Bicycling is a great way of exercise but at one point, approaching yet another hill might not be that much fun anymore and your legs might need a break. Croatian startup Rimac Automobili knows about your pain and has thus launched the Greyp G12, a bicycle that can be turned into a motorcycle.
Greyp is a brand within Rimac Automobili, a car manufacturer in Sveta Nedelia, a small town near Zagreb. The idea for the bike-turned-motorcycle came from Zvonimir Sučić, a designer of high-performance electric bicycles and motorcycles, who joined Rimac Automobili as a mechanical engineer in 2010. Sučić has been developing and building electric bikes with the help of a couple of friends since 2001, Monika Mikac, PR manager of Rimac Automobili, told inventures.eu.
Although Sučić’s first bike, the Greyborg, was delivered to 27 countries, bike-building remained his hobby. CEO of Rimac Automobili, Mate Rimac (read our profile of him here), on the other hand, liked Sučić’s bikes but wanted to improve the technology. Together with six engineers, Sučić, Rimac and designer Adriano Mudri started to develop the first Greyp from scratch. The result looks more like a slim motorcycle than a bike. The add-on G12 is a tribute to engineer Sučić’s work, for this was the twelfth bike he designed.
Photo credit: Rimac Automobili“Our goal was to make the experience for our cutting-edge technology, developed primarily for supercars, accessible for a wider range of customers,” said Rimac. The bike-turned-motorcycle can reach 65 kilometres per hour top speed and a range of up to 120 kilometres without pedaling. The touchscreen mounted on the handle bar can be activated per fingerprint.
Greyp G12 is available for 6.000 euros and is sold by the company directly, as it hasn’t established a network of dealers yet. “We think about spinning Greyp off to another company,” said Mikac.
Getting a Greyp will probably require having a license. “Most EU countries consider two-wheeled electric vehicles motorcycles if they can reach a speed in excess of 25 kilometers per hour,” said Mikac. “The G12 has a special mode to comply with the regulations for road vehicles – which limits the speed and power.”
Saving energy is what it’s about – one can decide if it is the motor’s or the rider’s.
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