The Van That's a Bike (HOW IS THIS LEGAL？)

This bad boy will set you back €15,000 and it is the future. You do not need to tax it, you do not need to insure it, you do not even need a license. However, you can ride it out on the open road and you can also ride it on bike paths. What gives? The short answer is, it's a bike. I know, I don't get it either, but in this video, I am going to drive it, ride it, and also see whether or not it is the future. Firstly, though, the name, ____ you. Oh, don't bleep it out. I said VOC, V, V, V, V, VOC. Yes, VOC is the company that makes it and this, their brand new pickup truck, is the U. They already actually have two other models in their range, the OFF and the SAKE. No, I'm kidding. They've got the S and the XL. S being small and XL being extra large. Here we go. I've not switched it on yet. Here we go. Handbrake off, handbrake off. I'm moving, I'm moving. Oh my goodness, this is so weird. Whoa, the brakes are good. I tell you what, I'm a little nervous. Okay, my mirrors are in the right place. Good. I'm going to indicate now. That's it. I'd like to go right, please. I'm going. Whoa. This thing can shift. Ready? Here we go. Boom. Whoa. Oh my goodness me. Being faster than I was expecting. Oh, just catching a glimpse of myself in a window, getting checked out by some people having breakfast in a hotel. Oh, yes. I'm going to try and not look at them even though I know they're looking at me. Someone else looking at me. There's a lot of eyeballs on me right now. I feel a little on show. Before we go any further, let me give you a quick tour of my new wheels, which are actually categorized as an electrically assisted pedal cycle or EPIC for short. This is something that we will see very shortly is actually very important. Now, VOC are based in Estonia. This is currently sold in 15 different countries. They describe it as an automotive grade four-wheeled electric cargo bike built specifically for commercial purposes in dense urban environments. Now, most of that sounds pretty plausible, but there is one bit that I struggle with. Bike. It's got four wheels and a motor. Most confusingly of all, the pedals aren't actually attached to anything. That's right. There is no chain. The pedals just spin, but when the bike senses that, the motor kicks in and off you go. It is a little bit like a car, only instead of an accelerator pedal, you have accelerator pedals. The faster you turn them, the more power the motor will put out, but then when you stop pedaling, the motor also stops. Now, this confuses me greatly because I thought that means that it would therefore not be a bike. I dived into the rules and regulations. This is from the UK government website. To be classified as an EPIC under the EPIC regulations, the cycle must cut off electrical assistance when it reaches 15.5 miles per hour, have an electric motor with a maximum continuous rated power not exceeding 250 watts, be fitted with pedals that can propel it. I guess that last bit is technically true, but we will see about the power. There's no throttle. Big speed bump. I've got to say, I've been in this thing for a matter of minutes and it already feels really quite familiar. I want to ride it like a hooligan, which is how I tend to ride bikes at the best of times, but it is just a lot of fun. Like I say, it just feels so easy. Anyone can get on this and ride for sure. Now, at the minute, I've got my pedals set to have a little bit of resistance to them. You can actually change it on the little central console bit, but the pedals themselves don't give any power to the motor itself. Now, the faster I move my feet, the faster I pedal, the more power the motor puts out, and then the faster we go, up to 25 kilometers per hour. Then you remember from the regulations, the motor needs to cut out. Unlike an ordinary e-bike, where there's a chain connecting my pedals to the wheels and I can move it under my own steam, with this one, I can't, basically. Shall I do a skid? Yes. Unlike a normal e-bike is what's under the hood, so to speak. Now, each of those wheels has a motor attached to it, meaning that, yes, it is four-wheel drive, but in order to comply with those European and UK regulations, it has to have a nominal continuous power output of just 250 watts. Now, this confuses me too, because when I produce 250 watts on my normal bike, I go up steep hills very slowly, but this, the bike alone, weighs three times my body weight, plus it can carry another three of me as cargo. The whole thing could weigh 540 kilos. How on earth is 250 watts going to get us up a steep hill? Probably better find out. The town we're filming in is Bath, here in the UK, and it is famous for, among other things, the Roman baths, amazing Georgian architecture, Jane Austen, and also steep climbs. This one up here, though, is the steepest. How does this wattage thing work then? Well, this is where the legislation is quite hard to understand, but essentially, the 250 watts refers to the power output that the motor can sustain for long periods of time. However, the peak power can be much higher in order for you to be able to accelerate or go up steep hills, but it can't operate at that power for too long. The reason is due to something called the thermal capability of the motor. In essence, if you put out too much power for too long, the motor would get too hot, so the average sustained power output could therefore only be 250. Nailed it. Come and have a look at this. The battery for this bike lives under the floor, and it is an almighty 2,300 watt-hour battery. There's also space in here for a second, and it's easily removable should you need to swap it out for another to keep you on the road all day. What's also really cool is when this thing turns around and goes back downhill. The VOC has regenerative braking, so as I'm riding, I can pedal backwards, and that is charging my battery up. Now, I've just bumped into fellow GCN presenter Connor here. Connor, what do you think to my bike? Because it is a bike. I love it. I absolutely love it. It's a bit of me, this. I would love to give this a spin. It's just so cool. It is cool, isn't it? It's cool. Although this is from a man that is not renowned for his cool. Don't take my word for it, but I think it's cool. No, that's an unfortunate endorsement. Anyway, it struck me, your bike, Pinarello Dogma F, and my bike, VOC U, they're basically the same value, about 15 grand. Those of you out there with 15 grand burning a hole in your pocket might be wondering which you should buy. I wonder whether we should have a bit of a race. Yes, sounds like a plan. Up to the hill? Top of the hill? Yes. My form is not particularly good in races on this channel, but I'll just give it my best. Well, my form is blindingly good, so watch out. Three, two, one, go. Oh, I got the jump. I feel like I need to pace my effort. I'm not quite sure what Si's got in the locker. I can't go any faster, Connor. I suspect he's going to get tired soon, though. I did a VO2 max session this morning. I'm going to have to play it cagey. Oh, he's going to hang on. If you hang on to my bike, I'll be well annoyed. Oh, dear. You got a good draft anyway, Si. It's getting steep now, though. I'm feeling a bit more confident about this now. He's coming back at me. Oh, I'm at my limit, though. Come on, Mark. Come on, Mark. I'm maxed out at seven miles an hour. This is for all the e-pics out there. I'm going to get him in a sprint. I'm going to get him in a sprint. I'll never live it down. Come on. Come on. Eight miles an hour. Come on, Mark. Come on. Oh, man. I've rocked. Oh, you made me work for it, to be fair. I'm pleased that you're out of breath. Oh, yes. That was quite close, actually, wasn't it? Yes. On the lower gradient, you had me. It's just when it not starts to steep a bit, but you had a lot more power than I expected. To be fair, yes. I thought you were going to just ride away, but obviously, this is doing a lot more than I thought it was. Well done, mate. Thanks. I'm almost out of breath. No, I'm not. I couldn't let you beat me. Yes. Fair play. That was good fun. It is well good. I think it's even better than I thought originally now. Definitely one of the most bizarre races I've ever had on a bike. So far today, I've been trying to ride this like my normal bike, but as I said at the start, this bike, Epic, is for commercial use. It is not a bike for taking your kids to school on or for popping to the shops. It's for businesses that are looking to supplement or replace their vans. This is where it gets really compelling. Volk reckon that their bikes cost 30 times less per year in terms of running costs compared to a normal van. They've also got plenty of examples of businesses where the bikes not only save them money, but also time as well. To find out a little bit more, I'm off to visit one of those businesses, Priority Express, who are a courier company. What kind of advantages do they offer, Priority Express? They give us that sort of flexibility to get into those tight sort of city center environments, places where it's difficult to access by a van. To give you an example, in Bath, we have two bikes on the road in Bath. That's taken two vans off the road in Bath because of the restrictions on loading. When the van drivers were in the center delivering, they would have to park up in loading bays, get the trolleys out, load up the parcels on the sat track walk, sort of a couple hundred meters before they could do their first delivery. Whereas with the cargo bikes, we can access pretty much directly outside the property, park up and deliver from there. It gives us that kind of a little bit more efficiency. We've just expanded our fleet in Bristol to six bikes. We had four on the road up until August. We've added another two now for this autumn. We've got a couple more in the wings in preparation for the peak season around sort of late November, December time for Christmas. As the local administration enforce more sort of traffic restrictions, and I think the bikes will become more and more important. Where does this all leave us then? Is a BOC the future? Do you know what? Honestly, I really hope so. We've heard that there's a business case, but really where I think vehicles like this benefit us all is in the reduction in noise pollution, the reduction in actual air pollution. Also, the kind of humanization of transports, not to mention the safety aspect as well. I mean, God forbid, I'd far rather be run over by a BOC which weighs 200 kilos and is traveling at 25k an hour than a van that weighs two and a half thousand kilos and is traveling at 50k an hour. I've also been thinking a lot about the legislation which was written a long time ago, way before bikes like this were even dreamed of. To look at it, to describe it, it's clearly not a bike, but yet to see someone on it, it is. That movement of the legs, I think, is what humanizes it. It looks like a human-powered vehicle. It doesn't look like a car. That said, there was one place where I didn't feel like I should have been, and that was when I was on the off-road bike path. Not because it's not suitable and not because it's not a bike, but I think it felt wrong to be there in a commercial vehicle. Although people use that path for commuting as well as for leisure, it just didn't feel right. Not because it's a one-off, but if more and more businesses do adopt BOCs and other such vehicles, I think that's when you might end up with a problem. If all of these commercial vehicles end up on cycling infrastructure, then there'd be an argument or a debate to be had. Perhaps it's a debate that simply means that we need more capacity on our cycling infrastructure. That, I'd be down for. Now, I'd be really interested to hear your thoughts on all of this, so please do get involved in the comment section down below. Hit the thumbs up button if you agree with me as well. Before I go, I'd like to say a huge thanks to VOC for lending me their VOC U. It's been an absolute blast. It really has.