esports World Championships through continental qualifier races. It says that while it's early days for cycling esports, some specialist riders have already emerged. As the metaverse continues to take shape, perhaps we'll start seeing more physical esports events in other disciplines.
While nothing can truly match the real thing, a number of stationary bike companies have tried to replicate the outdoor riding experience. A startup called Muoverti is the latest to take a swing with its TiltBikes.
As the name suggests, the machine can swing from side to side while you're standing and you can lean to turn a virtual corner. "You can balance and steer, accelerate and brake and fully engage legs, core and upper body," a narrator notes in an announcement video.
The on-pedal feel is said to mirror the physical forces of a real bike, such as gravity, incline and inertia. The electromagnetic resistance is controlled by an algorithm that updates a thousand times per second. This, according to the company, enables simulations of factors including drafting, angular wind speed and rolling resistance in real time.
TiltBikes are compatible with training apps including Zwift, RGT and Trainer Road. What's more, there are built-in gaming controls, so you can connect the bike to an Xbox and perhaps squeeze in some Riders Republic as you're getting a workout. The bike can pair with a smartphone, tablet or PC via Bluetooth too.
Muoverti
The frame is swappable, you can switch it out if you have different handlebar or pedal preferences to someone you share a TiltBike with, or go from a time trial setup to a mountain bike one. You'll also be able to monitor your workouts through a companion app that tracks more than 20 stats in real time.
These aren't exactly the first tilting stationary bikes on the market. Bowflex's Velocore, for instance, can stay locked in place or switch to leaning mode. Alternatively, you can put a bike on rocker plates for that side-to-side motion.
It appears Muoverti's goal is to bring together elements from other bikes and to elevate the experience. As it stands, some features that serious cyclists will be looking for don't seem to be available, such as vertical climb simulation, so it might be a better fit for more casual riders. Still, with its stylish frames, TiltBikes look a bit more like actual bikes than rival models.
Muoverti hasn't announced pricing for TiltBikes as yet, though given that some configurations don't include a display, they could prove less expensive than some other models. The company plans to ship the stationary bikes in 2022, giving you some time to find a decent wind machine to get the full outdoor riding effect.
If you had the opportunity, would you pay more in order to use an exercise bike less frequently? That is, give or take, the sales pitch for Carol’s at-home spin bike. It’s the anti-Peloton, designed to be used for just 8 minutes and 40 seconds per workout. At the end of its standard program, it even tells you that you can go to the gym if you want to, rather than because you need to. But stealing back all of those hours from the capricious gods of exercise comes at a price: $2,395, plus $12 per month after the first three months. It’s up to you to decide if that eye-watering fee is worth swerving all of those cardio sessions.
Science
Daniel Cooper
Carol leverages the principles of Reduced Exertion, High Intensity Interval Training (REHIIT), a variation on the Tabata method of HIIT. Put simply, you’re asked to exercise at a very high intensity for a very short period of time, rather than a long period of time in a steady state. In this example, Carol says that its standard sub-nine-minute workout gives you the equivalent workout to a 45-minute jog. This involves you going all-out for 20 seconds, but then having the better part of three minutes to recover.
That 20-second frenzy is designed to deplete your body’s stores of glycogen and pushes the heart rate through the roof. The long recovery time is designed to reset your body, enabling you to grind out far more from your muscles than you would in a standard Tabata workout. And studies have shown that, at least in male participants, a six-week REHIIT program can improve their insulin resistance and oxygen consumption.
“One of the things I like about REHIIT is the long length of the recovery periods,” says Stuart Moore, trainer and owner of Wheel Fitness, a specialist cycling practice. “This enables people without a lot of experience to recover properly between bouts of hard work and then go again with another round.” He added that “all interval training can be useful,” but stressed that would-be adopters “should get the important checks with your doctor” before trying this sort of thing. “I’d prefer complete beginners to interval training try something more mild than modified versions of HIIT,” he said, “this could help with developing a base before delving into the more intense exercise later.”
Andrea Speir, co-founder and lead trainer at Speir Pilates, added that the psychological benefits on neophyte exercisers were crucial. “Because it spikes the heart rate and improves VO2 Max, cardiac output and boosts the metabolism [...] without being too strenuous,” she said. “It’s not as daunting to commit to it three-to-five times a week, which is where you really see great results,” she added.
History
Daniel Cooper
It’s not often that a company founder announces that their product exists because of a BBC documentary, but Carol isn’t exactly a standard Silicon Valley story. Co-founder Ulrich Dempfle was a management consultant working with the UK’s National Health Service on behalf of firms like McKinsey and PWC. Part of his role was to look for ways to encourage people to exercise more, despite the fact they would often say they didn’t have enough time to become gym bunnies. It wasn’t until he watched 2012’s The Truth About Exercise that he became a convert to REHIIT.
The documentary was fronted by Dr. Michael Mosely, who is chiefly responsible for making intermittent fasting mainstream in the UK. One of Mosely’s gimmicks has always been to look for more efficient ways to feel healthy, and this was a love letter to REHIIT. Dempfle and his team contacted the academics whose research was featured in order to get a look at their equipment. Dempfle explained that the bikes featured had their intensity controlled by one of the academics while a person exercised on them, and that the price was astronomical. It was here that the idea of building an affordable REHIIT bike was more or less born. In fact, Carol would wind up being featured in a Mosley’s 2018 follow-up documentary, The Truth About Getting Fit, albeit not named because of the BBC’s rules against product placement.
Bike
Daniel Cooper
At first glance, Carol could be mistaken for pretty much any at-home exercise bike. It has a very large, rear-slung flywheel and a beefy drive unit, which houses the system to electronically control the resistance, the secret sauce behind the REHIIT program. A pair of short handles with the customary heart rate-monitoring electrodes sit below the display housing, which holds a 10.1-inch screen. The seat height and distance is adjustable, as well as the height of the handlebars, and there are toe cages and clips on the pedals, for pro cyclists.
After you’ve registered, you can then log in to the bike, which is a process you’ll have to do every time you want to use it. After the first attempt, you can just tap on your initials on a list of stored users, but there’s no way to stay logged in by default. Given how beefy the bike is, and that it’s designed for both at-home and professional use, I feel as if this makes it well-suited to offices and gyms, more so than people’s homes. You could easily see this in the corner of a small business, with staff members getting their 10 minutes each day as they take a break from their work.
Display
Daniel Cooper
When it comes to screens, there are two schools of thought dominating the at-home fitness market. Peloton’s ubiquity means that consumers may soon expect all machines to have a glossy, massive HD display as the default. Companies like Wattbike, Concept2 and others, however, are happy pushing out machines that still leverage old-school LCD head units. (On a personal note, the Polar View offered by the Wattbike PMB is one of the best training tools I’ve ever encountered).
Carol splits this difference by offering a 10.1-inch color touchscreen that offers the same sort of data you’d find on an LCD set, but cleaner and more colorful. The UI flashes an angry red when you hit the high intensity phase, and the visualizations showing your power output are great. A software update, too, came through during my review that has made the UI a lot cleaner and smoother than it was before. And, even better, you can use the display to live stream classes from Peloton’s own app, although you’ll need to subscribe to them separately.
Boot the bike up for the first time and you’ll be greeted by a Lenovo splash screen because Carol’s display is quite literally a Lenovo tablet in a housing. On paper, this is genius: An Android tablet should last longer, is more affordable and should be easier to replace than a custom solution. Plus, you can (and Carol does) leverage Google’s pre-built accessibility features for adjusting screen fonts and voice overs that it would take time and money to copy for little-to-no upside.
Not to mention that, because it is an Android tablet, you can run third-party apps through the Play Store, albeit only ones that have been sanctioned by Carol’s makers. So far, that’s just Peloton, but there’s no technical reason that your favorite fitness, or entertainment, app couldn’t wind up on this screen as well. But, for all of those positives, slamming an Android tablet onto a bike and calling it quits still feels a bit lackluster for a bike costing two thousand four hundred dollars.
In use
Daniel Cooper
Once you’ve answered the medical questionnaire, you have to go through six taster sessions for the bike to gauge your overall fitness level. After that point, you’re free to sample the delights that the bike has to offer, including four different REHIIT workouts. I pretty much stuck to the standard program — the reason anyone would buy a Carol bike — but there are other options available. This includes an Energiser ride, which offers shorter, 10-second sprints, as well as 15-minute or 25 minute Fat Burn program, with 30 or 60 sprints, respectively. You also get the option for a Free Ride, with power controlled by yourself, or an Endurance ride with the resistance slowly ramping up beyond your ability to cope with it.
Once you’ve chosen a program, you’re asked to choose from a series of generic audio options but, again, I was advised by the company’s representatives to stick with the default. (This was probably for the best, because the other options are essentially musak.) In it, a calm voiceover talks about how neanderthal man never jogged, they either walked slowly, or ran like their lives depended on it. At the same time, the on-screen coaching tells you to breathe in for four seconds, hold for a beat, and then exhale over six seconds, which is hard to coordinate if you’re bad at multitasking. All the while you’re asked to cycle at a very low level, never exceeding an output of 20 watts or so.
There’s a countdown timer on screen (and a timeline), so it’s not as if you’re not told when the sprints are about to begin. But the narration treats it more like a surprise, talking about the vista when, suddenly, she tells you that there’s a tiger leaping out at you!, and you have to pedal for your life. The screen turns red three seconds before the sprint begins, letting you spool up as you prepare to go hell for leather to escape your predator. Because the resistance is calibrated to your fitness level, it continues to go up after your initial burst of energy to ensure that you’re nicely wiped out by the end of the sprint. Hell, I found that I was flagging at the 10-second mark, and could never get back to my first output peak no matter what I tried.
You may scoff at the idea that biking for just 20 seconds can wipe you out and make any positive impact on your fitness. You begin to feel your legs go as your body suddenly starts to wuss out, and the final quarter of the sprints have you running on fumes. As effective exercises go, the system makes good upon its promises, and you need that long recovery time to restore any sense of humanity you may have had. The screen will graph your output (and compare it to your output on the second sprint, when you hit it) and let you see how far you’ve dropped between runs. Although the on-screen display’s promise that you won’t sweat is mostly true, it’s not entirely fair for sweaty, sweaty boys like me.
Wrap-up
Daniel Cooper
In the period in which I was using Carol, I think my fitness did improve, as did my mood when I was trying to complete one of these more or less every single day. (The bike repeatedly advises you, as does its representatives, to only do a single sprint session in a 24 hour period and only three times a week to avoid injury.) You certainly start the day feeling more energized, and I can’t complain that this has eaten a big chunk of my day when it hasn’t.
But I’m finding myself hamstrung by the price, especially given the fact that it’s designed to do one job, one fitness program, to the exclusion of most others. Do I want to spend $2,399 plus an additional $12 a month on an appliance I’d use for 30 or 40 minutes a week? Yes, that’s less than you can spend on a Wattbike Atom or Peloton Bike+, but it’s still a lot. In that philistinic sense of knowing the cost of something but not its value, the numbers make my eyes water.
It’s a bike that does one thing, really, and it does it well, but I feel in my gut that I’d have an easier time singing this thing’s praises if its price was just below the $2,000 mark. It’s a weird psychological barrier for sure, and maybe you’re scoffing at my imaginary parsimony. But as much as this thing is designed for a mainstream audience, right now, it’s priced at the level where only enthusiasts can buy it.
While Bird is mostly known for its rental scooters, it expanded its electric transportation offerings back in June when it introduced a bike-sharing service. Now, the company is giving those who want electric bikes of their own a new option to choose from: It has launched a new product called Bird Bike, which people can purchase right now for US$2,299. The electric bike has a Bafang rear hub motor with 50 miles of range and a 36-volt removable battery made of LG cells for easy charging.
In the UK and the European Union, owners will have access to 250 watts of continuous rated power in line with local regulations. Meanwhile, users in the US will have access to 500 watts of electric support. The bike has a pedal assist speed of 20 mph and has a thumb throttle, which can give riders an extra burst of acceleration to help them take on difficult inclines.
Bird
It's also equipped with an LCD display showing the rider's speed, battery charge, assist information and other details. Other features include a commercial-grade aluminum alloy frame, puncture-resistant tires and Bluetooth connectivity with the Bird app, allowing riders to easily switch their vehicle lights on and off and to view their battery range and miles ridden.
The Bird Bike comes in two types: One has a step-through frame, while the other has a step over frame. It also comes in two colors, namely Stealth Black and Gravity Gray. Bird is selling limited quantities of the e-bike right now on its website, but it will be available more broadly from retailers in the US and Europe this fall.
Young kids who see their folks on a Peloton bike and want to join in on workouts will soon have another way to do that. Little Tikes has created a smart stationary bike for children aged three to seven. It's called the Pelican Explore & Fit Cycle, which does not at all sound like "Peloton." Not one bit.
As with certain other connected stationary bikes, kids can cycle with the help of virtual trainers. They'll have access to trainer adventure videos that Little Tikes uploaded to YouTube. Youngsters can pretend they're cycling on a snowy mountain with a dinosaur buddy and ride over farmlands to see animals and practice the alphabet. They can also take a virtual trip into the woods on an adventure bike trail.
The handlebars and seat are adjustable. There's also a Bluetooth speaker so that kids can ride along to the beat of their favorite songs. The Pelican Explore & Fit Cycle will be available at Target next week.
Bike sharing systems like New York's Citi Bike may be taking off, but it's doubtful that many participants can find every station without checking a map. Thankfully, Adafruit has unveiled a smart helmet project that could help at least a few of those riders get to their destinations while keeping their eyes on the road. The DIY effort feeds locations to an Arduino-based Flora board and its positioning add-ons, which in turn use a string of NeoPixel LEDs on the helmet as turn indicators. Commuters just have to watch for blinking lights to know where to go next. While the system isn't easy to set up when cyclists have to manually enter coordinates, it is flexible: the open-source code lets it adapt to most any bike sharing system or headpiece. As long as you can get over looking like a Christmas tree on wheels while you navigate, you can build a smart helmet of your own using the instructions at the source link.
