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Bicycles

General Motors wheels out its first commuter-focused e-bikes

By Nick Lavars
February 15, 2019
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General Motors is launching its first e-bikes in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands
General Motors
After teasing its first line of e-bikes in November last year, General Motors has today gone the full reveal
General Motors
General Motors is launching its first e-bikes in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands
General Motors
General Motors' folding Merge e-bike, in compact form
General Motors
General Motors' first e-bikes will have a top speed of 25 km/h
General Motors
General Motors first e-bikes will cover 64 km on each charge
General Motors
General Motors' folding Merge e-bike, in compact form
General Motors
General Motors first e-bikes will have a top speed of 25 km/h
General Motors
After teasing its first line of e-bikes in November last year, General Motors has today gone the full reveal
General Motors
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After teasing its first line of e-bikes in November last year, General Motors has today gone for the full reveal, showing off a pair of compact two-wheelers powered by an in-house purpose built electric motor.

GM is offering its Meld and Merge e-bikes under the spinoff brand ARĪV, which is the result of a crowdsourced naming competition that offered a US$10,000 reward for the winning suggestion. The name might be different but GM says the bikes lean very much on expertise gained through its electric car efforts, to be spearheaded by the recently revealed Cadillac crossover EV.

Both bikes are based on a simple frame, with a curved tube running from the seat tube to the head tube as a single unit and splitting into seat stays and wheel forks at either end. A mid-drive electric motor and battery are positioned underneath, offering 64 km (40 mi) of range and four levels of pedal-assisted power up to 25 km/h (15 mph).

General Motors first e-bikes will cover 64 km on each charge
General Motors

Rechargeable LEDs feature both at the front and back of the bikes, which also come equipped with a USB port and the excellent Quad Lock mount for securing smartphones to the handlebars. Here, the handset can be used to display the companion ARĪV smartphone app that presents useful tidbits like speed, battery levels and distance traveled.

Both the Meld and Merge were cooked up with commuters in mind and are therefore compact, though the Merge takes things one step further with a folding joint in the middle that splits it in two. The bikes also come with "Walk" mode, which engages the motor to lighten the load when pushing them uphill.

General Motors is launching the bikes in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands to begin with, citing heightened interest in e-bikes in those locales. The pricing for the Meld and Merge in the Netherlands and Belgium is €2,800 (US$3,160) and €3,400 (US$3,840), respectively. German customers will pay a little less, with the Meld priced at €2,750 (US$3,100) and the Merge at €3,350 (US$3,780). Both can be pre-ordered via bikeexchange.com, with shipping to kick off in the second quarter of 2019.

Source: General Motors

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BicyclesGeneral MotorsFoldable bikeebikesNew Atlas Audio
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Nick Lavars
Nick has been writing and editing at New Atlas for over six years, where he has covered everything from distant space probes to self-driving cars to oddball animal science. He previously spent time at The Conversation, Mashable and The Santiago Times, earning a Masters degree in communications from Melbourne’s RMIT University along the way.
12 comments
Don Martin
A bike dedicated to commuters apparently without the possibility to attach a luggage rack? Did they ever observe commuters at all?
MerlinGuy
Stick to cars.
Jeff Goldstein
The bikes aren't anything special but are way overpriced. I am still waiting to see a mass produced e-bike selling for under $1,000. Battery technology just isn't very good yet. Someone needs to find a way to mass produce rechargeable batteries for a lot less money than currently.
McDesign
Huh - my entry to name them was "GM-E" - pronounced "gimmee".
Far better than "ARIV".
Sheesh
Daishi
I'm curious what percentage of ebikes are foldable? I've seen a handful of ebikes in the wild and in bike racks outside offices but none of them are foldable. I get that people are less likely to put a foldable bike in a bike rack than a normal one but I know a couple people that use electric scooters for portability. These seem to fill a small expensive niche between ebikes and electric scooters which have both come a long way recently. Electric scooters are easy to fold. I think an electric scooter with larger diameter wheels would be interesting in that space because potholes and curbs are unforgiving on the tiny wheels most scooters use.
Cudaboy
Too expensive; and being typical of GM it is ugly as heck. Makes the Bolt look - no, wait - the Bolt is still nauseating. 👀
mediabeing
No luggage rack and NO shock absorption. Oh yeah, I want an overpriced load like this. Wake up, GM.
highlandboy
So the company that killed the electric car the first time round want to create an electric bike. I suppose they want to make it garbage too.
TomLeeM
I think that is an interesting design for an e-bike. It seems rather expensive. One would hope that it would be less expensive since it is coming from GM. Perhaps get a discount when one buys a GM BEV?
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