This French company has designed the first e-bike that doesn’t need a battery

If riding a bike on a daily basis is too much of a challenge for you, you might be tempted to opt for an e-bike.

The issue with those is that the production of the batteries consumes a lot of natural resources such as lithium or rare-earth elements which require extensive and often environmentally impactful mining procedures.

French entrepreneur Adrien Lelièvre, however, has engineered a pioneering, sustainable solution.

The inventor, who has a background in electronics, designed and patented an e-bike called Pi-Pop, one that doesn’t use lithium batteries but supercapacitors.

“The system gets charged when the ride is easy and when the bike brakes - thanks to engine braking - the energy is given back when needed,” Lelièvre, the director of STEE, the company behind the bike, told Euronews Next.

To put it simply, a supercapacitor works by stocking energy in an electrostatic way, or by way of a slow-moving charge. In contrast, a lithium battery stocks energy as a chemical reaction. In other words, a supercapacitor can stock and release energy very quickly when it is needed. In the case of its bike, it means stocking energy when the person pedals or brakes and using it to assist more difficult actions like restarting or uphill riding.

Lelievre estimates that the assistance offered to the rider by the bike’s supercapacitors is enough to handle an elevation gain of 50 m if charged on a flat beforehand, making it suitable for around 80 per cent of European cities.

The concept of a supercapacitor is not a new innovation in itself; the first ones were manufactured at the end of the 1970s. Today, they are used in photovoltaic systems (such as solar panels), digital cameras and some hybrid or electric vehicles to improve their performance.