A recent company’s funding may make the dream of turning Boston into the Copenhagen of the United States into a reality. Thanks to Cambridge startup Superpedestrian, Boston will now have access to the Copenhagen Wheel, an invention out of MIT that transforms bicycles into hybrid e-bikes that function as mobile sensing units. Basically, the wheel allows riders to capture the energy lost when braking and saves it for when you need a boost of energy to propel yourself through places like the mountainous Beacon Hill.
Superpedestrian announced Monday they have received $2.1 million in Series A funding from venture capital firm Spark Capital, with participation from Tumblr Founder and CEO David Karp.
Superpedestrian was founded by MIT SENSEable City Laboratory Associate Director Assaf Biderman, who was also on the team that invented the Copenhagen Wheel. He, along with Carlo Ratti, the lab's director, created a wheel that is the instrument behind Superpedestrian’s plan to commercialize the patented wheel technology to connect people with their environment.
“With the backing of Spark and David, and a founding team comprised of creative people in the areas of networked computing, electro-magnetics, city planning and design, we’re now less than 60 days away from introducing the first-ever commercial model for the Copenhagen Wheel,” Biderman said in today’s release. He added that the rider benefits of the Copenhagen Wheel include hills feeling flattened, distances shrunk and also that it is connected through a series of apps that allow riders to personalize and control their bikes.
The wheel includes a sensor kit that monitors carbon monoxide, mono-nitrogen oxides, noise, relative humidity and temperature. What sets the wheel apart from other electric bikes, according to the Copenhagen Wheel team, is that it does not pull the rider down with external wiring or bulky battery packs. It's retrofittable to any bike. With all of these features, riding your bike may become more enjoyable than driving your car.
It’s no wonder then that the founding team of Superpedestrian includes world-recognized engineers, architects and academics, all former team members of companies like Segway, TeleAtlas, Nokia and MillenWorks.
“The Superpedestrian team has come up with one of the most innovative means of urban travel to be introduced in recent decades,” Spark Capital Co-Founder and General Partner Santo Politi said in the release. “Assaf and his team have taken the world’s most common mode of transport—the bicycle—and completely transformed it.”
The Copenhagen Wheel was revealed four years ago by the the SENSEable team at the COP15 United Nations Climate Conference. It is slated to be released by Superpedestrian, along with technical details and video demonstrations, in late November.
If you’re unsure how to feel about this, read some of the pros and cons of biking to work. With this new invention, the pros list just got a little longer.
