This very cool Red Bull-developed £1,295 kit turns your pushbike into an e-bike in seconds

Attention car fans. This is not in your regular wheelhouse, but it’s cool, interesting and new, and we know you like that. Electric cars are all the rage right now, but what you can’t do is turn a petrol car into an EV just by clipping a 4kg box to it.

But in the bike world, that’s exactly what you can do thanks to Red Bull Advanced Technologies (RBAT) and a British inventor’s Very Good Idea. The gadget you’re looking at is called Skarper and it’s a sleek box of tricks that clips to the back wheel of almost any regular bike with disc brakes and turns it electric.

The 4kg, 34cm-long detachable drive unit contains a 240Wh battery mated to a 250w motor – the clever part is the gearbox contained within Skarper’s ‘DiskDrive’ replacement rear brake disc. This allows the brakes to operate as normal, but torque to be delivered to the back wheel through the hub. It’s this that RBAT has worked on, using its F1 experience to improve the system’s strength, reliability and efficiency.

Simple, you deliver power to the bike through the chain on one side, while on the other the Skarper box gives you a boost. How much boost is calculated by a sensor clipped to the pedal arm and an inclinometer built into the drive unit to monitor terrain.

A lockdown project that got out of hand, Skarper’s first investor was none other than six-time Olympic champion, Sir Chris Hoy. The brains behind it is Dr Alastair Darwood, a biomedical specialist who had previously worked with RBAT on ventilators during Covid-19.

The claim is up to 60km (37 miles) of range, and a 2.5hr recharge. The box clips on and off in seconds, so you can ride an electric bike to work, but only leave a cheap commuter bike chained to a lamppost for the day.

Which is just as well considering Skarper’s box of tricks costs £1,295. Still, that’s a whole chunk cheaper than packing your classic V8 off to be converted into an EV.