This Is What a $4,500 E-bike for You and Your Furry Family Members Looks Like

If you’ve never heard of Bunch Bike not a problem, most of us haven’t. But once we stumbled across this e-bike we just had to bring it to your attention. It’s called the K9 - 2020 Edition and is bringing accessible e-biking not just to us humans, but to our canine family and friends as well.

This e-bike has been specifically designed to assist in traveling with our furry companions. As such, certain modifications have been made as to accommodate more than just a human. So, let’s have a look to see what it can do any why someone would be charging more than $4,000 for an e-bike with a cargo hold, $4,495 to be more exact. And this definitely doesn’t include the $200 shipping charges.

Like any e-bike that is made to carry heavy loads, like one or even two dogs, the whole thing is setup with two wheels on the front axle and only one wheel at the rear. For the frame’s construction the team at bunch are using steel as the base material. True, this gives the bike a strong frame, but also a heavy one. How heavy? We don’t know. Bunch makes absolutely no mention on their website. But we do know it has a weight upwards of 220lbs. (100kg)

On the front of the bike, we see the cargo hold for our four-leggers. But it’s not just a simple box. Quite a bit thinking and design went into it. First off, it has a door that swings open at the front, so you won’t need to lift your dog over any plywood walls. Inside a folding dog bed and storage bench as found. But, if you feel that today you and the kids want to take a ride without the dogs, then just fold the dog bed up and use the bench for your kids to sit on. It’s even equipped with two three-point harnesses for safety.

Like any good e-bike, this one too requires a battery. A 48V 13.6Ah lithium-ion battery with Samsung cells that puts out 653Wh of juice. Because of such a high load this set-up is only good for a max of 35 miles (56km). But once empty, it’ll take up to six hours to recharge. It may sound like much, but when you think about taking your dogs out twice, maybe sometimes three times in a day, this will do just fine between morning and evening walks.

As for the motor for this hunk of steel, we find a 500W brushless and geared hub motor with an output of 45Nm of torque. As for how fast this motor will get everybody flying at, we have no info. Obviously, it won’t be anything too fast, as that’s not what this bike’s about, but at least 12mph (19kph) it should be able to achieve under that 45Nm motor.

The next and most important piece of this puzzle is the braking systems. Obviously, anytime you carry such heavy loads, and especially on the front of a vehicle, you’ll need excellent stopping power. So for the K9 we find top-shelf Tektro hydraulic brakes and 160mm rotors on both the front and rear wheels.

Throw on a side-pull thumb throttle, Samson double wall rims, Schwalbe Big Apple Performance Line tires, LCD display, and a cargo hold with a limit of 66lbs. (29kg), and this puppy hauler is ready to cruise around anytime.

Yeah, it's nice and neat that some company out there covers this niche off the market, but over four-grand for something that you might be able to build in your garage, I'm not too sure on. But then again that’s why it’s a niche market.