Polestar And CAKE Designed An Urban Trike To Electrify Last-Mile Deliveries
Polestar and electric motorbike company CAKE have teamed up on an electric transporter design, with the Re:Move trike aiming to take on urban deliveries where zero-emissions and nimble movement are key. The three-wheeler "sled" is intended to be small enough to operate safely in existing bike lanes, but still carry much more than the average e-bike might.
Polestar and CAKE, of course, are no strangers to electric vehicles. The former recently launched the Polestar 2, its all-electric fastback EV, while CAKE has carved a niche for itself building distinctive electric bikes and motorcycles around a modular rail architecture.
Re:Move borrows a little from both. The design handiwork of Konstantin Grcic, it was commissioned by Wallpaper Magazine and tapped metal engineering expertise from aluminum producer Hydro. The result is hefty use of lightweight, recyclable aluminum, and the ability to carry a payload of more than 600 pounds.
The design itself is fairly straightforward, by intent. "The horizontal platform and the vertical shield is something you don't see in vehicle design," Grcic points out. "This is how you'd build a table or a shelf. I think the simplicity and directness, the pragmatism, is nice."
Re:Move is intended to slot in as the final step – the so-called "last-mile" – of deliveries, particularly in dense urban areas. That's traditionally done by vans, which usually spend plenty of time idling at the side of the road while delivery workers shuttle packages from the cargo area to their intended recipients. Although many companies are looking at electrified fleets, we're still some way out from transitioning fully to zero-emissions and cutting out what's a considerable contributor to city pollution.
A working version of Re:Move will be shown off in the fall, the collaborators say. It's unclear whether any production plans are on the cards, at this stage.
"The electric drivetrain is only the first step," Thomas Ingenlath, Polestar CEO, says of the trike, "then we have to look at the whole supply chain and what materials we design with. This is so much more exciting than the last twenty years when designers were just making things pretty."
Next up for Polestar, meanwhile, is the Polestar 3. That will be an electric SUV, larger and more practical than the existing Polestar 2. Beyond that, the automaker plans to put a version of its luxury Precept concept into production, with an emphasis on how high-end vehicles can also embrace sustainability in ways that look beyond simply electric drivetrains. It will also bring CAKE's e-bike range into its Polestar showrooms, positioning the different EV transportation options as an ideal pairing.