With the e-bike market now proven to be much more than a fad and the Trade Shows of the globe showing record numbers of these sustainable transporting two wheeled freedom machines in recent years, Copenhagen designers SENSEable City have launcehed a retrofitable power storage device developed by MIT and attachable to a bicycle's wheel.  The design has been generating quite a bit of web interest since its launch a few days ago.

First shown at last week's Copenhagen Climate Summit, the device claims to "transform your ordinary bicycle into a hybrid e-bike that also provides feedback on pollution, traffic congestion and road conditions in real time."

The design stores kinetic energy from braking for future use by way of technology similar to the Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS), which has changed Formula One racing dramatically in recent years.  The design stores that energy in a battery that is contained in the wheel, not on the frame of the bicycle. For that reason the Copenhagen Wheel is retrofitable on any type of bike (including the Cinelli Mystic pictured here courtesy of the SENSEable City Lab’s website).