What better partner for a Cowboy than a Prancing Horse?
The Agnelli family’s Exor holding company is best known as the owner of Ferrari, the four-wheeled supercar with the stallion logo.
Now, it has joined the race to invest in e-bikes with Belgian e-bike start-up Cowboy, as the two-wheeled electric commuter market shifts up a gear.
Photo: AFP
The electric bike market was already a good prospect: Industry figures show that 3 million were sold in Europe last year, one-quarter more than in 2018.
Yet a number of factors have come together this year to boost the Cowboy in Belgium, which was never as bike-friendly as the neighboring Netherlands.
As the country tackles the COVID-19 crisis, some commuters are shunning public transport, and the city of Brussels, once jammed by endless traffic jams, is transforming itself to exit the lockdown with vastly more bike lanes.
Speed limits have been cut to 30kph across 85 percent of the city, despite groans of motorists’ groups, and pedal power is up.
“So we really saw a spike, really an explosion in demand. Between January and mid-June, our sales went up three times — tripled in six months,” Cowboy founder and chief executive officer Adrien Roose said.
Five investors have joined the young firm, the biggest being Exor Seeds, a venture capital arm of a company that owns Ferrari and Juventus soccer club.
“We’re super happy to be working with them and we’re hoping to find synergies, especially in the industrial process,” Roose said.
Belgium is more hilly than low-lying Holland, and Brussels’ cobbled streets can be hard to navigate on a push bike, but the Cowboy’s detachable lithium-ion battery gives the bike a power-assisted 70km range.
Those intrigued by the concept can book a test ride at the firm’s flagship store — more like a sleek consumer tech showroom than an oily bike workshop.
Along with Dutch rivals Vanmoof and France’s Angell, Cowboy is trying to tempt a new generation of riders with bikes designed as electric from the wheels up, rather than converted pedal bikes.
Lighter batteries and smaller motors are not the only innovations: The Cowboy is digitally connected to its user — a useful security measure for a vehicle that costs more than 2,000 euros (US$2,356).
“People who buy an electric bike are rightly afraid of having their bike stolen. We’re not going to create a stronger lock than the others, but we could reduce the risk of theft,” Roose said.
“If someone steals a Cowboy electric bike, it won’t be worth anything to him, because he won’t be able to turn it on. To turn it on, you need the application with your information: your login and password,” he said.
“Secondly, if someone moves your electric bike when it’s turned off, you’ll get a notification on your mobile app, notifying you that maybe your bike is being stolen, and you can track it in real time,” Roose said.
If that does not work, Cowboy sells bike insurance.
With an approval rating of just two percent, Peruvian President Dina Boluarte might be the world’s most unpopular leader, according to pollsters. Protests greeted her rise to power 29 months ago, and have marked her entire term — joined by assorted scandals, investigations, controversies and a surge in gang violence. The 63-year-old is the target of a dozen probes, including for her alleged failure to declare gifts of luxury jewels and watches, a scandal inevitably dubbed “Rolexgate.” She is also under the microscope for a two-week undeclared absence for nose surgery — which she insists was medical, not cosmetic — and is
GROWING CONCERN: Some senior Trump administration officials opposed the UAE expansion over fears that another TSMC project could jeopardize its US investment Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is evaluating building an advanced production facility in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and has discussed the possibility with officials in US President Donald Trump’s administration, people familiar with the matter said, in a potentially major bet on the Middle East that would only come to fruition with Washington’s approval. The company has had multiple meetings in the past few months with US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and officials from MGX, an influential investment vehicle overseen by the UAE president’s brother, the people said. The conversations are a continuation of talks that
CAUTIOUS RECOVERY: While the manufacturing sector returned to growth amid the US-China trade truce, firms remain wary as uncertainty clouds the outlook, the CIER said The local manufacturing sector returned to expansion last month, as the official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose 2.1 points to 51.0, driven by a temporary easing in US-China trade tensions, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The PMI gauges the health of the manufacturing industry, with readings above 50 indicating expansion and those below 50 signaling contraction. “Firms are not as pessimistic as they were in April, but they remain far from optimistic,” CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said at a news conference. The full impact of US tariff decisions is unlikely to become clear until later this month
Nintendo Co hopes to match the runaway success of the Switch when its leveled-up new console hits shelves on Thursday, with strong early sales expected despite the gadget’s high price. Featuring a bigger screen and more processing power, the Switch 2 is an upgrade to its predecessor, which has sold 152 million units since launching in 2017 — making it the third-best-selling video game console of all time. However, despite buzz among fans and robust demand for pre-orders, headwinds for Nintendo include uncertainty over US trade tariffs and whether enough people are willing to shell out. The Switch 2 “is priced relatively high”
RSS