Personally, I think there's some kind of narcotic in Brompton's colors, especially Turkish Green, so that's just not even fair to mention that!
I can't seem to find any mention in this thread(?) but when I first unboxed the Dash, I affectionately dubbed it "the hog" on account of its robust dimensions (and weight) as compared to our Expressway bikes. We are fortunate in that we are able to employ a "team lift" here getting them into the back of our Jeep Grand Cherokee.
I had made up some lightweight wooden "sleds" for the Expressway bikes which helped to hold them upright and folded in a stable package, making them much easier to lift. I haven't conjured up anything like that for the Dash yet. Our current procedure is a bit inelegant, involving lots of bungee cords and scrap cardboard.
After folding one of the Dash bikes on the pavement behind the vehicle, I drop the front onto a piece of cardboard on the ground to protect the paint. I then bungee the two wheels together to stabilize the whole package, with more cardboard placed between the front and rear frame sections where they are folded together in order to protect the paint. The bungees help to keep the bike bundled together as a stable package so that it doesn't unfold when we lift it.
Once we lift a bike into the back of the vehicle, I use several bungees looped through the frame near the hinge and connect them to the vehicle's back seat headrests. This helps stabilize the bikes for transport. The bike on the Driver's side is naturally more stable as they "lean left". The one on the right gets some support from boxes with our helmets placed between the bikes.
Maineiac mentioned that he or a friend uses polyethylene storage bins as tubs to transport their bikes. Maybe you could get a large storage bin, perhaps even cut out the back to make it easier to slide the bike into, and slide the box up a board into the vehicle - ? Also, while removing the battery is a bit of a nuisance, it might help you to lighten the bike a bit.
As regards the hills and grades, I'm glad to hear that it's exceeding your expectations. We recently returned to the very steep 12% hill I first rode the bike on last July and my wife was able to muscle her way up in 1st gear, PAS 5; I was impressed. However, as she noted, it was pretty much a maximum effort (on a cool day). As an inexperienced rider, if she'd had to stop she would have walked the bike up the rest of the way as she would not have been confident in her ability to get started again from a full stop on that steep slope.
For all that, it's been easy and comfortable pedaling every place else, even up the 8% grade on the street in front of our house. Railroad trails are a piece of cake as they are generally 4% and less.
The way things are going, I suspect that we'll never pursue re-gearing the bikes to more speeds as I had discussed early on in this thread. As we don't like to ride at very high speeds, if I ever found the current gearing inadequate I'd probably look into just reducing the gearing, which would be much less expensive. But, it really looks like we'll just keep riding them "as is", because a 12% grade is such an outlier for us.
All of my perspective on gearing relates to our style of slowly sightseeing, with "thrilling downhill descents" hovering just over 12 mph.
As mentioned earlier in this thread, and as I had learned talking with folks at Evelo, other people tended to want the Dash to be geared higher for higher speeds. I don't know how the five-speed gearing on the newer bikes compares to the three-speed gearing on ours. And, judging by my lack of motivation to figure it out, I guess we're doing just fine as-is.
