The internal combustion engine is now Public Enemy Number One in our towns and cities.

Oxford, Bristol and Coventry have committed to restrict vehicles in their city centres and others must now follow to meet the UK’s climate change commitments.

But if lorries can’t drop off goods, or deliver recycled cups for your daily skinny latte, what will? And who will collect the rubbish if waste lorries can’t roll down the streets?

An entrepreneurial company based at Upper Heyford in Oxfordshire has the answer. Electric Assisted Vehicles (EAV) is a sustainable zero-emissions transport manufacturer.

The company, founded in 2018 by 36-yearold Adam Barmby, is making ultra-lightweight commercial vehicles and selling them across the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, the USA and Australia.

The EAV e-cargo bike is powered purely by humans and Adam’s unique electrical assist mechanism. As soon as the rider begins to pedal, the EAV’s motor, which stands between pedal input and wheel, kicks in. And you don’t have to be fit. According to Adam, who has coined the phrase “lite tech” to describe his innovation, if you can use your legs, you can pilot an e-cargo bike.

There are three key positives to the wider adoption of EAV’s e-cargo bikes across our towns and cities.

Firstly, they relieve our city centres of vans and trucks, making our streets safer and healthier.

They are also lighter on our roads. A fully laden EAV e-cargo bike with rider weighs around 380kg. A fully laden, average-sized diesel commercial van is around 1,782kg. Electric vehicles might not have tailpipe emissions but weigh a lot more thanks to their heavy batteries, meaning they’re tougher on our road surfaces and will still deposit tyre and brake particulates in the urban environment – so not as green as you might think.

Thirdly, these unique small e-cargo bikes are attractive and quirky – especially so when you learn that their bodywork is made of

20 BUSINESSINNOVATIONMAG.CO.UK hemp fibre – not traditional ‘dirty composites’ like carbon fibre or fibreglass.

EAV’s executive chairman, Nigel Gordon-Stewart, agrees: “Our e-cargo bikes are trundling around in heavily builtup areas and rather than looming over pedestrians, they simply make people smile if they need to step out of the rider’s way.”

Waste management company Veolia is trialling two EAVs in Central London. The company has more than 300 operatives collecting rubbish on foot because they can no longer drive trucks into the city centre between 11am and 7pm.

In comparison to a normal barrow used by a street sweeper, which has a total capacity of

20kg, an e-cargo bike can carry a maximum of 150kg and access small areas.

Closer to home EAV has e-cargo bikes in the City of Oxford’s Covered Market.

Adam said: “With the average speed of vehicles in towns at seven miles an hour, we don’t believe the answer is to electrify vehicles in town centres. While that’s a solution for intra-city routes, when you enter a city, the answer is to take weight out.”

The e-cargo bikes are becoming attractive to logistics companies which measure to the second how long stops take. Adam explains: “You jump off the bike, press the key fob, unlock the doors, deliver the parcel, jump back on and you’re away.

“It’s 37 per cent more efficient than any kind of van in a town or city. There’s no opening or shutting doors. You can ride it in bad weather because it’s got thin tyres which cut through the snow, and with four wheels it’s stable – unlike the cargo trikes I’ve seen.”

The e-cargo bike can also park legally outside a drop. According to Adam, the average cost of fines per delivery vehicle in London, which can also clog up narrow streets, is around £2,500 a year.

EAV has delivered more than 85 vehicles and has a sales pipeline for many more. While Covid has slowed the team down, they are still on track to ramp up to around 200 a month by the end of 2022.

There is a huge potential market for e-cargo bikes, and EAV is in advanced talks with a global automotive original equipment manufacturer. If this goes ahead, it would be game changing not only for EAV, but also for the world’s automotive industry.

A designer who makes things happen

It’s this practical and thoughtful approach to solving 21st century problems which helped Adam fund himself through university and build a successful career at a relatively young age.

Describing himself as a designer who can make things, Adam completed a degree in transport and product design and was destined for a career in boat design after spending his finishing year with a boat designer. But the 2008 Icelandic banking crash put paid to his job offers.

Instead, he set up a business making parts for the classic Mini. This enabled him to establish BAMD Ltd, a composites design and development business specialising in low and medium volume composites manufacturing.

BAMD now employs around 16 people and works with some of the UK’s most recognised sports car marques, but Adam was acutely aware that while making parts for F1 using carbon fibre (which is what BAMD set up to do) was rather cool, when you get to the gritty end of it, it’s not a nice thing to do to the environment.

He started researching what else he could make composites out of, such as horsehair or bamboo, and found the answer closer to home.

“My diet includes flax seed and I discovered that the flax stalk is a by-product which can be woven into material for clothes. I found a company in Switzerland which produces a twilled weave flax material and we had it pre-impregnated with a bio-based resin to maintain its true sustainable credentials. This created some really brilliant bodywork material properties, such as natural vibration dampening, low electrical conductivity and flame retardant.”

It took six years to develop the composites product to commercial standards and BAMD, now EAV’s sister company (and run by Adam’s original apprentice) makes the hemp bodywork for the cargo bikes in the same way as it makes F1 parts.

“There’s no difference in the process except that one is much greener than the other,” said Adam.

EAV’s e-cargo platform design and motor, which is IP-protected, has minimal moving parts (making it low maintenance), and flexible and rigid parts of the chassis which allows it to be ridden comfortably within today’s urban landscapes.

HGV engineering on a micro scale

“What we’ve achieved is HGV engineering on a micro scale,” said Adam. “We are taking a 150kg vehicle and loading it with 150kgs. If you take a two-tonne van and load it with two tonnes, you’ll break it. We are designing a vehicle which can take 100 per cent of its total weight.”

Adam’s solution highlights the fact that perhaps, in some cases, technology has got too clever by half at the expense of the planet, and we have ignored things around us that could do the job just as well –if not better.

The FIA, the governing body for motor racing, is starting to agree. “The FIA is now making companies use natural fibres, because they realise that while everyone uses carbon fibre because it’s the go-to clever thing to do, if they make everyone use something more sustainable, they will continue to compete on a level playing field.”

EAV has now developed designs for a larger, “mid-mile” vehicle platform which can be deployed between an edge-of-town depot and its centre and, EAVgo, an ultralightweight two-person passenger vehicle.

And Adam is already planning autonomous vehicles.

Around 85 per cent of the parts for EAV’s e-cargo bike are made in the UK, and everything is recyclable or sustainable. The company is also working with motor manufacturing company (and neighbour at Upper Heyford), Saietta Group.

Saietta’s axial flux electric motors will power EAV’s lightweight skateboard platform which is the basis of its new multi-purpose modular vehicle.

Ultimately though, for Adam, it’s about the future of our planet, and with three young children, that bothers him. “No one really thinks what’s going to happen to our children’s children. There’s no accountability.

“Heavy vehicles on our roads damage the environment and people. We just need to move things slowly and efficiently. And our e-cargo vehicle works perfectly.”