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Tech

The Smart Bike of the Future is Pretty Smart

We tested the new smart bike of the future and it was pretty chill.

Like anybody cycling in Toronto, I know my bike does save me from using the shitty TTC, but it’s a rolling death trap on city streets. So when Vanhawks got in touch with me to test out their new Valour smart bike, which is designed to intuitively provide riding directions and collision awareness, I was intrigued to see if it could actually keep me from getting hit by a car.

While most people jury-rig their phones to their handle bars to see Google Maps directions, the Valour smart bike links up to an app and directs your route through flashing LED lights on the handlebars. Before you get on, you punch in a route and the bike takes care of the rest, flashing right and left as you travel. There’s even a U-turn light pattern if you missed a direction. It’s an easy system to follow, and I found myself naturally looking down at the lights without losing focus on the road.

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The bike itself, which is based around a carbon frameset, is insanely light. At first I felt like the bike was going to crack in half when I hopped on, but Vanhawk's Ali Zahid, who brought the fixed gear bike by our Toronto office, said not to worry, as the bike's frame has an internal carbon structure that he claimed makes it stronger than a normal carbon road bike frame. It’s so light you can actually lift the bike with two fingers.

Zahid showing off his baby.

While the LED nav system is the most visible tech on the bike, the real power comes from the Vanhawks app. Vanhawks designed each of its bikes to work as a single node in a mesh network, automatically banking street data like road quality and traffic based off of accelerometer and GPS data.

So rather than get stuck on a route with a bunch of potholes, the app will re-route you. The shared network also gets smarter when more Valour bikes are on the road gathering data. Better yet, a stolen bike can send its whereabouts to the network, sending messages to passing smart bikes with its location.

But back to the getting hit by cars thing. The Valour's neatest feature is the sonar system mounted on the back wheel. Every time a car enters your blind spot, the sonar picks up its presence and warns you by buzzing the corresponding grip on the bike's flat bars. (The prototype model I was on had a sonar pod hanging off the back wheel because of a broken bracket, but it still worked pretty well.)

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To my mind, this is easily the most ingenious aspect of the Vanhawks smart bike. Most urban bikers can point to times they were rear ended or sneakily tail-gated by reckless drivers, which is just about the scariest thing on the road. Anything that limits me swearing at passing vehicles and protects me from being hit by a car is chill in my book.

The handling on the bike is decent, but at times the wiring connecting the system to the wheels pulled on the handlebars as I turned. While I rode a pretty beat up prototype, Zahid said the commercial units, which are currently only available through the firm's blockbuster Kickstarter for $1,049 CAD, will have internal wiring and better functionality.

One of the little sonar pods on the rear dropouts.

I’m no fitness fanatic, but the system also logs how many calories you’re burning and the distance of your journey. It even gives you access to riding statistics like “Pedal by Pedal playbook,” bike orientation, and real time speed for people who think they can race the Tour de France, as well as working with Strava.

While you still have to keep your phone charged—no mean feat—for the app to work, the front wheel is laced to a dynamo hub that charges the bike as you ride, much in the way an alternator works. An hour long bike ride fully charges it, according to Zahid.

While Vanhawks' current business model is to make and sell complete bikes, in the future I could see the basic system being retrofitted to other bikes. Like any startup with a good idea, there's always the chance that a bigger manufacturer could come snap them up, but Zahid said that for the moment, the focus is on building and shipping the Valour bike as a whole.

Zahid also told me the company is open to eventually releasing the app to the public at large. But that might be giving away the most valuable part of the Valour, as using the app to power external LEDs on a regular old bike isn't a completely bonkers possibility.

Still, hats off to Vanhawks. They’ve not only created a truly seamless and clever smart bike, they’re doing so by entering a traditional market with established competitors. And it’s already changing the bike game.