The article missed some of the more subtle implications of L1e-b on DD hubs and Speed Pedelecs as a whole. I'll try to explain.
In theory, a DD hub is really not a good drive for e-bikes in Europe. A significant proportion of the population lives in apartments, not houses. This often means carrying the bike up or down a flight of stairs. Moreover a significant percentage of e-bike buyers are 50 and above, and many of them are retirees. The TDCM and GoSwiss drives are heavy and intimidate a lot of potential buyers. Contrary to what Stromer would have you believe, the weight of a drive has a significant impact on sales in the EU, especially when we're talking about a vehicle that's supposed to have a lineage with a bicycle. The other problem most bikes equipped with DD drives have is pricing. 7K is much too expensive for an ST3. In Switzerland there's a niche market for that kind of bike due to liberal laws for S-Pedelecs, but this doesn't extend into the rest of the EU because of L1e-b. You can sugarcoat things as much as you want, but nobody wants to wear a full blown motorbike helmet while riding an e-bike... Cratoni and the other helmet manufacturers don't have the solution here. Try wearing one of their products in the summer and you'll see what I mean. The necessity to wear a helmet implies that L1e-b vehicles will need more power, and this is where things get interesting for companies building DD hubs.
Although it might seem like Stromer's entire future is compromised by L1e-b, the new EU law might actually be Stromer's saving grace. When you read L1e-b, it's clear that Stromer not only has the technology that matches the spirit and the letter of the law, but it also has the means to introduce an entirely new class of vehicles. In this new category, the powerful but heavy DD drive is an asset rather than a liability. Most execs in the e-bike industry fail to understand that L1e-b isn't a specification for S-Pedelecs as we currently know them. Instead the new class designates a hybrid vehicle that lies somewhere between a moped and an e-bike. We're talking 4000 Watt drives and the possibility
to exceed factor 4. The only real limiting factor is a total weight of 35 kilos and the necessity to have pedals. So we could imagine that the future for Stromer in the EU would be to add a line of moped-like e-bikes with more powerful drives and bigger batteries. These bikes would still have pedals and would require some user input, but they would be closer to mopeds than to e-bikes. The pedals would essentially act as a low level throttle thanks to the non-requirement of factor 4. Technically the bikes would need to have a more industrial design than Stromer's current offerings. One of the main requirements would be to build 100% waterproof bikes so that people can leave them out on the street. The 35kg limit means that Stromer will also need to reduce the weight of its bikes a little in order to allow for bigger batteries and other high tech devices, such as ABS brakes and blinker lights. To succeed, Stromer is going to need to increase its battery size by at least 50% with respect to its current 983Wh battery. If Stromer can pull it off, they will become the market leader and will have designed a vehicle that's essentially the iPhone of E-mopeds. Everyone will associate Stromer's name with this new hip product, and others will be forced to copy it.
Now, here's the million dollar question: will Stromer dare to do it? Because Stromer is really a very conservative company that's shy when it comes to technological innovations. The ST5 is a minor improvement on the ST2s, which itself is a minor improvement on the ST2, which itself is a logical evolution of an ST1. I realize that the ST2 was the first "connected bike", but that's really a pretty minor undertaking. To survive, Stromer is going to have to be much bolder and start thinking outside the box. There's a golden opportunity here that will most likely never repeat itself. And, unlike so many others, Stromer has almost all of the pieces of the puzzle. All it takes is an exec who understands L1e-b, and who is visionary enough to see that it designates an entirely new category of electric mopeds. If you ask me, L1e-b is essentially a
coup d'état by the motorcycle industry in order to retake control of a category that was eventually going to jeopardise sales of low end mopeds. Any company that specialises in selling S-Pedelecs in the EU needs to really understand the implications of the new law.
