Biking Hub COBI – daniels + erdwiens - design innovation development

Connected Biking.

COBI turns your smartphone into a connected biking system. Hub and app combine light, dashboard, navigation, communication, health tracking and entertainment.

COBI founder Andreas Gahlert came up with a simple yet highly convincing idea: Everybody owns a smartphone, the computer part is already there. Now we connect it via case and hub with the bicycle and let it take over with thumb-control operated functions all around monitoring, operation, information and communication.
We succeeded in a pitch and since then continiously developed the design. COBI stands for connected biking and comes with light, warning signal, additional battery for smartphone charging (non e-bikes) and theft alert.

In close cooperation with a constantly growing team, our engineering partner H&H, lighting development experts, electronics and app developers, communication professionals and production partners, we have given a lot and learned a lot. In a rapidly developing world of networking and mobility, the core tasks and greatest challenges lay in the development of the system, the mechanical and electronic interfaces, the definition of light and style kits and the consideration of multi-optionalities and the greatest possible variability.

The striking design of the hub served as inspiration for the UI design with its graphic corner elements.

Based on the design of the hub, we developed style kits for mountain bikes, city bikes, urban bikes and race bikes offering a a wide range of opportunities for customization.