'Acer has not only adopted an unfamiliar design but also hedged their bets on AI features' What it's like riding Acer's futuristic electric bike

$4,999.99 USD

single-armed front fork

not a foldable e-bike

airless tires

a SIM card

the ebiiGo app

Every single one of these design decisions – except the single front fork – seems entirely unjustified when taken together as a whole. This is not an ebike for actual use, but a technical demo, not unlike proof-of-concept automobiles that never make it to series production. But the reason those cars never see production is because they’re often exceedingly impractical, like when mechanical engineers go racing in concrete boats. They do it for the challenge and the lolz.

But unlike cars, the triumph of lithium ion batteries and cheap production costs means that ebikes like this can actually enter production. But should it have? I don’t think so. We are basically using time, energy, and resources to build instant ewaste. It’s the fast fashion problem, but with ebikes.