Carmaker Mini will launch a range of electric bikes designed by connected bike brand Angell and produced in France by Seb, the French company announced Thursday. Angell won a tender to develop, manufacture and distribute a range of bicycles for five years in collaboration with the Mini teams.
The British brand, revived in 2000 by the BMW Group, plans to launch two new models of electric cars in 2023 and plans to be 100% electric by 2030. The first motorcycles will be designed based on the Angells, and will be manufactured like them in the Factory from Seb in Is-sur-Tille, north of Dijon (Côte d’Or). They should be available from the winter of 2023/2024, and distributed in “various networks”, indicated the two brands.
When Angell launched in 2019, “we hit the car pretty hard, individually and thermally,” said its founder, French entrepreneur Marc Simoncini, who had previously launched dating site Meetic. “But from the moment the car becomes electric and less individual, we tell ourselves that the fight is won. And the Mini is very urban, it is our main objective and our experience,” continued Marc Simoncini.
5000 copies sold
The high-end brand also intends to grow by releasing a new product every six months, starting with a helmet and then new bikes. With an e-bike market that has exploded since 2020, “the myth of the universal bike will suffer, the practices will become more mature,” explained John Mollanger, director of Angell.
Like its competitors Cowboy and Vanmoof, it started with a first and only fairly urban and lightweight bike that sold 5,000 examples between its 2020 launch and the early 2022 release of a second, more comfortable model. For their part, industry stories like Cannondale or Specialized cover all subcategories of the bike. “There is such a big gap that we can do something different,” as long as it stays in the city bike category, John Mollanger wants to believe.
The brand will also expand its distribution network, initially intended to be 100% direct: it will soon be distributed in around fifty stores in Europe, in particular so that customers can test drive the bikes. Ultimately, Angell hopes to double its sales by 2023. Pricing for the future Mini range has not been specified, but Angell bikes are offered for around €3,000. Angell doesn’t rule out the idea of a folding bike, which would fit in the trunk of a Mini.
Source: BFM TV
