I’ve got 2 Bromptons for the plane/heli and I have added an electrification kit to both. They are excellent and weigh 17kg each.
17kg is a lot to lift and move sideways into the luggage compartment…
Yes, a bit of a lump – I’ve been chucking them into a nice padded bag made just for the job, and then putting them on a back seat.
Aren’t there some ~7kg ones, titanium / carbon fibre, albeit at some 5k or so?
The Brompton is under ten kilos. It’s the battery and motor that adds the extra.
I got two of these (TILT500 no longer available in UK) both weight 16kg and they fit in the back or seats of many aircrafts with zero effort (e.g. SF25, PA18, PA28, C172…)
https://www.decathlon.com.au/p/8386534_tilt-500-folding-bike-xs-cn.html
Previously, I had two Montague Paratropper & Montague Swiss X50 both with electric upgrades both weight 50kg, taking them on GA or CAT flights was always a hassle, tough they do run 100miles at 25mph…
https://fudgescyclesonline.com/product/montague_paratrooper_highline_mtb_650b_folding_bike
TILT500 UX was nice on flat cycling lands (e.g. Belgium/Netherlands)
Climbing Trouville hill to Deauville aéroport is different user experience, half way I wished I had a Montague Paratrooper 
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Peter wrote:
Aren’t there some ~7kg ones, titanium / carbon fibre, albeit at some 5k or so?
This is it. Ebikes are great, but when you really stop and think about it nothing beats either a light folding bike or a light road bike with the wheels removed.
Unlimited range, dead easy to get into and out of aircraft, no faff with charging the thing. Just get on and go.
The range of most ebikes is c. 30-50km, and joyless riding when the battery is flat. Most of us should really be able to ride a light road bike that far.
I have a Phillips Parkway folding bike. I can’t find them on the internet, but Raleigh seem to do an identical one. When I got it my requirements were:
With three gears and narrow 20” tyres it’s just as fast as the mountain bike I normally use for cycling to work. It’s really fun to ride, folds up easily, and weighs about 13kg. Putting it in a big Ikea bag protects the seat leather. For my usage, aerodrome-town-aerodrome on country roads a few time a year, it’s really good.
The only negative is size when folded: 80×25×65cm, which takes up the whole back seat. I’ve never tried the baggage compartment: it’s just too big and heavy to manoeuvre inside the cockpit (no external baggage door). It’s a compromise between folded size and speed on the road. I’ve since tried a Brompton, which wasn’t as slow or wobbly as expected, so might eventually get one.
I can’t see the advantage of an electric bike, but then I have Lance Armstrong legs
Of course, you can always get a Gyrodrive:
Are there any concerns / considerations in regards to high altitude non-pressurized flights with electric scooters / bikes in the back which consist of sizable batteries not necessarily tested for such conditions?
Anybody ?
I bought a small electric step and I hope it is “Flight level resistant”…
There is a wide range of opinions of lithium battery safety.
All the high-performance products use LIPO batteries which is the least safe technology. LIFE is much better but have a lower energy density.
It appears that fires tend to involve one or more of
So, a mere carriage of these things “should be safe” provided it is undamaged and disconnected from the appliance so it cannot get shorted (yes; can’t easily do that on modern laptops).
Altitude is not an issue.
The big unknown is the quality of the battery / manufacturing defects. This factor has featured strongly in past years. The IT world is full of batteries which “inflate” with gas generation. This “milspec” tablet had a roughly 100% failure rate, where the batteries inflated themselves by about 1cm in thickness and cracked open the case. I can vouch for this personally. Much later, the Logitech Dinovo keyboard has the same (I am typing this on one of these) with a ~75% failure rate. Battery QA issues are relatively common… consider that the majority of batteries for sale on Ebay or Amazon are chinese fakes with a capacity well below spec; this is not saying they will catch fire but it tells you a lot about how much the mfgs give a damn.
For flying, this is what I do:
