Photo: Lotus
Simplify and add lightness. This is the motto that Lotus' founder Colin Chapman personified in all-too-short life. It's the mantra that's kept Lotus a true-to-form lightweight sports car maker long after all its rivals became huge and blobby. It's also the perfect design philosophy, as it turns out, for a performance road bicycle. Say hello to the Lotus Type 136, the kind of lightweight e-bike you could imagine Old Man Chapmin tootling around his old North London factory in.
Indeed, on first impressions alone, the Type 136 just looks like the kind of bike with the seal of approval from the first name in high-quality, lightweight sports cars. It wouldn't be the first time Lotus has tried their luck in the realm of two wheels. The Lotus Type 108 pursuit bike famously competed at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, where the Enligsh powerhouse Chris Boardman won the 400-meter pursuit race and broke a world record in doing so. At the time, the feat was the first Olympic gold medal by a British cyclist in 72 years.
Even as recently as 2020 (2021) Tokyo Summer Olympics, Lotus bikes were out in force ridden by British competitors. This same dedication to light, durable build materials, and sleek aerodynamics has made its way into a modern e-bike like a duck to water with the Type 136. Assembled painstakingly by hand in Italy, the Type 136 just barely scrapes under the ten-kilo mark at 9.8 kg (21.6 lbs). It owes this considerable lack of heft to a carbon fiber frame, which might legitimately weigh less than the wheels on this bike.
The Type 136 is powered by an HPS electric drivetrain, which, batteries and motor included, weighs just 1.2 kg (2.6 lbs). The electric motor alone only weighs 300 grams (0.66 lbs). So the literature says, this system was derived from a similar system found in the Mars Lander Project. So, in a sense, the Type 136 is actually part e-bike, part spacecraft.
With a sleek, aerodynamic frame sitting on an EV power train that weighs almost nothing, the Lotus Type 136 is the kind of bike that demands a high price just by virtue of its superior build materials. Even so, an asking price of £20,000 ($24,229, €25,000) for the limited edition first production run of the Type 136 is a little high for most working-class folk's budgets. That's without mentioning that only 136 examples of this special first edition will ever be made. But if you're still not convinced, maybe the British Olympic cycling hero Sir Chris Hoy could sway your opinion.
"This is an incredible bike, which says so much about the pioneering endeavors of Lotus and the iconic status of its bikes over the years," Sir Hoy said about Lotus' exclusive new e-bike. " As a teenager, I vividly remember watching Chris Boardman powering Type 108 to a gold medal in Barcelona in 1992 and smashing records on Type 110 to wear the yellow jersey in the Tour de France two years later." Is nostalgia worth 20 grand? It could be for some.
Even as recently as 2020 (2021) Tokyo Summer Olympics, Lotus bikes were out in force ridden by British competitors. This same dedication to light, durable build materials, and sleek aerodynamics has made its way into a modern e-bike like a duck to water with the Type 136. Assembled painstakingly by hand in Italy, the Type 136 just barely scrapes under the ten-kilo mark at 9.8 kg (21.6 lbs). It owes this considerable lack of heft to a carbon fiber frame, which might legitimately weigh less than the wheels on this bike.
The Type 136 is powered by an HPS electric drivetrain, which, batteries and motor included, weighs just 1.2 kg (2.6 lbs). The electric motor alone only weighs 300 grams (0.66 lbs). So the literature says, this system was derived from a similar system found in the Mars Lander Project. So, in a sense, the Type 136 is actually part e-bike, part spacecraft.
With a sleek, aerodynamic frame sitting on an EV power train that weighs almost nothing, the Lotus Type 136 is the kind of bike that demands a high price just by virtue of its superior build materials. Even so, an asking price of £20,000 ($24,229, €25,000) for the limited edition first production run of the Type 136 is a little high for most working-class folk's budgets. That's without mentioning that only 136 examples of this special first edition will ever be made. But if you're still not convinced, maybe the British Olympic cycling hero Sir Chris Hoy could sway your opinion.
"This is an incredible bike, which says so much about the pioneering endeavors of Lotus and the iconic status of its bikes over the years," Sir Hoy said about Lotus' exclusive new e-bike. " As a teenager, I vividly remember watching Chris Boardman powering Type 108 to a gold medal in Barcelona in 1992 and smashing records on Type 110 to wear the yellow jersey in the Tour de France two years later." Is nostalgia worth 20 grand? It could be for some.
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