Envo Drive, a Canadian company that specializes in making electric propulsion kits for bikes and kayaks, is taking pre-orders for its “electric snowbike kit.” In short, the kit is pretty simple. You take a bike, replace its rear wheel with the kit’s electrically-powered snow track, and replace the front wheel with a snowboard that attaches to the forks and allows the rider to steer. The battery is attached where a bottle cage would typically mount in the middle of the frame. The drive comes from the snowmobile-style track at the rear, which has 1,200 watts of power and 120 Nm of torque. That’s a lot! [Read: How to build a search engine for criminal data] Of course, it’s a bicycle so the rider is still free to pedal as normal to power the track. Check out the video below showing how it all works. According to Envo, the snowbike kit has a top speed of 11 mph, which is good going for snow. But sadly, because of how hard it is traveling across snow, its range is just six miles. It then takes eight hours to charge the battery, which is, um, not that practical. There’s no sign if it can be fast-charged. Earlier this year, we looked at a removable ebike conversion kit from Bimotal, which attached to a bike at its brake mountings; that one costs around $2,000. Given the amount of kit and how specialist the Envo system is, it doesn’t seem that expensive in comparison — it’s $2,092. Obviously, we’re not going to see this sell in droves, unless we’re thrown into some kind of apocalyptic winter. But it makes perfect sense for the Canadian winters, if you have the cash. What’s more, Envo says this is a “state-of-the-art Canadian invention,” which is the first time I’ve ever written that sentence. So that’s something. HT – Inceptive Mind SHIFT is brought to you by Polestar. It’s time to accelerate the shift to sustainable mobility. That is why Polestar combines electric driving with cutting-edge design and thrilling performance. Find out how
