logo The Ryan brothers are something of a powerhouse of Kiwi entrepreneurship and innovation. Between them Doctors Shaun and Grant (underachievement obviously being a familial trait!) have set up and been involved in a raft of exciting companies – GlobalBrain, Eurekster, SLI Systems among them. They’re also involved in a bunch of different government boards – the New Zealand Venture Investment Fund and Foundation for Research Science and Technology among them. They’re also semi-regular attendees at our monthly Christchurch Web lunches (at the Twisted Hop, taking advantage of the great $20 Pizza and Pint specials)

The latest exciting thing to come out of Chez Ryan, is codenamed Project Garlic but slowly peeping out from it’s cloak of secrecy.

Several years in the making, and the culmination of some smart design, smart thinking and smart manufacturing, YikeBike is the worlds smallest lightest electric folding bicycle at less than 10kg.

Still under wraps to all but a select few, the YikeBike is going to be launched to the world on Sept 2 at the EuroBike expo.

This is very cool on a number of levels;

  • Anything that gets cars off the roads is a good thing
  • It’s a great example of smart Kiwi design
  • The Ryans could well be running their businesses from Silicon Valley – the fact that they’ve chosen to remain here in New Zealand is inspiring
  • The teaser video has the sounds, and face, of New Zealand/Icelandic singer/songwriter Hera who is a very cool chick!
  • I had a small part in the project – Cactus Climbing did some design and prototyping work for the YikeBike carrying solution

Good luck Grant – I’ll be watching on September 2nd!

Ben Kepes

Ben Kepes is a technology evangelist, an investor, a commentator and a business adviser. Ben covers the convergence of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users.

5 Comments
  • I don’t know what it is or how much it costs, but for some strange inexplicable reason, I want one!

  • Stuartm,

    From Googling:
    “YikeBike is a super light small electric folding bike with
    carbon frame weighing in at less than 10kg. The radical
    mini-farthing wheel formation is designed to fold into
    less than a third the volume of any other 20 inch folding
    bike. It has a powerful 800W motor and anti-skid
    regenerative brakes. Given the super small size and
    weight it can easily be taken on busses, trains, cars and
    easily stored under a desk or in a cupboard.”

    Sounds awesome, can’t wait!

  • I can’t remember what type of engineer Grant was back in the day doing my engineering degree at Canterbury but I do recall he made us all look average. Cool concept. As soon as you can play YikeBike polo with it, it’s made it.

  • @Miki – yup smart guys alright!

  • Well done, the worlds congested super cities are waiting for this for a long time.

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