Gocycle Family Cargo: Nice Words. Great Pictures. Little Essence.

“The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing.” So says Tom Fishburne, expert in marketing, internationally known cartoonist in professional circles and book author. If you take this quote as a yardstick, the latest news from the British ebike manufacturer Gocycle does not come off lightly. It announces its very first ebike talking big. However, it omits basic information about the bike. There is not even a picture of the bike or a design draft.

With its first ebike, the Gocycle G1, Gocycle has already laid the foundation for its image as a brand that ignores the mainstream and prefers to go its own way. Founder Richard Thorpe gave his folding bike, which has been in production since 2009, an iconic design that has been coherently developed with a keen eye for detail. At the same time, a Gocycle impressed with technical innovations that were considered benchmarks for other manufacturers.

Richard Thorpe, founder of Gocycle, previously worked as a designer for the McLaren Formula 1 racing team.

Missing trace of DNA

Given this context, the announcement of the Gocycle Family Cargo is a source of great excitement. What will the manufacturer surprise us with this time? So excited, you fly over the lines of the press release, browse through the pictures sent along – and after five minutes you realise that you are just as clueless as before.

Apart from a few catchy phrases and platitudes, hardly anything essential is mentioned. Instead, Gocycle throws a snazzy made-up word like OneDesignDNA® philosophy into the room and emphasises its crucial importance for the approach of the new Gocycle Family Cargo. On the manufacturer’s website, however, the term is not mentioned at all. Which is quite surprising for a philosophy that is supposed to reflect the DNA of all Gocycle models.

Revolutionary ebike for (almost) everyone

What else do we learn? The future cargo bike is supposed to have a low overall weight and fully integrate the e-drive. Presumably, qualities such as the lowest possible maintenance effort and wear are also high on the agenda. Let’s see, for example, what will become of solutions like the Cleandrive, the completely enclosed chain drive. According to the press release, the Family Cargo should also be fun to ride. In addition, Gocycle announces that it wants to use “some revolutionary new technologies” on the ebike. In the end, a bicycle is to be created that is intended for “parents, grandparents, kids, pet lovers and stuff haulers across the globe”.

How much of the familiar will the new Family Cargo feature?

What all this means in concrete terms for the technical concept of the new development remains open. Especially since many details of the Gocycle could change for a cargo bike:

• Front hub motor – perfectly adequate on an urban ebike like the current Gocycle G4 with a maximum permissible total weight of 100 kilograms. Rather the exception among cargo bikes. Examples like the Convercyle “Electric” show that the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. However, this would probably mean that you cannot expect a Longjohn with a cargo bed placed between the front wheel and the head tube.
• Single-sided fork and rear stay – More payload means higher forces acting on a bicycle frame on a cargo bike. Therefore, the majority of manufacturers resort to conservative designs with forks with two fork legs and two chain and side stays. Gocycle, however, already works with aluminium, carbon fibre reinforced plastics and magnesium for the frame of the G4. Particularly as Coh&Co also successfully implements more daring designs with the Velosled Anna.
• Folding mechanism – Until now, the rule has been: a Gocycle is always a foldable bicycle. At one point in the press release, however, there is talk of opening up new markets with non-foldable bicycles, among other things. The Family Cargo could be the first of these.
• Shimano Nexus 3-speed hub – Another constant in recent years has been the Shimano hub gear integrated in the rear wheel with three gears. Despite the various levels of assistance, this may not be enough for moving heavy loads. Especially since the only Shimano hub gear with real approval for cargo bikes being the Nexus Inter-5E. Of course, a hub like the relatively new 3×3 would also be conceivable.
• Overall length of 1.60 metres – Due to its compact dimensions, the Gocycle G4 does not offer enough space to accommodate so much more luggage that it becomes a full-fledged cargo bike. At the same time, an ebike like the Tern NBD is only three centimetres longer and can carry a maximum system weight of 140 kilograms.
• Gocycle Lockshock – Based on an elastomer, the element on the rear triangle defuses a few bumps in the ground. If riders with a weight of more than 80 kilograms sit on the bike, it already yields significantly on its own. With the additional weight of a cargo bike, it would probably be completely overloaded. Should the frame of the Gocycle Family Cargo be equipped with a suspension, the technical solution should be different.

Nothing for little money

The pictures available provide a little orientation with regard to the new model. Not so much because of the motifs. Sometimes it is not even possible to tell which part of the bicycle they show. Nevertheless, the pictures clearly speak the same language. Perfectly staged light. Well-coordinated colours. Stitched leather appears in one picture. Overall, this looks enormously high-quality and decidedly colourful. Probably many of us have never seen more aesthetically pleasing detail shots of the head of a hexagon socket screw before. 😉

Gocycle plans to publish further details in early 2024. Since the sale of the Family Cargo is also scheduled to start in that year, it should then certainly include more meaningful information. We will stay tuned for you in any case. Until then, keep a saying by the British John Hegarty in mind. “We don’t buy what we want to have. We consume what we want to be.”

Pictures: Karbon Kinetics Ltd.