World's First 5G-Enabled e-Bike Is Designed for Rider Safety, and It's a Complete Mystery

Orbic is a U.S. company specializing in connectivity options – an "international leader in sustainable electronic innovation," as they describe themselves. It works with local carriers to offer a wide range of solutions and products, from accessories to hotspots and routers, tablets, phones, and laptops. What it does not offer is anything remotely to do with mobility.

Ok, put that in the past tense: Orbic didn't offer mobility products. Until just now, when they've introduced what they call the world's first 5G-enabled e-bike, which uses AI to guarantee rider safety and boasts features that encourage connectivity and an enhanced rider experience.

Orbic is at the 2024 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain (February 26-29), and their booth includes one such record-setting bike. It's called the Orbic 5G e-Bike, which scores no points for originality in the name but deserves credit for aiming high: to hail a new era of environmentally friendly, smart transportation.

With the e-bike bubble, we've seen some pretty strange or downright amazing proposals for electric bicycles that would change the game forever in one way or another. With most, all that extra tech on top of a two-wheeler felt like trying too hard, like paying extra for a bike that wouldn't make much of a difference to your everyday life. Do we really need an e-bike with blockchain tech, especially now that the NFT craze has died down?

But the Orbic promises to do more than something as silly as getting you into NFTs: it promises to safeguard your safety. Because it comes with 5G connectivity and uses artificial intelligence, it can integrate object avoidance and collision detection technology. Sensors and a 140-degree camera system monitor the bike's surroundings, and you get warnings on potential hazards directly on the display in the cockpit.

A 2019 study revealed that drivers, pedestrians, and even cyclists themselves regard other cyclists as not entirely human but rather as something between a cockroach and a person. This goes a long way to explain the number of accidents involving cyclists. Since you can't change others' perception of cyclists, perhaps the next best thing is to give them a bike that would look out for them, which is what Orbic wants to do.

The Orbic 5G e-Bike is equipped with three cameras. There's a front-facing 64MP camera made for livestreaming your adventures, an 8MP camera on the display facing the rider and ideal for making video calls (*hopefully, not when you're riding), and a 2MP rear camera that monitors traffic behind you.

The cockpit is dominated by a 7-inch all-weather touchscreen display that does what all the other smaller bike displays do, meaning it shows stats like battery charge, speed, distance, and PAS. What the others displays can't do is show real-life maps and tracking, which the Orbic 5G can do because of 5G connectivity.

Speaking of which, this e-bike can also double as a hotspot wherever you need it and can connect to other bikes to form a community of like-minded riders.

The official description that went live as the bike made its big debut mentions a top maximum speed of 45 kph (28 mph) for the bike. Photos show it riding on fat tires, but there's nothing extraordinary about it visually: the frame is fairly standard, with a mid-mounted motor and the battery encased in the downtube, and front shock absorbers.

Given the MCW debut, the strange thing is that there's not a single mention of the bike online, aside from a video that plays on a loop on the official Orbic website. CEO Mike Nirula did speak with some media outlets at the event, so make no mistake: this is a real product, and it's really coming to cyclists everywhere.

A tentative delivery timeline is set for later this year, which is when more specifics on the bike should be made public.

Nirula says that this is his pet project and that he's been working on it for the past 18 months. They're still working on pricing, and their job is all the more difficult because they want to bundle the bike with an Orbic helmet that instantly connects to the e-bike when you put it on. In fact, it sounds like the e-bike will only work with the helmet.

"By integrating 5G connectivity and AI technology, we aim to redefine the riding experience, making it safer, more connected, and environmentally responsible whether on city streets, in suburban neighborhoods or the challenging terrain of mountain trails. The 5G e-Bike represents a significant leap forward in electronic mobility," Nirula says.

All this may very well be true, but this kind of tech and the prerequisite of a similarly smart helmet can only mean one thing: this will be exclusively a toy for the rich.