Representing an eco-friendly lifestyle, the Ateneo Innovation Center (AIC) has just demonstrated a Bamboo Electric Bicycle that will create new opportunities in Green Transport for Smart Cities and Eco-tourism.
The bike is developed by a small team in the AIC headed by Amelie Cottin and Alexis Flipo, two foreign exchange students from ICAM (Institut Catholiques des Arts et Métiers), a French engineering school in Lille, France who came to the Philippines as exchange students to do their thesis on green transportation with Ateneo de Manila’s (ADMU) Electronics, Communications and Computer Engineering (ECCE) Department.
Within four months since their arrival, Cottin and Flipo managed to design, develop and create the bike in collaboration with Philippine bamboo bike pioneer, Bryan Benitez McClelland of Bambike*, a social enterprise in close collaboration with Gawad Kalinga (GK). The finished Bamboo electric bicycle is 90% bamboo, 5% abaca and 5% metal with a rattan seat and bamboo pedals.
The Bamboo electric bicycle is lightweight, weighing only 18 kilograms a full 3 kilograms lighter than conventional electric bicycles. The electric motor (200W, 36V-10A) and battery of the bicycle has a range of 30 kilometers on a 5 hour charge when used over level ground but since the Bamboo electric bicycle is a hybrid, where the electric power is used only for assisting the biker for uphill climbs or to get a boost of speed, the range is multiplied several times over.
Proving again that thesis projects can transition to products. Dr. Gregory Tangonan, the director of the AIC and who is also the director of the Commission on Science, Technology and Engineering (COMSTE), envisions an electric bamboo bike rental system in tourist hotspots like Bohol. This will be done through a partnership between Bambike, local government units, the Department of Tourism as well as the private industry.
Meanwhile, Ateneo college students will continue the good work of Amelie and Alexis by scaling-up the original thesis in collaboration with various stakeholders.
The President and Vice-President of the Ateneo de Manila University regard this as a great example of multi-disciplinary collaboration between different fields and nationalities, and looks forward to more innovation in the future.
* Bambike is a socio-ecological enterprise that sells and produces handcrafted bamboo bikes produced by the villagers of GK Victoria, a Gawad Kalinga village. For more information, contact Bryan Benitez at his website,
http://bambike.com.
Contact : Ateneo Innovation Center
Tel. 426-6001 loc. 5641
Email : info@ateneoinnovation.org
