GM Joins eBike Market, Asks Consumers for Brand Name

General Motors officially enters the bicycle business with the introduction of a pair of unbranded eBikes, one folding and another compact, an innovation the automaker sees as one answer to easing mobility in increasingly difficult-to-navigate urban landscapes.

GM announces the arrival of the unbranded eBikes with an appeal to biking enthusiasts to name the products. The winner of the global naming game will receive a $10,000 prize. Nine other runner-up contestants submitting their name for the eBikes will receive $1,000 each.

“As an avid cyclist and urban commuter, I know how great it feels to get where I’m going easily and to show up sweat-free,” says Hannah Parish, director-Urban Mobility Solutions, at GM. “We blended electrification engineering know-how, design talents and automotive-grade testing with great minds from the bike industry to create our eBikes.”

The contest begins Nov. 2 at eBikeBrandChallenge.com and runs through Monday, Nov. 26 at 10 a.m. (EST). The automaker says it wants simple, smart and bold concepts capable of bringing the eBike brand to life, and it suggests fun ideas capable of being understood around the world. But do not submit names that could be considered jokey, punny, offensive, complicated or difficult to pronounce, GM says. Winners will be announced early next year.

GM Chairman and CEO Mary Barra first announced the eBikes during an October 2015 briefing to journalists and Wall Street analysts disclosing the automaker’s future mobility strategy.

“We are working to redefine personal mobility and how (people) will get from point A to point B, going forward,” Barra said at the time. “We have a strong foundation to get there.”

Elements of the automaker’s future mobility plan from that briefing included a number of other items beyond the eBikes it now has begun executing, such as car-sharing through its Maven brand; autonomous-vehicle deployment though its Cruise R&D group expected to occur in 2019; further development of its hydrogen-fuel-cell program; and a mixed-material and mixed-metal engineering and manufacturing approach making vehicles such as the redesigned Chevrolet Silverado large pickup 450 lbs. (204 kg) lighter.

In the three years since GM revealed its future mobility plan, the automaker also has adopted a corporate vision for zero emissions, zero crashes and zero congestion. The eBikes would play a role by, for example, getting people in densely urban environments to work without transit headaches, while getting exercise and with a form of mobility much more affordable than a car.

The bikes were designed at GM’s Oshawa, ON, Canada, engineering and development center. The automaker plans to begin selling them next year. Pricing will be released closer to the on-sale date.

According to the research group Statista, the global eBike market is expected to reach $24.3 billion by 2025 from about $15.7 billion in 2016.

GM’s folding eBike.