Someone wants an electric bicycle, assessed most times by a friend, an agent, or directly a freelance electric bicycle builder. He then chooses the model, price and providers.
He then orders all the needed pieces, which are sent to the freelance electric bicycle builder. Mounting does not require very complicated tools.
Bikes are finally tested by an independant examiner. A peer, a company, or by the builder recording the bike ride.
The network will promote local manufacturing and bike culture, establishing a direct relation between the person building the bike and the user. Money going to people near you. Because of the smaller overhead and the personal and
Commercialization
The main commercial tool would be a phone app and internet site to search for builders and bicycle types. Builders can post a list of places where to order all the pieces. (Possible domain names: Localebike, lokalbikemount, lokalbike, localbike.net, bikehood, bikehoods, mountabike, bikebuilders, mount-a-bike).
The bike itself can also be used as a selling or communication tool. On the bike frame there is a code that allows you to talk on the internet about that exact bike, also will include the information of the model and the builder. With this code you can also access the history information about the bike, like repairs, charging times, or recorded data of performance or use. You could see for example how many hours did the bike ride, the charging habits, etc.
Background info
Electric bikes sales are rising around 30-60% a year. A couple of million electric bikes in Europe last year.
At current times, only small and medium enterprises are fabricating eletric bikes. They accumulate stock and make sales of a couple of models. Sometimes they “design” the bike themselves, and some times they adopt a nearly made solution and choose among some options or piece changes.
This network would allow small bike shops to sell a lot of different models. And even recieve offers to mount new models directly from clients.
Other details
Delivery:
- Delivery and test. The tester drives the bike from the producer to the client. Maybe the ride is recorded by a simple short video making thingy and the video is delivered in a USB with the bike as a documental proof of the test done. Maybe the tester can also be the constructor if the ride is recorded.
APENDIX: OTHER RELATED IDEAS
A generalization of a peer to peer network for electric bicycles
– Peer construction. Peer learning on electric bicycles.
– Peer design. Open source electric bicycle.
- Open source test machine for electric bicycles. Can be promoted by holding a competition.
– Peer production. Open Bills of Materials.
– Peer certification.
– Peer consumer reporting.
Information is as open as possible, but/and private actors are perfectly encouraged to take part by self interest too, but following rules of interaction and “open commerce etiquete”.
Competitions, social events. Electric bikes competitions (by price categories? Wheight? Battery independant???
Quality assesement
Best way to compare bikes and parts is by recording use by rider.
Competition to create an open source test machine for electric bicycles. During the first selection phase, admission to competition by individuals or groups will be sent to an open list of supporting electric bicycle professionals.
APENDIX: OTHER UNRELATED IDEAS
A protocol and service network to provide telephone contact info for a specific subject/object, using a digitalized physical code (a QR Code). The list of phones you can call is something like a google search for a certain row of hashtags, the “answer” is changing with time or location, etc… .
ideas and designs 