Tens of thousands of E-bikes priced at nearly 8,000 yuan have been purchased by NIO owners | Product Observation

Author | Zhang Ziyi

Editor | Yuan Silai. Search for Lemmo Zero on Xiaohongshu, and you will find people flying with it to Kyoto for cycling; some people try to modify it by hanging a trailer behind the vehicle and riding it to buy groceries; others challenge commuting to work on it, but forget to bring the battery on the first day.

In China, E-bike is still a relatively unfamiliar category that few people know about. People are more accustomed to electric two-wheelers, rather than E-bikes that often cost tens of thousands of yuan.

Interestingly, the Lemmo Zero, priced at 7999 yuan, has found its market among car users. Lemmo, headquartered in Berlin, Germany, partnered with NIO last year. After Zero was launched on NIO Life, it has received tens of thousands of orders so far.

In addition, as of early August, Lemmo launched its store on Tmall in June this year. According to the company, the store ranks first in the high-end electric assist bicycle category and second in all categories.

Such order performance is rare in the E-Bike category in the Chinese market. Victor, co-founder and CEO of Lemmo, was previously in charge of global product R&D and design at Mobike. Victor witnessed how startups achieved mass production of bicycles, and personally experienced the common demand for travel and the "last mile" in different global markets amid the wave of the sharing economy.

In Europe, folding bikes are usually used in combination with public transport. Victor told Hard Krypton: "If you bring a folding bike on the subway and train, you don't need to buy a separate ticket for it, which is driven by economic value behind it."

Back in China, what Lemmo values is the potential of folding bikes in the "4-wheel + 2-wheel" scenario.

Whether for commuting or daily travel, cars will also get stuck in the "last mile". This has become the best application scenario for Lemmo to cut in with folding bikes. Compared with other short-distance travel products, electric scooters are restricted by road rights, ordinary bicycles take up too much space, and only folding bikes can be easily stuffed into the trunk to travel with the car.

Hard Krypton learned that in addition to the cooperation with NIO, Lemmo has also successively announced its cooperation with XPeng and Volkswagen this year. At the same time, since its establishment, Lemmo has received a total of tens of millions of US dollars in financing from funds including Qingshan Capital, Joy Capital, Daosheng Capital and Star Voyager Capital.

Apart from scenario expansion, Lemmo has greater ambitions. They plan to integrate the four traditional product types of bicycles, E-Bikes, motorcycles and microcars in pairs between walking and driving. The ultra-lightweight product platform DMV (Dual Mode Vehicle) aims to combine bicycles and E-Bikes into one, allowing users to switch between electric assist bicycles and ordinary bicycles.

Starting from the first-generation product One, Lemmo integrates all electrical components into the independent Smartpac electrical system package, which is paired with a dual-mode motor hub built with Lemmo's patented resistance-free clutch. When the user installs the Smartpac, the bicycle has the electric assist function; without the Smartpac, it can ride smoothly without resistance like an ordinary bicycle.

On Xiaohongshu, the user who challenged commuting on Lemmo Zero but forgot to bring the battery spent 18 minutes riding 5 kilometers without power supply.

"Current E-bikes and bicycles seem to be separated by a wall. But looking ahead five to ten years, batteries and motors will become smaller and smaller, and this wall will become more and more blurred. What we want to do is to break through this wall," Victor said.

01 Designing E-bikes for car trunks

It is not uncommon for car brands to enter the E-bike sector in overseas markets. Porsche once cooperated with Rotwild on E-bikes; Mercedes-Benz has also launched the E-bike of the AMG series. BMW mini once launched a co-branded project with high-end bicycle brand Brompton in South Korea.

For car companies, competition has been extremely fierce in recent years, and they have to compete on price, configuration, and brand ecology. Launching E-bikes not only allows for technology reuse to achieve greater brand exposure, but also can supplement vehicle usage scenarios and activate user communities.

Among them, the folding e-bike that can be directly stuffed into the trunk to extend the travel radius is also an excellent entry point.

The cooperation between NIO and Lemmo took less than two months from project initiation. The reason for such a rapid progress is that both parties had long-term practice and preparation for folding bikes before that.

In Lemmo's product plan, Zero is a mass-market product for the global market from the very beginning, so it must take into account the usage needs of different regions.

In Victor's view, China's car usage scenarios are very different from those of European users. Europe tends to use folding bikes as a supplement to public transport, while in China they are more used for leisure and entertainment scenarios. While more and more leisure bike lanes combining sightseeing and tourism have appeared in cities, the number of new energy vehicles is also growing rapidly. China's scenarios are more complex, and the requirements for products are more comprehensive; if the needs here can be well met, the product will naturally have stronger adaptability in the European and American markets.

"Cars can solve the connection from home to the riverside and park, while folding bikes can realize leisure and entertainment in the scenic spots," Victor told Hard Krypton.

It is not difficult to put a folding bike in the car trunk. The problem is whether it can be made convenient enough and take up a small footprint. This became the starting point for NIO and Lemmo to discuss cooperation.

"At that time, we took female users as the main reference. Girls should be able to easily carry the bike and push it vertically into the trunk gracefully. So we not only made the whole bike, but also equipped it with a car mount system, so that the bike can be easily slid into the trunk, very compact, and only takes up a corner of the trunk," Victor told Hard Krypton.

The Lemmo Zero is a 16-inch model, and the carbon fiber frame keeps the total weight of the bike at 10.8 kg. According to Hard Krypton's on-site experience, even a girl can lift it with one hand. If you fold it separately, it can be completed in 10 seconds; folding and unfolding take about 20 seconds in total.

In addition, Zero is equipped with a 2.3kg detachable Smartpac battery, which can be removed for separate charging. When the battery or the vehicle is low on power, NIO's in-vehicle infotainment system will send a reminder, and users can charge the battery in the trunk when they set off. The battery-assisted mode has a range of 40 kilometers. Victor said that the weight and volume of the iterated Smartpac will be reduced later.

For comparison, the classic C Line of Brompton, which is famous for its extremely compact folding structure, has a total weight starting from 11.35kg and can be folded in 20 seconds.

In addition to weight, they also have to consider the volume.

When developing in cooperation with NIO, Lemmo took the ET5T model as a reference. Compared with SUVs, the vertical space of the station wagon trunk is lower. If the folded Zero can be put in relatively easily, it will have better compatibility with more cars.

Therefore, after folding, Zero does not simply pursue a shorter size, but tries to fold into a flat rectangle as much as possible.

Zero still follows the basic idea of triple folding, but Victor said that its folding direction and wheel storage method have been redesigned. The inside of the frame adopts a hollow structure, and the wheels can be further retracted into the bike body when folding to reduce the final occupied space.

This is also the tricky part in Zero's R&D process.

Compared with the motor and software parts, Victor believes that the mechanical structure is a greater challenge: mature folding bikes have undergone decades of iteration, forming a mature solution that balances folding volume, riding stability and operation habits. What Lemmo needs to do is not to re-prove that "triple folding" is feasible, but to further reduce the size and storage space without sacrificing the riding experience after unfolding.

In the end, they made the folded Zero fit into a standard 28-inch suitcase and be allowed on the plane. This removes another obstacle to the linkage between Zero and car scenarios.

02 Remove the battery, and it is still a bicycle

Stuffing a folding bike into a car is just one of Lemmo's transformations of the product form.

Since the first product One, Lemmo's DMV platform (Dual Mode Vehicle) has been trying to achieve this goal, making an E-bike truly transform back to an ordinary bicycle.

"For users, it is best for bicycles and electric bicycles to be the same product: you can use electric assistance when you want it, and ride it by yourself when you don't need it," Victor told Hard Krypton.

Traditional E-bikes usually disperse components such as batteries and electronic controls inside the bike body. Once the power is exhausted, even if you can still ride by pedaling, the resistance brought by the motor and the total weight of the bike makes it difficult to achieve the riding experience of an ordinary bicycle.

Lemmo's solution is to remove most of the complex electrical components from the bike body. Its Smartpac system integrates functions such as battery, motor controller, IoT, GPS and external power supply into an independent module, while the inside of the bike body only retains wiring harnesses and hub motors as much as possible.

The difficulty of doing so is not only to "separate the electrical system", but also to make the E-bike still ride well when there is no power.

To this end, Lemmo has developed a brand-new clutch structure inside the hub. When the vehicle switches to pure bicycle mode, the motor power core can be disconnected from the hub shell to reduce the mechanical resistance caused by traditional friction clutches.

In Lemmo's view, the benefits of the separation of bike body and power system are not only the flexibility at the riding level, but also the convenience in production and manufacturing.

Victor once participated in the mass production of bicycles during the Mobike era. He realized that bicycle factories and consumer electronics factories are good at two completely different production methods. If a large number of electrical components and wiring harnesses are stuffed into the frame, not only the assembly process is complicated, but it is also more difficult to repair when problems occur. The relatively independent modules are easy to manufacture separately and easy to repair.

In Lemmo's plan, the benefits of Smartpac also play a greater role in the business model: on the one hand, the bike body and the electronic system have different update cycles.

Bicycles can be used for many years, while consumer electronics and intelligent systems iterate faster. After the two are separated, the Smartpac and other electronic components can be continuously upgraded without replacing the entire bike body. In the future, if users want to obtain new intelligent functions, they do not necessarily need to buy a new bike. Some functions can be realized by upgrading hardware such as electronic derailleurs, combined with software updates of the Smartpac and the bike body main control unit.

On the other hand, Smartpac is also the core module for Lemmo to connect subsequent products.

At present, Lemmo has launched three capacities of Smartpac: 159Wh, 540Wh and 1000Wh, which correspond to short-distance combined travel that can be taken on planes, urban and 100-kilometer travel, and the needs of multiple people in the family and high load. Zero, One and Lemmo 3 are the entry products launched by the company for these three types of scenarios.

According to Lemmo's vision, the same Smartpac can be switched between different devices such as bicycles and scooters, and the devices can still be used independently after being separated from the Smartpac. Considering that the price of Smartpac accounts for about a quarter to half of the total product, sharing the battery can reduce the cost for users to purchase multiple products at the same time.

This set of design also includes commercial considerations.

Durable consumer goods such as bicycles have a low repurchase frequency, and it is difficult to establish continuous user connections by relying solely on the App. Lemmo hopes to take Smartpac as the basis to integrate different hardware, intelligent accessories and software services into the same product system.

In addition to sharing Smartpac, Lemmo is also trying to launch different means of transportation.

On September 28, Lemmo released Lemmo 3, which is closer to electric mopeds: this is a long-tail SUV E-Bike for multi-person family travel, with a full suspension system added, and its load-bearing capacity, power and comfort are enhanced. The product is targeted at the global market including China, but it will be launched in Europe and the United States first.

In the next two years, Lemmo also plans to develop a lightweight four-wheel LSV (Low Speed Vehicle), extending the product boundary from electric mopeds to microcars. According to the company's plan, this product can not only support multi-person travel, but also carry the previously launched lightweight travel equipment.

"Let cars take more responsibility for intercity long-distance travel, and leave the short and medium-distance travel in cities and at destinations to lighter means of transportation," Victor told Hard Krypton.

In the past three years, the destocking and reshuffling of the E-bike industry in Europe and the United States under high inventory has dealt a heavy blow to the established European and American bicycle manufacturers, and also made new Chinese entrants need to find new solutions in the stagnant market.

Amflow, which is backed by DJI, has rewritten the mid-to-high end E-bike market with a high-profile strategy, while Lemmo has taken a different approach by returning to the domestic market and entering ordinary households with the help of car companies.

There are also other E-bike manufacturers connecting AI, making intelligent trailers, making Cargo bikes, and even trying to make exoskeletons... The new gameplay is endless, and everything has just begun.