Hasta La Gadget!

The Grace Pro Race electric bike is best described by the words of those who passed along the details of this new photoset to me.

Chuck Squatriglia of Wired.com’s own Autopia blog asked “What would happen if you crossed an old-school Cannondale with a modern downhill mountain bike and then made it electric?”

The Cycle EXIF blog, which sent this to Chuck, calls it a “Teutonic behemoth.” And Derp, a commenter on Cycle EXIF, calls it a “Stillborn Transformer.”

The official line, though, from Grace, is that this is the “world’s first street-legal e-motorbike.” And it is. The bike can hit 45km/h (28mph) by spinning its rear-wheel brushless 1.3kW motor. It’ll run for up to 50km (31-miles) and do it all off a one-hour charge, powered by the li-ion batteries hidden inside the frame. And as you can see from the photographs, it looks nasty

The frame and CNC-milled aluminum blocks that make up the bike and motor are made in the same factory in Berlin – somewhat appropriate as this looks more like an old East German moped than a push-bike. How much for this intimidating piece of machinery? The Grace Race is available built-to order only, and will cost you just 7,398 Euros, $9,944. For more on this Teutonic behemoth, check our previous coverage, with equally awesome photos (warning: silver jumpsuit).

Grace Pro product page [Grace via Bike EXIF. Thanks, Chris and Chuck!]

Photos: Gracebikes / Flickr

See Also:

• Electric Bike Runs (Almost) on Water
• Gocycle Black, The Non-Electric Electric Bike
• Sinclair X-1: Sir Clive Tries Another Electric Bike
• Volkswagen Electric Scooter Charges in Your Trunk
• Electric Cargo Bike: A True Car Replacement?
• Grace: An Electric Motorcycle Disguised as a Bike

Evan Solida’s Rael is yet another concept bike, although this one doesn’t dicker with the time-tested double-triangle frame, wheels and chain. Instead, it aims to make a regular carbon-fiber road-bike safer to ride.

What you don’t see is Solida’s Cervellum Hindsight digital rearview camera hidden in the seat-stays. It continuously records a loop of video and if it detects a crash with its accelerometer, it keeps recording for ten seconds and then stops, keeping the footage as evidence. The Cervellum can also be hooked up to a 3.5-inch transflective (viewable in sunlight) LCD screen mounted on the handlebars, giving you a digital rear-view mirror.

The part you do see is the redesigned brakes and handlebars. The drops have been refashioned into pistol-grips, and the brake levers flipped to point up instead of down. The point is to let the index fingers get to the levers whether you’re riding on the hoods of the brakes or down in the drops.

Everything else is pretty standard, as it should be, although far from pedestrian. the gears, for example, are Shimano’s Di2 electronic-shifters.

The bike may be a concept, but the Cervellum camera is on its way to market, although there’s still no launch date. And as concept bikes go, this one looks like it would actually be good to ride.

Rael: a road bike concept by Evan Solida [Bicycle Design]

Cervellum camera product page [Cervellum]

See Also:

• Two Brakes, One Hand: How To Stop a Polo Bike
• Coasties: Fixed-Gear Style, Only With Brakes
• Peugeot Concept Bike Channels Tron
• Commuter Cycle Concept is Bike and Briefcase

LAS VEGAS — Apple accessory maker Griffin has announced a nifty new dongle which connects your iPhone wirelessly to your car’s brain. The CarTrip is an OBD-II hardware interface connects to the iPhone via Bluetooth.

OBD-II (On-Board Diagnostic System) is a standard interface for hooking up diagnostic computers to cars. The CarTrip plugs into the socket (found in pretty much any car made after 1996) and sends the info to a companion app called CleanDrive.

As you may guess from the name, CleanDrive isn’t about tweaking your car for performance but for tweaking your own driving for better fuel economy. You can see readouts and graphs for acceleration, top speed, fuel consumption, as well as fault codes. Trip analysis helps you see how you’re driving, and if the dreaded check-engine light blinks on, you don’t need to panic. Just pull over, check your phone and you’ll know what’s wrong.

The CarTrip will cost $90 and is “coming soon.” The companion CleanDrive app will be free, and available at the same time.

CarTrip product page [Griffin]

See Also:

• GPS AutoBot Dongle Tracks Your Car From Your Cellphone
• Wired.com Readers' Best iPhone Dongleware Inventions

Yes! Another reason to write about the darling and awesomely-named Wheego Whip LiFe! This time, it’s good news indeed, as the all electric micro-car has received EPA certification. The cars, which are priced at a reasonably affordable $32,995 (or $25,495 after the Federal tax credit), are now simply waiting for final approval from the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration before they can roll into dealerships. It looks like the cars will ship at the beginning of the year now, with production well underway for the past few months. We’ll take two, please.

Wheego Whip LiFe grabs up EPA certification originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Dec 2010 14:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Meet the Surly Long Haul Trucker Deluxe. If you like to travel and ride, this may be your next frame.

The Deluxe is a special, plane-friendly version of Surly’s famous touring frame. The deluxe-ness comes from a pair of S&S couplings fitted as standard. These stainless-steel couplers let you split and reassemble the bike to fit in a travel-case, but they add very little weight (8oz or 227-grams) and don’t affect the stiffnees of the frame.

The Deluxe is also made to use 26-inch wheels instead of the usual (and larger) 700c wheels. This has a couple of advantages. First, you can fit the wheels into an airline-maximum sized case without deflating the tires (although maybe you shouldn’t be taking tires onto a plane fully-inflated). Second, 26-inch tires can be had anywhere in the world that you can find a bike shop.

The frame has mounting-points for pretty much everything: cantilever brakes, derailleurs, three sets of water-bottle bosses, fenders and even a spare-spoke holder. The rear dropouts are vertical, and there are routings for cables.

This frame replaces the current S&S equipped Travelers Check, which takes 700c wheels and has a horizontal dropout (better for fixed and single-speed). It will be available in spring 2011, for around $1,000.

Surly Long Haul Trucker Deluxe [Surly Bikes via Urban Velo]

See Also:

• Wallpaper Magazine Hawks Gorgeous Fixed-Gear for $4700
• Surly Trailer Hauls 300-Pounds, Replaces Your Car
• Hands-On: Surly Jethro Tule Bike Wrench and Beer Opener