Fuell back from brink: Erik Buell's electric project secures crowdfunding boost

Fuell, an electric bike brand from the mind of Erik Buell, have launched their first bike, the Fllow, on ‘pre-order’ website PreLaunch.

The premise is simple: If you really fancy the bike, they ask you to place a deposit (in this case $200) and in return you get a $2000 discount on the RRP while the manufacturers get to find out if enough people want to buy the thing before they spend any more time/money building it.

The Fllow is an electric motorbike with a 47bhp motor in the rear hub that Fuell are billing as an ‘urban e-commuter’.

Like most electric bikes, it has a bonkers torque figure (553lb.ft) and is quite heavy (180kg) despite not really going that far (150 miles round town) or particularly fast (85mph top speed).

But it does make up for that with a claimed 30 minute 0-100% charge time and a zippy 15 minutes for 20-90%. An RRP of approximately £9940 is pretty good too.

Will it be any good? Hard to say. Erik Buell is something of an engineering legend with his early bikes going their own way and doing a good job of it until Harley-Davidson bought him out.

His name has been attached to various different projects since, but none of them has achieved the same level of success.

But haven’t we seen this before? Er, yes. Fuell first announced the bike back in 2019 alongside an electric pedal bike called the Fluid (now the Flluid) but the pandemic struck, laid waste to their plans and now they’re back with this pre-order system.

The Flluid raised almost £1.2m through a crowdfunding campaign back then and is currently listed as Sold Out on the Fuell website.

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Fuell Fluid more than trebles funding target in five days

First published on 30 April 2019 by Ben Clarke

Erik Buell’s new electric bike start-up has had a strong start to its crowdfunding campaign, achieving over 388% of its target in the first five days. All 40 higher-speed Fuell Fluid 1S models made available have been claimed at a special early bird price of $2649 (about £2050).

The Fuell Fluid is an e-bike with a range of up to 125 miles that comes in 20mph or 28mph versions and produces almost 74ftlb of torque from two 500Wh, removable batteries.

The batteries have been designed to be removable so that they can be taken inside and charged easily at home or at work, and if the technology moves on, they can be easily upgraded.

The Fluid also uses a virtually maintenance-free carbon belt drive system and eight internal hub gears.

 

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Our fluid E-Bike is now available. Don’t miss out! Fluid super early bird at -30% on Indiegogo. Link in the bio #ebike #indiegogo #crowdfunding #electricbycicle #vélo #veloelectrique

A post shared by Fuell mobility (@fuellmobility) on Apr 25, 2019 at 5:11am PDT

A pin-protected, colour dash displays your speed, distance and battery level and can also charge your phone via a USB port.

Delivery for the Fluid is quoted on the Indiegogo campaign page as August, 2019 and delivery can be made worldwide.

Buell has teamed up with Frederic Vasseur of Formula E and F1 fame and entrepreneur, Francois Terny to launch the Fuell brand, and they have also released plans for a more full-blooded electric motorcycle called the Flow.

The Fuell Flow comes in 11kW (125cc-equivalent) or 35kW (A2-licence equivalent) versions and uses a hub motor on the rear wheel to leave space for 50 litres of integrated storage.

Fuell are claiming a city range of 125 miles for the Flow (which needs charging at a public charger), and an American price of $10,995. Financing options for both bikes that ‘favour usage over ownership (credit, leasing, battery leasing)’ have also also been suggested by the manufacturer.

See the Fuell Fluid in action in this video: