Luxury bicycle manufacturer M55 just tipped the scales of wretched excess by releasing its new Terminus Royal and Terminus Prime line of e-bikes, which can be blinged out with Swarovski crystals, diamonds, and gold. The Royal line comes studded with gems and precious metals, and the ‘no-limit’ Prime line can be decked out with practically anything you can imagine. The company is marketing its cycles to VIP e-bike loving customers — starting at $37,600 — but we can’t help but think about the wasted resources going into blinging-out these Terminus electric bikes. No matter how many zero-emissions miles you might ride on these two-wheeled vehicles, you’ll never make up for the resources that went into mining the precious materials that make these bikes sparkle.
M55′s Terminus bicycles couple the power of an electric motor with a pedal-powered drive system. The motor is not a substitute for the rider’s pedaling action – it just helps to create more momentum during the action of pedaling and, “can not be compared to anything else: it tricks your mind and [you] feel like a superhuman riding this bike,” according to the company.
The main bike components are made from aluminum, carbon fiber, and titanium – which makes the overall weight of the bike pretty light – except that adding a decorative layer of diamonds and gold is sure to add the pounds back on and make your electric motor pretty inefficient. M55 offers a line of motors (depending on the model you choose) from 250 watts to 1,500 watts, and the bikes can go 18-62 miles on a single charge.
For every bike sold, M55 donates $723 (or 555 Euro) to the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation to help preserve the environment. Perhaps instead of making this small donation M55 could make bikes that don’t use up as many rare resources and we could call it a draw. As-is, these bikes are veiled in a green disguise – even if you power them up with a solar panel.
+ M55
Via DVICE
They appear to have made an electric, downhill mountain bike, studded with diamonds?
I can’t see anyone who is serious about riding a mountain bike being interested in this. You’ll quite possibly even be laughed off the hill of you show up on this… (and ride it down very carefully, in fear of damaging it or losing any of the diamonds…)