Campaign for E-Bikes

The dreaded commute is about to be revolutionised… More and more of us might soon be cycling the streets of Scotland – with a little something to power us on our way, says DAVID LEE

If bikes can be in your blood, then they are certainly free-wheeling merrily – or perhaps pedalling furiously – through Neil MacMartin’s veins.

This young entrepreneur, still well short of 30, started off working in his dad’s bike shop while at primary school and has taken the idea of cycling off in innovative new directions. His journey into the world of electric bikes has already taken him far – but he has very high hopes for his company, FreeFlow Bikes. MacMartin has a vision of electric bikes becoming the norm in cities across Scotland, and is also hopeful of striking a deal with a city in the Middle East.

He is a man on a mission, but it hasn’t been easy. Before joining The Entrepreneurial Exchange (in November 2010), he tells a familiar story of an aspiring business person who found finance and good advice hard to come by in Scotland.

“Before I joined the Exchange, it was massively difficult to use the right terminology and find the right people. I found some traditional business organisations very hard to deal with and felt I had to be careful what level of information I gave out.

“I had a much better reception once Scottish Enterprise and Scottish Development International (SDI) got involved, and lots of people started lifting their heads to take notice – but raising funds for a business is pretty much a joke in Scotland. I went over to China and it is much easier to talk to serious people who want to invest in new business ideas – and invest quickly.

“In Scotland, I’ve never seen anything happen in less than five months; investors wait for you to trip up so they can get in cheaper. I have had no investment in my business from Scotland – plenty of interest, no investment. Angel investors tend not to want to invest in family businesses and the banks are not keen to lend. It’s a very difficult, lengthy process – although the bike industry is one that thrives in a recession.”

The MacMartin family business started back in 1975 when Neil’s father started Craig MacMartin Cycles in Pollokshaws Road, Glasgow. MacMartin junior was involved since he was eight, but joined the business formally as a manager in 2005. Annual growth since then has been 33 per cent per annum and he became CEO in 2009. He attributes this high growth to a successful migration to online sales: “I had knowledge of online marketing and working for online stores, and I took my dad’s business plan – how he got customers, served customers and got information – and put it online.”
The online business name changed for the most prosaic of reasons – MacMartin was too tricky to spell and find online, so FreeFlow Bikes was born. Turnover doubled in a year and the companies ‘flipped’, with FreeFlow becoming the leading player.

So how did electric bikes come into the picture? “I have always had an inventive streak and started looking at the electric bike market. I initially found them heavy and ugly – and they didn’t feel like bikes when you were not powering them.

“It’s all about battery technology (and weight) and motor control technology. We need to bring down the weight of an average electric bike from 25-30kg to 18-20kg. There has been massive growth – about a quarter of Eurobike stands in 2008 had electric bikes and now it’s about 90 per cent.”

MacMartin concentrated his energies on the motor technology. “The conventional motors on the market are re-inventing the wheel,” he says, with a hint of irony. “The only way to get more power out of them is to put bigger, better magnets in – or draw more current from the battery, which means you need a bigger volume of battery. And magnets and batteries are very expensive.”

MacMartin explains how he looked at the equation Force = Mass x Acceleration. “Electric bikes were using a heavy mass with slow acceleration. I looked at how we could get the same result with a lower mass and faster acceleration.”

The problem he faced was how to stall a motor going incredibly fast – and avoid the instability created if a rider has to brake suddenly. MacMartin believes he has found a system that does just that, offering lots more control. He has patented it, or rather has patented what he sees as the key elements of it: “We made a list of items to patent but there were about 15 and it would have cost too much – so we looked what was the real key to it all.”

The SALTIRE e-bike at the heart of the FreeFlow strategy is a so-called Pedal-ec model; you have to pedal to get electric power, unlike throttle-controlled electric bikes, or hybrid versions. Once you get up to 3mph on the SALTIRE e-bike, you are propelled at 15mph.

The bikes should be ready by this summer and will be targeted at the domestic and export market. MacMartin cannot say much more than there is “a big deal” afoot in the Middle East, while Scottish cities are very much on FreeFlow’s radar. A key meeting in the first part of 2012 could see its SALTIRE e-bike operational in a Scottish city this year – though he can’t say which one.

“The target is any city that is not flat with more than average hill climbs of 4 per cent – like Glasgow, Edinburgh, Stirling, Seattle and Barcelona. These are places where bikes were once a main mode of transport. In the 1960s, about 80 per cent of people used bikes; now only 0.8 per cent of commuter journeys are by bike. As part of the 2020 targets, the UK has a flagship city to increase commuter cycling journeys to 10 per cent of the total – and Edinburgh is that city.”

Can it be done? “If they take on the SALTIRE e-bike scheme, I am sure it can,” MacMartin laughs.

He knows there are big cultural barriers to overcome: “Public transport has a real problem linking people to their end destination and 20 per cent more people say they would take the bus if it stopped outside their workplace. Surveys suggest people are prepared to walk up to nine blocks to work, but our experience is more like five blocks. The opportunity is to get people to collect a bike at the bus station or the park and ride and use that to get to work.”

MacMartin uses the example of a ‘classic’ journey of someone taking the train to Glasgow Central who wants to go on to Byers Road. “One person in a thousand might walk that journey – others take a taxi, bus or underground. We can get them there quicker than a bus, and in the same time as the underground – and they are getting good exercise, but not sweating when they get there.”

MacMartin says electric bikes can provide different solutions in different cities: “Some cities will want to underwrite the costs and offer the bikes for free, others might want to levy a charge and make a profit within a certain number of years. They might charge an annual fee, then offer a certain time period – half an hour or an hour – free, with an extra payment if you use it for longer.”

There will be different ways of operating the scheme too. MacMartin expects RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) cards or smartphone apps to be the most popular methods of ‘unlocking’ the bike for use and charging your account. Smartphone apps also bring with them the added benefit of data collection, such as the amount of carbon offset and calories burned on a journey.

There might also be ‘pay as you go’ schemes for tourists with a small charge of around £5, though this would necessitate a hefty deposit on a credit card, due to the high cost of the bikes. The current retail cost of the SALTIRE e-bike will be somewhere around £1600 and MacMartin concedes that large-scale, repeat-use city schemes are the way forward to make the technology pay for itself.

In the longer-term, he hopes that SALTIRE e-bikes might bring lapsed cyclists or those who have never really ridden bikes into the fold. “They might go for an electric bike, but in the longer term, we would hope some people will renew with a non-powered model. Ultimately we want to go back to the 60s mentality where people just jumped on their bikes.”

For more information about the SALTIRE e-bike and FreeFlow Bikes, visit FreeFlow Bikes or follow them on Twitter @FreeFlowBikes.

*Article taken from publication on Invicta’s website by David Lee