If you are a bicycle geek like me, you already know Superpedestrian, the MIT spinout company behind the Copenhagen Wheel. This famous product basically turns any bicycle into an E-bike, as the wheel integrates the motor, the battery, charged by back-pedalling, all the electronic and sensors. So famous that it has been shown in a famous US TV serie, Weeds:

The company announced on may 23rd that it completed a $16.5 million Series B1 round of financing, mainly from Asian investors (Charles Kim, Spark Capital, General Catalyst), with the goal to conquer a part of the shared-mobility market, starting with bicycles. Superpedestrian, which invested a lot in the development of embedded technology and software, clearly has innovation to bring to the bike-sharing market, says Assaf Biderman, the company’s CEO:

Our e-bikes autonomously manage themselves through onboard diagnostics, self-protection, and self-calibration, and then connect to a remote maintenance system that can service the entire fleet. If you rely mostly on users to report that something is broken, that’s too late. We know what’s going on inside each of our e-bikes and can resolve most issues before they occur,”

On the business side, it seems that Superpedestrian did not secure any contract for bike-sharing yet, but is looking for partners in Asia. We also have to point that the price of the product (US$1500 for private sell) will be a big problematic to build a viable business model, even if I personally believe that there is room for “high-end” dockless bike-sharing. Wait and see…