Originally Posted by
CEBEP
Fair enough, what I don’t get is why not allow Asian OEM producers sell these bags as accessory and earn money. Just as they sell frames and let OEM producers choose the rest of the components themselves. It’s not critical for me by any means to get exactly this bag, as there are billion bags available for bikes. I just don’t understand their business model. Why not make bag specifically designed for Birdy available wider, through the same Asian dealers if R&M don’t want to market themselves. It’s not a nuclear fuel where you need to control supply channels after all.
All Asian OEM are allowed to sell parts and accessories for the Birdy in Europe and US.
But they don't do it because nowadays the amount of Birdy sold in Europe is too small and in the US its even smaller.
The pnly thng that isn't allowed its to sell complete Birdy in Europe and US which market are owned by R&M who is the owner of the intellectual property of the Birdy (they designed it). Pacific Cycles is allowed to sell outside Europe and US but not allowed to modify the Birdy. They can only make some special series Birdy with other frames (like the Titanium Birdy and 40 year Birdy, at a certain moment it seemed this one would become a standard model of Pacific Cycles but then Pacific Cycles denied that this would happen)).
Originally Posted by
jackyharuhiko
Yes. Here the Birdy is being viewed as a high end folding bike ranked with the Brompton but has a reputation of being faster and stabler in riding. It’s also very popular (although not as popular as few years ago since a lot of people ride road bikes now).Since except the front hub and the BB, the Birdy can be swapped with standard MTB or Road Bike parts. Nevertheless, there are a lot of accessories specifically made for Birdy and most bike shops offer modification of the Birdy.
Having both a Brompton and two Birdy, I can attest that it is the case: the Birdy is stabler and equipped with a derailleur or Rohloff its also quite faster than the Brompton.
The bottom bracket box of the frame is standard too, its only the front hub of the Birdy disc which is proprietary (the one of the Birdy with rim brakes is also standard).
Originally Posted by
glye
At SPEZI 2013 I test rode a Birdy ebike. Likely R&M since it's in Germany. Anyway, if this is something they were considering as a product, then it appears they gave up on the idea. It was using a Nuvinci gear hub, a front motor hub, and a battery pack on the handlepost. Bolt-on solutions that don't require any changes to the frame. While the Pacific e-Birdy seems to be a singlespeed with a rear hub motor, batteries inside the hub. Neither are really good ebike solutions. To achieve that the frame must be designed for it.
The Pacific Cycle e-Birdy uses a Zehus rear wheel with everything in it, motor, battery, controller. But its a bad solution because the battery is very small and only one speed (seems Zehus will have a 4s version). The reason they did that is probably because its very simple to make and more important it doesn't require any frame modification that they aren't allowed to do without approval of R&M.
For R&M itself, they were only using Bosch system that requires a specific frame and doesn't fit into a small folding bike like the Birdy
They now have also a series of ebike with the new Fazua system, its a little bit smaller and weight less than the Bosch system (not that much anymore since the latest Performance Line CX Bosch motor is smaller and weight much less than previously) but it also requires a specific frame. Putting it into a Birdy would require a huge and complex frame modification and would result in a very expensive eBirdy what would limit the amount sold (the Birdy is already close to the price of a Brompton Electric, adding a high end expensive Fazua motor would end up with a close to 5K€ eBirdy).
A simpler solution would be a eBirdy with a Mahle Ebikemotion rear hub motor that accepts a real cassette and derailleur transmission but R&M doesn't work with Mahle and its also a relatively expensive solution.
I am pretty sure that R&M would never use a Chinese ebike solution.