MAKE WAY Ateneo—the world’s first Bamboo Electric Bike (E-bike) is about to hit campus roads, move uphill to conquer Philippine tourist spots, and eventually pedal its way to world recognition.
Developed by French Exchange Students Alexis Flipo and Amelie Cottin from Institut Catholiques d’Arts et Metiers (ICAM) in cooperation with the Ateneo Innovation Center (AIC), the Bamboo E-bike is the hybrid of AIC Director Gregory Tangonan’s original idea of a bamboo bike and the French students’ idea of an electric bike.
AIC’s Junior Operations Officer Matthew Cua said that although publicly promoted as a bamboo E-bike, it is actually a power-assisted bamboo bike.
“It has a motor that will aid the rider when it comes to hills and other slopes with the press of a button,” added co-head of the E-bike team Elijah Nonnatus Adamos.
Adamos is also the President of the Ateneo Environmental Society.
The E-bike is made out of 90% bamboo, 5% metal and 5% abaca. It is front wheel-powered via an electric motor, while the pedals at the back. The set-up provides riders an option of cycling in the conventional way or via electric motor.
It weighs 18 kilograms, five kilograms lighter than most European bicycles.
Green is in
The conception of the Bamboo E-Bike is aligned with AIC’s objective of developing and further exploring ‘Green Technology’.
Joseph Lara, also co-head of the E-bike team, said that bamboo as a material for technology has a lot of potential. “Bamboo is versatile material. From houses to bags, bamboo can be used. Now that people have discovered its use for building bicycles, who knows what else we can make from it?”
Part-time faculty Gilbert Peren said that bamboo is an indigenous material and is thus valuable.
“It has a commercial value on its own. For example you have tourists [and] they see a bamboo bike, they would want their picture taken beside that and they would also like to ride that,” he added.
According to Cua, Tangonan thought of creating a bamboo bike during the previous school year but wasn’t able to push through with it because of the lack of a team who would handle the project.
As luck would have it, Cottin and Flipo came to the country to accomplish their thesis. Both initially wanted to make an Electric Bike Kit that is cheaper than the ones in Europe.
Through Tangonan’s advice, they integrated the idea of creating a bamboo bike and an electric bike.
Supersenior Ricson Chua, who helped in the monitoring of the batteries, said, however, that the technology they came up with was available only to bicycles and is “not ready for cars yet.”
Ateneo as testing grounds
The Loyola Heights campus will serve as the E-Bike’s test field. Currently, there is one Bamboo E-bike shared by AIC and Bambike. The two organizations will also coordinate to build ten more bike units.
Bambike is a socio-ecological enterprise created with the aim of selling bamboo bikes built by Gawad Kalinga (GK) villagers.
Ten E-bikes and five scooters will be scattered throughout campus and will be made available for trial rounds to anyone interested.
Tourism boost
The E-Bike has already been presented to the Senate and has shown promise in boosting tourism in the country.
“In other countries, bamboo bikes would be unusable. In the Philippines, we have…tourist spots [where] you can bike around. ” said Cua.
Cua and AIC Operations Officer Paul Cabacungan are now also working with Hapinoy to conceive of ways in which the Bamboo E-bike could be used for water delivery or waste management.
Hapinoy is a microfinance project that focuses on sari-sari stores in the Philippines.
Cua said that it was a “fair trade system,” a win-win situation for all parties involved, although he acknowledges that the bicycles were somewhat expensive.
Currently, AIC is in the process of planning the deployment of the Bamboo E- bikes and soon, the development of the Bamboo Electric Scooters which will be designed to carry heavier loads. Its members are currently in negotiations with the Manila Observatory and other potential sponsors for possible collaboration.
Dear Editor,
I would like to point out that the banner statement “Innovation center, French students pioneer world’s first bamboo e-bike” of this article is erroneous. The French students made a presentation of their electric bamboo bike on Saturday December 11, 2010 at around 2pm at the Ateneo in CTC 315. I told them that I wasn’t claiming that KawayanTech’s bamboo electric bike, the Electric Eric 350, is the world’s first. But when it was launched on September 19, 2010 it certainly came out ahead of their version.
Alexis Flipo stated that he made the erroneous claim of having the world’s first electric bamboo bike when his search on the internet for electric bamboo bike didn’t come up with anything.
Below is the content of Dr. Greg Tangonan’s e-mail to me and the concerned parties asking that they correct any impression on the public regarding their statement.
“Guys this is the reference that we missed on http://kawayantech.wordpress.com/
please correct any impression that we are the first in the Philippines to do make this bike, it is not true and not correct.
we have to thank Mr Cadiz of KawayanTech for pointing our error.
I have asked to come and visit the Ateneo to see if they would be interested in working with us on the Green Transport project.
please correct the site citation asap.”
I do know that the statement claiming to have the world’s first bamboo electric bike has also been made in national television via ANC. Those who have watched the show would now have the wrong information and I have no means of correcting this. However, I would like for Guidon to please make a correction to what it has published.
Thank you,
Federico T. Cadiz GS ’74