The Sherpa Folding Electric Bike

“The Sherpa accelerates as quick as a car, stops quicker, and can be ridden legally on footpaths, bike paths and it cuts straight through traffic snarls like a motorcycle does.

“As it goes faster than a fit racing cyclist and does so for much longer, in most cases the Sherpa will get to the same destination within a minute or two of a car.

“The Sherpa has a moulded aluminium frame, which is a more costly manufacturing process, but it has many advantages in that there are no welds and joins, so it’s stronger.

One of the other advantages of the Sherpa is that the battery is designed to be easily removed.

“If you’re riding it in to work,” said de Wit, you can lock it up downstairs and take the battery inside to charge it. A full charge takes four hours, but you’ll get 60% of the battery capacity inside an hour.” The Sherpa also has a smart charger which is similar in size and shape to a laptop charger, which means you can carry it easily and plug it in at any stage of discharge and leave it for as long as you wish. So if you’re stopping for a sandwich somewhere, and there’s a friendly shopkeeper, you can top up your battery while you stop for half an hour. There is also no memory effect, which means you can charge up when and where you wish and when the battery is fully charged, the charger goes into maintenance mode, maintaining the battery at full charge.

The Sherpa also has top quality stoppers - front and rear disk brakes – though it doesn’t have any suspension.

“In designing the bike we decided that the suspension compromised the weight and compactness too much”, said de Wit.

“We wanted to ensure we hit the right price points and the design attributes we were seeking for this machine were for it to be small and light and affordable.

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