The Beauty of Biomega’s Affordable, Lightweight Electric Vehicle
Electric vehicles (EVs) are bursting onto the market in all sizes and scales, from larger models that require more charging infrastructure and maintenance to smaller ones made for efficiency and short distances. There are already so many options to choose from — and it’s only the beginning of the surge to come.
One way to encourage consumers to buy your EV is to design a beautiful, practical car. Biomega, a Danish company that normally produces electric bicycles and cargo bikes, unveiled just such a vehicle last month in the form of SIN. Named after Singapore (the city that inspired its concept), SIN is an affordable, lightweight EV for urban mobility. It seats four passengers, can go from 0 to 62 miles per hour in under 13 seconds, and has a maximum speed of 80 miles per hour. Its frame is made of carbon fiber, and its 14kWh battery is hidden in the floor. Unfortunately, European consumers will have to wait until sometime between 2021 and 2023 to shell out €20,000 for a SIN of their own.
So what prompted a company that normally makes electric bicycles to design an electric car? Simply put, Biomega believes in making attractive bicycles and is now approaching the SIN car with the same goal of encouraging a paradigm shift in transportation away from fossil fuel dependence. To achieve this, they put together a world-class team of creatives to make their products look as irresistible as possible.
The original colors of Biomega’s bicycle collection were selected by Beatrice Santiccioli, a color expert with over two decades of personal experience. Santiccioli has also created colors for the Nike eyewear featured in the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, Benetton watches, and numerous Apple products. Jens Martin Skibsted, the co-founder of Biomega, heads one of Denmark’s top product design firms alongside architect Bjarke Ingels and industrial designer Lars Larsen, all of whom have brought at least some level of knowledge and expertise to Biomega. The all-star team doesn’t end there, either. The company has also been blessed by the involvement of Marc Newson, the Creative Director of Qantas Airways, and Ross Lovegrove, an internationally acclaimed designer whose work has been exhibited as some of the world’s most prestigious museums.
The company website concisely states that the design philosophy for their bicycles is either “mega” or “meta” tech, explaining: “Mega-tech is when the fascination of a certain technology becomes the driving force of the bike design, and innovation arises from a clash between form and function and this technology; meta-tech is where technology becomes instrumental to the bike design and subsequently can cause paradigms to break in [its] application…”
Similar to their bicycles, Biomega’s SIN car represents true Danish minimalism, unlike the soulless style that so commonly passes for Danish design these days. The company calls this phenomenon out on its website for becoming “its own pastiche,” preferring to endow their own products with a more exuberant “organic minimalism.” When all is said and done, getting back to the beauty of Danish design is what Biomega expects will most encourage people to accept alternative forms of mobility.
