Skarper: The Revolutionary E-Bike System That Fits in Your Hand

0:02Welcome to Third Angle, where we are cycling smoothly towards the future of e-bikes.

0:18I'm your host, Paul Hames from industrial software company PTC. In this podcast, we share the moments where digital transforms physical and meet the brilliant minds behind some of the most innovative products. around the world, each powered by PTC technology. In this episode, we're heading to Scarpa in the vibrant streets of Camden in North London. It's here among the canal side workshops that a small team is reimagining what an e-bike can be. It's not built into a frame, it doesn't require a complete bicycle rebuild, and remarkably, it fits in the palm of your hand. The Scarpa concept is elegantly simple.

0:59Take any standard bicycle, attach a specially designed disc brake rotor system, and you easily transform it into an e-bike in seconds. Remove it and you're back to a traditional bike. No compromise, no permanent modification, just choice. Co-founder Dr. Alistair Darwood takes us for a tour of the Scarpa offices to find out more about this revolutionary clip-on e-bike drive system.

1:28Hi there, welcome to the Scarpa Camden office. Shall we go on a little tour first of all? Sure, let's do it. Let's just walk upstairs. So as we walk down the office, you can see bikes from various brands. They all have the disc rotor sitting on the back. The whole point of development is to make sure that you can pick up a Scarpa, go onto pretty much any bike onto which the disc drive has been fitted, and you can just align the Scarpa up like that, like so, and then you can just click it straight on to turn that bike into a new bike so this is the main floor of the office we have all the different departments within scarpa so we have mechanical engineering software engineering electrical engineering industrial design there's a lot of activity which goes on here a lot of complex engineering challenges being solved and trying to get as many scarpas out to customers as we can and trying to keep up production with the demand that we're seeing so on a day-to-day basis it can vary but at the moment i think there's about 22 23 people who can be in this office on a daily basis so it can get it can get quite busy in here but it's a great place to work dr alistair darwood isn't your typical e-bike entrepreneur having trained as a doctor with a background in medical device engineering he's brought a unique perspective to the cycling world one that prioritizes precision and user experience in equal measure as a keen cyclist he wanted the extra power of an e-bike without the bulk and expense.

2:55But after exploring various conversion kits, he found them too heavy and cumbersome. So he set out to create something better. I've always been a fan of inventing new things. There's a huge amount of satisfaction that you can get from going from nothing to something, creating something new. Now in the medical device field, you're creating devices that are hopefully really helpful to people and can benefit them in some way. But very often, you're creating a device that no one wants to use for fun it's more a device that alleviates something or helps in in the treatment process and whilst that's really satisfying it sometimes loses a bit of of the the light touch that let's call it fun invention can can do now as passionate cyclist i really wanted to try and create something that was completely different to my medical device work in the consumer space to create something that people wanted, not what they had to have, if that makes sense.

3:55However, the Scarpa concept is not just about creating another e-bike. It's about changing the way e-bikes are made all together. In the cycling industry, the e-bike industry specifically, you've got two main methods of powering an e-bike. That is hub motors, where you put the motor into the wheel of either the front wheel or the rear wheel and you've got mid-drive where the motor is built into the frame at the pedal cranks we believe in scarpa we have developed the third method of powering e-bikes it's the disc drive system it's a way of taking any bicycle at a factory level and giving the customer the option to have an e-bike or normal bike at will whenever they fancy on their ride without changing anything about the underlying bicycle itself it gives consumers freedom but it also gives oem manufacturer's freedom to turn any bike in their inventory into an e-bike.

4:47What sets Scarpa apart isn't just the concept, it's the extraordinary level of engineering that makes it possible. To pack a motor, gearbox, battery and all the electronics of a full e-bike into something you can hold in one hand required solutions that simply didn't exist. Co-founder and COO Yuri Marie Majarevic explains the challenge they faced in the beginning.

5:12Dr. Alastair Darwood:When we started with the vision of making scalpel so small, there were physically no components in the market that would fit the contours of the product. So if you want to buy a speed controller, you go to the best companies, a Canadian company, to make speed controllers. It was just too big. So we spent the first years of scalpel designing and developing our own speed controller, our own electronic boards, our own battery management. system and where you are in our workshop this is the electronics parts today it's it's kind of done today we are just doing testing but you can see here battery packs and you see that speed controller here it's one of the smallest most powerful speed controllers on the market which in theory by the way we could sell it to other e-bike manufacturers today because it really is small and powerful but it was designed for us these ultra compact components allow the scarper system to be lightweight and portable.

6:05But Scarpa's vision extends beyond convenience. It's also about sustainability and addresses some of the e-bike industry's most pressing environmental challenges. So Scarpa, from a sustainability angle, hits a lot of different interesting points. There's the obvious one, where you've got bicycles which maybe aren't being used, or they're sitting there collecting dust in the shed, but they're perfectly good, and they can be reused and given a new lease of life as e-bikes but the really fascinating one comes if you look at the logistic the logistical chain behind the sale and consumption of e-bikes globally when you buy an e-bike it comes in a massive packaged box usually needs about two people to lift it with a huge logistics chain to get it to the customer that goes behind that box scarper exists in a shoebox and that logistical advantage exists in terms of warranty and maintenance if there's something goes wrong with the scarper you're not transmitting a bike back to a shop or warranty center you're you're you're posting a shoebox um which obviously from an environmental standpoint is is really significant the other key one is massively increasing the lifespan of bikes that people are buying so if you buy a typical e-bike the underlying mechanical components components of the bike can last for many years but the e parts of the bike are limited by their fragile independent components how long is the battery going to be produced by the by the the customer once it's of warranty if anything goes wrong with a component there's hugely expensive repair fees over this point scarpa disconnects all of the higher risk electrical components from the underlying bicycle and turns into something that can be easily sent back returned fixed repaired maintained by customers and it really comes down to the circular economy reuse what's already built add only what's needed.

7:55So in terms of the real impact, I guess every Scarpa sold means one less heavy e-bike manufactured. It means people cycling more, replacing car journeys and reducing emissions. As part of Scarpa's development, they've partnered with the world famous Red Bull Advanced Technologies. It's a collaboration that brings Formula One grade engineering and rigour to consumer cycling and allowed Scarpa to test if their bikes would satisfy F1 standards. We started working with Red Bull initially on a mountain biking concept. That developed into work on our gearbox and the current disk drive system that's on the market at the moment.

8:36And it was really their engineering prowess and expertise which helped us crack the really tricky engineering problem of the amount of power and torque density we need to put in such a small space. So we're really proud to work with them. They've given us testing rigour. If it can survive F1 standards, it can survive British winters and alpine climbs. And I think what matters is when you say develop with Red Bull Advanced Technologies, people understand this is serious engineering. This is a novel e-bike drive system. And when a six-time Olympic champion puts their name and investment behind a product, people pay attention.

9:13Sir Chris Hoy believed in the concept so much that he became a founding investor in Scarpa. Sir Chris Hoy became a founding investor of Scarpa really early on. And I think what's interesting, he's a six-time Olympic champion. He doesn't put his name on gimmicks. He tested it, loved it, invested in it, and became really from the early days of the company, one of our most credible advocates because of his huge ability and his reputation in the cycling industry. Walk into Scarpa's test lab and you'll find a fascinating array of custom-built rigs, including modified turbo trainers running units at maximum power for thousands of kilometres and longevity rigs that mimic years of real world riding.

9:59There's even a waterproof testing chamber with a showerhead to simulate torrential rain. This is where theory meets reality, where initial prototypes evolved into production units that run for weeks under conditions far more extreme than any normal rider would encounter. This is the Scarpa test lab, and it's really where we stress test Scarpa units, put them through their design paces, and check Scarpa as they come off the production line to really check that everything going out to customers is going to give them thousands of kilometres of easy use. so you can see we've got heavily modified bicycle turbo trainers onto which we put scarpers and we just leave them at their absolute maximum power output for thousands of kilometers to try and effectively try and break them and see where the problems will occur and it might be a bit hard to hear but usually we have these large fans running to cool the scarper as it runs on the turbo trainer these are putting out at about 430 mechanical watts for upwards of 2 ,000 kilometres to try and see where the limits of the engineering actually lie.

11:11Dr. Alastair Darwood:Sorry, so three years ago, we had a testing regime and we had a test to destruction of the rotor. We said it needed to last X hours. We put those rotors on the testing and they lasted 20 minutes. They just turned into dust. And then you realise, oh, we're going to need something better. and we took a lot of work and also the support of Red Bull Advanced Technologies and a lot of engineering to come up with a design that it was supposed to last an amount of hours and I can say it now lasts days and weeks and it just keeps on going. So we're very happy with the outcome and I don't want to say we can't break it anymore but we have to try very hard and we're happy with how robust the product turned out.

11:54But the real test is the experience of riding the bike which Alistair demonstrates for us on the surrounding streets of Camden. He introduces us to some of the features of the dedicated Scarpa companion app, which connects to the drive via Bluetooth and allows users to switch between Eco, Cruise or Turbo mode. And we're cycling out onto the streets of Camden. We're going to do a few laps over the little park over here. And yeah, just so you can see what it's like to ride Scarpa. So I've currently got the system in Turbo mode. so I'm probably going to have to change the mode because I'm having to do absolutely no work as you can see and it propels me off quite quickly it's very much like a motorbike in this mode the majority of our customers tend to actually ride in eco because it dynamically adjusts the amount of power it gives based on road incline and cycling cadence and the other thing that's quite cool is if I backpedal three times now so that's one two three it's put the scarper into a pause mode so I'm just cycling along normally now this is all under my own power and the Scarpa has gone to sleep so if I was on a long flat section of a cycle I could just put the Scarpa into pause mode do my cycle and then I could just back pedal again three times one two three and now the Scarpa is pushing me along again now of course all of this can be done from the app and if we increase our speed a little bit you'll see that Scarpa will cap out at 25 kilometers an hour and if we try and go faster than 25 we we can but just under our own power there's an automatic clutch inside which effectively completely disengages the system so above 25 it just feels like a normal bike again as we slow back down below 25 the system gradually kicks back in and starts giving us assistance so i think when you ride scarpa i'm riding a fairly nice bike it's got a good group set good frame and it just feels like riding a normal bike just with the massively powerful legs The combination of measuring road incline as well as cadence gives it really smooth, very, very dynamic ride feel.

14:02Our dynamic climb algorithm smooths things out. And actually, it's a common theme we get from a lot of our customers. Incredible feedback about the dynamism, how smooth the onset and offset of power is and how responsive the system is.

14:24you know we've just done a fairly decent cycle in a pretty horrible london winter conditions and um yeah i i was lazy i had this in turbo mode today and really the scarf has done all the work for me but of course if i started going in different modes then that would that would really drastically change things but scarper don't just want to make individual rides more pleasant. They want to change our behaviours and get us all out riding more, leading to healthier, greener futures. So even for people who like bikes, there are many times where they're tired after work, it's raining at six o 'clock in the morning, where they might just choose a car or non-eco-friendly travel, not because they don't like bikes, but because there's no good solution for them short of buying a separate e-bike, which they have to store, they have to have the space, they have to have the financial ability to do so so i hope scarper will have the ability to give some of the flexibility to do new things on their bike whether that's commute whether that's cycle further whether it's just get more active active hours in the day um that's really something that i'm excited by you know i'll give you an example that's quite relevant to me so last summer i went cycling with my dad he uh likes to gravel ride and we did a 90k ride um just south of london and I actually had to carry the Scarpa for him so for the first 30k I carried a Scarpa in the rucksack for the remainder of the ride we stuck the Scarpa on eco mode clipped it onto his bike and it just took the edge off so he was able to happily keep up with me and climb all those different hills and he and without the Scarpa wouldn't have been able to do that ride and it just opened up that to let him go further faster and longer than he'd otherwise be able to do

16:11Our thanks to Alistair and Yuri at Scarpa. Now it's time to get our experts take. Welcome, John Hershtick from PTC. John, Scarpa is still a relatively young company, and for them, this first product launch is a huge milestone. They absolutely had to hit their target date, and that's why they adopted PTC's Arena, which brings together all of their product data, bills of materials, and changes into one connected system. For companies in that same position, feeling the pressure to hit a launch date, can you talk us through the real benefit Arena gives them and how it helps take the stress out of that final run-up to release?

16:53You know, when teams are gearing up for a product launch, the number one thing I hear is that feeling of pressure. And it's rarely because the engineering work isn't good. It's usually because everyone's trying to keep track of information that was in 10 different places. You've got spreadsheets floating around, different versions of the bill of materials, emails with changes that someone may or may not have captured in the bill of material. And then you've got a contract manufacturer trying to make sense of whatever file they were sent last Tuesday. That's where things start to get stressful because as you get closer to launch, the margin for error just disappears.

17:31One mystery vision or one outdated file can create a domino effect that eats up days you don't have. What Arena does is take all that noise away. It pulls the bomb, the CAD files, the documentation, the changes, everything into one place. And once you've got one source of truth, suddenly the team feels like they can breathe again. And it doesn't stop there. Your suppliers and your contract manufacturers are part of that same flow. Instead of you emailing them a PDF and hoping they're building from the right revision, they just log in and access the latest release data themselves. That alignment alone saves days, and it removes so much of the anxiety that typically shows up right before launch.

18:21Now, a lot of PLM systems do some of this, but Arena in particular goes beyond doing these PLM functions because it makes it even easier to set up and operate the system. Because Arena is cloud-native, it's a PLM system that can be set up almost instantly and can be accessed by anyone almost instantly and no need to maintain servers or databases or backups that traditional PLM burdens impose on companies. So when people ask how Arena helps teams under heavy time pressure, I always say the same thing. We give you clarity, clear data, clear ownership, clear approvals. And when you've got clarity, you make better decisions faster.

19:04You free up engineers to actually engineer instead of firefighting. And you walk into launch week confident that everyone inside your company and outside it is working from the same playbook.

19:20Thanks to John and to Alistair, Yuri and our producer Jeff for taking us behind the scenes of Scarpa. Please rate, review and subscribe to our bi-weekly Third Angle episodes wherever you listen to your podcasts and follow PTC on LinkedIn and X for future episodes. Companies that make products the world relies on rely on PTC.

19:47This is an 1860 production for PTC. Executive producer is Jackie Cook. Location recording by Jeff Marsh. Sound design and editing by Clarissa Maycock. And music by Rowan Bishop.