Nauseatingly-punctuated German e-bike brand Car.Los is now selling the V1 – the folding long john e-cargo bike it first unveiled at Eurobike in 2023. Two versions are available with the more expensive ‘Full’ model boasting a collapsible cargo basket.
E-cargo bikes are wonderful things, but they do tend to be quite large – not as big as a car, obviously, but pretty sizeable if you’re looking to store one inside a building.
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To address this, Car.Los hit upon the idea of making a 2m-long, 34kg, front-loading e-cargo bike with a hinge in the middle so that it can be made more compact for storage.
The handlebars fold down too, as does the “Vario-Basket” front carrier thing. In its compact form, the bike’s footprint is just 108cm x 44cm.
Car.Los somewhat optimistically suggests this makes the V1 ideal for multimodal commuters, on the basis that, “it can be easily carried in a car, train or public transport.”
We don’t imagine that would be quite as straightforward as they make out, but we’ve few qualms about its credentials as an e-cargo bike.
Front-loaders are appealing to those who prefer to keep an eye on their cargo and the Car.Los V1 can carry up to 65kg.
You get a Brose mid-motor offering up to 70Nm of torque to get you moving and this is teamed with a respectably-sized 522Wh battery which sits beneath the cargo container to help keep the centre of gravity low.
The bike has Enviolo N380 Cargo stepless hub gears, Magura MT05 hydraulic disc brakes and a double kickstand for a bit of stability when loading.
The Car.Los V1 Full costs €5,199 and there’s also a Basic version without the cargo container which is available for €4,799. (We can’t see any other obvious differences, so that front basket costs a bob or two.)
As you’d imagine, folding e-cargo bikes are not that common, but we have reported on a few.
The Tern Vektron arguably qualifies, but it is a rear loader and not rated for anywhere near the same volume of cargo. The Dahon Foldable Cargo E-Bike is therefore perhaps a more obvious comparison – although being as it’s technically a trike, the folded package obviously ends up far larger.
There was also the Calendar Longtail Max. Sadly for those in the market for a longtail glow-in-the-dark folding e-cargo option, that one no longer seems to exist.
