Circular, Data-driven Value Network around S-pedelecs (CaDaNS)

Realising full growth potential of bicycles as a sustainable means of mobility

Research centre Flanders Make and bicycle manufacturer Aska Bike jointly launched the Living Lab "Circular, Data-Driven Value Network around S-pedelecs (CaDaNS)". With this Living Lab, they want to exploit the full growth potential of the (electric) bicycle as a sustainable means of mobility and investigate how the life cycle of bicycles can be made as sustainable as possible.

Electric bikes are 20 to 50 times more environmentally friendly than electric cars, emitting 2 to 5 grams of CO2 per kilometre driven. But even if you charge your bike's battery with green electricity, there can be CO2 emissions along the entire sustainability chain, as bikes are produced in countries where the electricity mix is not yet as green. Electric bikes also include a lot of rare, valuable materials. So those who care about sustainability should choose a quality bicycle and use it for as long as possible.

Until now, the bicycle industry has mainly focused on selling as many new bicycles as possible. Large foreign suppliers of bicycle components often make new versions that deliberately do not match older versions of their components. In addition, cheap electric bikes are also more difficult to repair, and labour costs are high in our region. Therefore, it is often cheaper to buy a new electric bike than to repair or refurbish an existing one. Making the bicycle industry more sustainable is therefore a big challenge.

In the living lab CaDaNS, a number of innovative Flemish players of the e-bike landscape, covering the full life cycle and value chain, are working together on innovative and substantiated Bike-as-a-Service business models that can support the full circular life cycle of sustainable e-bikes and their components. The focus is on fast electric bikes or 'speedpedelecs' and obtaining a modal shift in the commuting of high-tech companies located in traffic bottlenecks.