Derringer electric "board track" bicycle

Los Angeles made | Battery powered | Li-NMC | 

These guys from Los Angeles have been building and selling petrol- powered bicycles for a while now, so it was perhaps inevitable that sooner or later they'd move onto electrics. Their latest creation is the e-bike. It's available in three options:

Derringer Heritage Series. 37-volt 12.5Ah Li-NMC battery. 750W gearless hub motor. Street legal in various markets. $3,500.

Derringer Signature Series. 52-volt 12.5 Ah Li-NMC battery. 2000W high-torque gearless or geared hub motor. The power output, we hear, can be electronically limited to 750W/20mph where legally applicable. $4,500.

Derringer Bespoke Series. 63-volt 12.5 Ah Li-NMC battery. 2800W high-torque gearless hub motor. $6,500.

The batteries are in the dummy fuel tank. The electronic controller lives in the aluminium box under the saddle. The bike frames are made from chrome-moly. The finished product is hand-assembled in the City of the Angels. And there are more colours than the United Nations and Benetton combined.

We don't know how fast the top-end bikes can go, but we can imagine a skinny guy or girl getting up a fair head of steam. Well, electric steam.

It seems there's a "Kickstarter" pledging system at work in which backers promise money, and if enough is reached, the bikes are actually built and released. The manufacturers (or would-be manufacturers) need to generate $75,000 by 22nd January 2014, which is around three weeks away. It's not clear what happens if the pledging falls short and the project fails. Either way, we're not very impressed with this kind of buying system. We prefer the idea where a manufacturer puts his or her money where their mouth is. But then, we're an old fashioned bunch here at Sump. And there's probably no cure.

Overall, the Derringer electric bike, with its faux 1920s board racer appeal, looks okay. Cool-ish even. But there's only so much trendy retro a guy can take, and we've got a 50 or 60 year old Humber in the garage that still has a few miles left on the tyres.

And electric? Well we love the stuff in a light bulb, the hairdryer and the TV. But we're not yet ready to juice up our pushbikes with it just yet.

Maybe next year, huh?

www.derringercycles.com

— The Third Man