Trip Technologies — Shared Fat-Tire E-Bike

Shared micro-mobility has a structural problem: the bikes that operators deploy aren't built for public use. Thin-tired scooters and docked bikes suffer from short lifecycles, high maintenance costs, and safety concerns — leading to widespread loss of confidence in micro-mobility as a profitable, scalable business. Trip Technologies was founded to solve this from the hardware up.

Trip engaged ZÆT to design the bike itself: the first dockless intelligent fat-tire e-bike purpose-built for rideshare. The brief was demanding — a 5-year lifecycle with annual-only servicing, zero-puncture airless tires, a maintenance-free belt drive, in-field swappable batteries, and a full IoT stack integrated into the frame for geo-fencing, anti-theft, virtual parking, and a programmatic LED advertising screen.

ZÆT designed every aspect of the physical bike: the triple-coated steel frame, fat tire geometry for all-weather stability, front and rear suspension, hydraulic disc brakes, belt drive, swappable battery architecture, and the physical integration of the IoT and display hardware.