The world's most innovative kids bike has just landed in Australia and it is set to revolutionise how kids learn and enjoy riding a bike. The
E-350x2i features all the superior design of the
E-350 range with the incredible innovation of speed sensitive gears. No levers, no cables, no chance of anything going wrong, just simply a clever gear system that changes up and down at the designated speed. Here,
Warren Key, owner of Kids Bike Co, talks candidly about the evolution of the E-350x2i concept and design. "The moment of creation came for the new E350x2i when I was at a birthday party at our local traffic school. I was watching the kids test ride my daughter's E-350 and even though I was content that these children were having a real bike experience, I knew I could add just a bit more fun for them.
I sensed the new riders needed a bit more 'go' to help them along, and the skilled kids wanted more options, even more dynamics, - more fun.
Then not long later SRAM came to the party by developing one of the coolest gearing systems around.
A totally invisible internal unit with no complicated levers or cables - when I found out about this I thought it would be perfect for kids.
The SRAM i-motion 2 speed self- shifting gears are now appearing on the high-end European electric bicycle market; it makes great sense. For ByK, what we did is tune the mechanism so that it works brilliantly for kids in our newest model geared bike, the E350x2i. Testing was huge fun and literally everyone wanted to ride one of our demo bike fleet.
It is amazing how many adults love to have a go on a kids bike again...the kids were queing up too!
At our demo day I guess we had as many as thirty kids ride our protoytpes and give feedback. I know from experience that a lot of this feedback comes back as colour options (I'm sure many parents relate to that having shopped with their kids for various items, not just bikes!), but I can't recall even one negative response to having gears at this level - just a long line of smiling kids. It's a great sensation when you feel the gear click up, it's a totally seamless movement and always inspires you to do it again and again. But we didn't just make the gears the only 'wow' factor on the new model. To make the E-350x2i that little more special, we have also introduced a new tyre profile to add to the great dynamics.
Our new low X2i tyres are even faster and smoother than on the standard bikes plus they add a bit of 'wow' to the looks.
Now we have finally received our first delivery of our new geared bike and the first thing that happened when bike no.1 was assembled, all our ByK staff wanted a test ride. It was just like they were kids again - big smiles on big kids." We can't wait to hear feedback from the first E-350x2i owners - if you get your hands on one, post a photo to our Facebook page, or even email a video and comments to us at warren@bykbikes.com - we love to see kids having fun and so does our ByK riding community!