There’s another aspect, Kapadia explains, too: “That’s longer distance, and it’s sending a message we call safety-enhancing technology, where you’re giving the driver information to have an earlier opportunity to avoid an icy road or traffic congestion ahead.”
Bike brands jumping onboard
Mio Suzuki is Trek Bicycle’s director of embedded systems, “and we are exploring all sorts of safety,” she says. For instance, Trek recently introduced its own radar tail light, which warns riders of a car approaching rapidly—Garmin has had similar systems for several years. But Suzuki is intrigued by C-V2X because it offers more advanced warning than rear-facing radar. “And unlike cars, we have a very vulnerable road user so we need to augment our senses and the rider’s awareness of the riding environment, because we don’t have a big metal shield around us.”
What Suzuki envisions this direct communication might enable is an e-bike where the rider has a display that would warn a rider “of an imminent danger that’s approaching; a car might be coming from the side, but the view of the car is obstructed by a building, so the rider can’t see.”
Franz Reindl is CTO of Stromer, a high-end Swiss brand that only makes e-bikes with very top tech, including ABS brakes. Reindl says they’re also studying C-V2X. “Safety is one of our biggest promises, and we need to do everything we can with products and technologies to make it more safe for customers.”
It’s not just accident-proofing
There are other benefits to direct communications that would be particularly appealing to e-bike brands. Stromer’s Reindl says their bikes already have GPS security tracking in case of theft.
But Jarrett Wendt, CEO of a bike technology supplier called Spoke Safety, which hopes to supply C-V2X within the next 18 months both as an integrated component of e-bikes and with a standalone system in the aftermarket to riders, says that Stromer’s tracking isn’t a default for most e-bike brands. “I think people are going to want geofencing and geo-tracking,” Wendt says, noting that the average e-bike is an investment. “You know, you just spent several thousand dollars on a bike, and tracking is going to be an expected feature.”
