Review: Brompton Electric Folding Bike

If you’re at all interested in bicycles, you probably know what a Brompton is. You’ve probably seen it, perched like a shiny, tiny egg in the window of many premium cycle stores. The Brompton was first launched in 1975 in London. For almost 50 years, it has been the most compact folding bike on the market, and it’s stayed more or less the same.

About 10 years ago, the company announced it was going to start making an electric motor available. Most importantly, the motor wouldn’t interfere with the bike’s signature fold. Well, I finally got a chance to test the new Brompton Electric, which fulfills that promise. Sort of. 

For the past few weeks, I’ve been riding it around my neighborhood, feeling profoundly conflicted. It deserves all the accolades; it’s one of the most ingenious bikes I’ve ever seen. But it’s not very comfortable, and the motor is only so-so. The latest Tern Vektron S10 is a better ride, but if you see this Brompton in person, it will be very hard to resist.

Photograph: Brompton

The Brompton is minuscule, even when compared to an already small bike like the Vektron S10. The two-speed weighs about 30 pounds and folds into a neat bicycle knot that's a mere 22 inches tall, 23 inches wide, and around 11 inches long. It fits almost invisibly in the smallest room or car trunk.

The Brompton fold that makes this wizardry possible, however, caused me a great deal of stress for about four to five days. For almost a week, I often found myself staring at a mildly maladjusted Brompton, having to start the fold or unfold over and over again until I could remember the proper sequence. If you’re going to be using this bike on a crowded subway platform, I recommend practicing at home first. In contrast, Tern makes it a point to say its bikes can be folded in under 10 seconds. I don’t always fold it that fast, but it's easy and intuitive. 

One upside is that the Brompton does have a hook to hold the bike closed when it’s folded, and the seat post also locks the fold into place. It will never swing open and bash you in the shins or crush your hand when you’re loading it into a car, unlike a Tern with its easier-to-use but less reliable magnetic lock.

The Brompton Electric has a front hub motor. Unlike other ebikes, which have a big, unwieldy battery hooked on a rack or built into one of the bike’s tubes, the Brompton’s battery and charger are contained in a battery bag that clips onto the front rack.

Photograph: Brompton

I cannot stress enough how ingenious this design is. Ebike batteries are the bane of my life. First, I have to use colored washi tape to match the battery, key, and charger. Then I have to use the right key to unlock the big, bulky battery, carry it inside to charge, and make sure I don't lose either of these three things or mix them up. I can't believe the Brompton stores everything neatly for you. 

It clips on and off the bike’s front rack easily, which means you can even fly with the bike when we all start traveling again. You can bring it in easily to charge or take it off to reduce weight. It’s also easy to carry it inside with a handle to recharge at work. There's even a larger version that will fit a laptop! 

With all that said, the Brompton Electric just isn’t that much fun to ride. Our 6-foot-plus testers, and my 6-foot spouse, all refused to ride it because it's so tiny (they look clownish on it). The company does have special H-shaped handlebars for taller riders, but no one was enthusiastic about those, either. 

Brompton’s electric assist was designed in partnership with the Williams Advanced Engineering Team, which develops the motors for the Williams Formula One racing cars. This information may be exciting to anyone who is a fan of Netflix's Drive to Survive series, which follows Formula One teams, engineers, principals, and drivers through the season.  

Photograph: Brompton

However, if you watch the series, you also know that the Williams team is pretty bad. That translates here because the Brompton's electric assist isn't great. It only assists up to 15 miles per hour, which feels even slower when you're pedaling these piddly clown wheels. It's not that it's precisely slow, but it is quite a bit slower than the 20 mph or more I get out of most ebikes. 

At least I was able to get around two days of use before needing to charge it back up. Range varies on a variety of factors, but Brompton claims you can get around 20 to 45 miles on it. That's solid. Unfortunately, it's right back to bad news as the trigger and shifting system isn't great. The shifter is sticky, or hard to shift between gears. And if you stay in the biggest gear with the highest level of assist, then it's easy for the Brompton to miscalibrate how much power to feed the motor. 

Multiple times, I found myself rocketing forward into an intersection with what I thought were little taps on the pedal. It’s a far cry from riding a bike with a powerful, natural-feeling Bosch system you just cannot screw up, no matter what gear, assist level, or terrain you happen to be on. What I'm working my way up to say here is, I got smoked by an elderly lady, also riding an ebike, near my house. It was embarrassing, and I blame Brompton. 

It’s unlikely that any of this will dissuade you from buying a Brompton if your heart is set on one. They’re classic, tiny, and as irresistible as M&Ms. The fact it can pack down into such a tiny package is a miracle of engineering. And unlike most bikes, which are often mass-produced in Asia, Brompton bikes are still hand-brazed in a London factory.

Yet as clever as the removable electric-assist design is, I'd probably forgo the motor completely in favor of the beautiful, classic bike itself. I don't think I'll miss it. Brompton offers plenty of bag options to click into that front rack instead.