VanMoof S5 Electric Bike

VanMoof S5 had the cleanest frame design of any e-bike on the market. With the battery hidden inside the top tube and the motor integrated into the front hub so the silhouette read as a regular bike rather than an electric 1. Integrated headlight and taillight were built into the frame itself. Anti-theft tracking used a cellular connection and an alarm that activated when the bike moved without being unlocked. VanMoof went bankrupt in 2023 and was acquired by Lavoie, which tells you the design ambition outpaced the engineering execution. I liked what the S5 represented even if the reliability problems were real. Question it asked, whether an e-bike could be a design object rather than a utility vehicle, was the right question.