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People love to ride their bikes when the weather is nice but, even if the weather is a little bad, you will see people putting away their rash guards and helmets and taking their car keys.

However, Norwegian company CityQ has designed a bike that it says offers the “comfort, safety and flexibility” of a car while maintaining the footprint of a bicycle. CityQ’s bikes weigh around 100 pounds but retain full weather protection, four wheels and disc brakes.

Auto Futures caught up with Morten Rynning, the founder and CEO of CityQ, to learn more about his bikes and the company behind them.

Rynning explains that the bikes are part of a modular platform that can be tailored to meet consumer needs, whether they need cargo boxes or other features.

Likewise, bicycles, while occupying the same roads as cars, do not need the same type approval or costly and time-consuming safety tests. This might sound worrying to some, but, as Rynning says, bikes won’t go as fast or on open roads as cars – they’re designed for narrow city center streets and can only reach 25 km/h .

The bikes will launch in Germany, the UK and across Scandinavia starting in small-scale production this year, before moving into “full-scale production” in 2023.

CityQ was not the only company to bring electrified solutions for city centers to MOVE this year.

Bolt’s Johnny Munro, for example, told us that while sounding the death knell for private car ownership was “unrealistic”, the company’s mix of carpooling, e-bikes and e-scooters gives city dwellers an option perfect at low cost. to move around towns.

Similarly, Rachad Youssef, chief product officer of BrightDrop, explained how his company’s Zevo 600 electric vans and electric-powered Trace cargo boxes help humanize last-mile delivery for often underpaid and overworked employees in industry.