We’ve seen a lot of electric bike conversion kits over the years, but none are quite as interesting-looking as the . And now the company isn’t just standing out on the street, it’s also standing up and raising a $10M Series A funding round to expand its operations. We first started covering the Clip kit , when the invention was in its early stages but had already achieved its unicorn-like form.
In 2023, we finally got a chance to test out the Clip e-bike conversion kit in person in Amsterdam. You can see the testing experience in the video below, but the real takeaway is just how simple it seemed to install and remove the kit from a bike. That’s the real beauty of the Clip kit: The entire device is easily removable, returning the donor bike back into a pedal bike.
Some e-bike riders might want to go electric permanently, but others just want to occasionally give their pedal bike some boost, and that’s where the Clip kit comes in. It adds extra power when riders want it, but doesn’t leave extra bulk on the bike when it’s not needed. The physical drive system found in the kit isn’t the most innovative by itself, featuring a friction drive that spins the front tire via a roller system.
Friction drives were common on some of the earliest e-bikes over two decades ago, and weren’t without their own downsides. But their ability to avoid interfacing with the rest of the bike is one of their advantages, and a friction drive has never been implemented quite like the w.