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You and Yours: Gap Finders: Oliver Montague from Swytch, the electric bike conversion kit

Gap Finders: Oliver Montague from Swytch, the electric bike conversion kit

BBC Radio 4 - You and Yours, Gap Finders: Oliver Montague from Swytch, the electric bike conversion kit

Gap Finders: Oliver Montague from Swytch, the electric bike conversion kit.

Today's Gap Finder is Oliver Montague from Swytch, which sells kits that convert any bike into an electric bike.

Oliver has always been interested in engineering and clean energy. He studied engineering at the University of Oxford, and was interning at Jaguar Land Rover working with electric cars when he had the idea. Oliver was cycling into work because he couldn't afford a car, and would have to shower and change in the office before work. One of Oliver's colleagues cycled in one morning but he wasn't sweaty - because he'd cycled in on an electric bike.

Oliver decided to retrofit his own bike into an e-bike, buying parts from the internet. E-bikes were too expensive for him to buy.

His friends started asking for a kit from him, and he thought there was enough demand to build a real kit that he could sell.

But Oliver wanted the kit to be simple and to fit any bike - so developed a kit where the unit fits between the handlebars with a motorised wheel that customers could fit themselves at home.

The batteries as standard have a 10 mile range. Oliver says many journeys we make on car and bike are much less than that. But you can purchase bigger batteries, with a range of up to 40 miles; or extra batteries to carry around with you. Your bike switches back to a normal bike if you don't have the battery on.

Swytch sells its kits on a pre-order basis so it doesn't waste money on overstock and can keep building the business sustainably. 

Oliver joins Winifred to talk about founding the company, as well as e-bike popularity and whether it can help more of us use the bike as a way to make journeys, instead of using our cars.

PRESENTER: WINIFRED ROBINSON
PRODUCER: LYDIA THOMAS

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