Ecox is a French chain?of?e-bike shops. Whilst they’re mainly seen as a bike retailer, they’re also mobility experts and enthusiasts. The e-bike industry is rapidly growing. Last year, Paris closed 50km of car lanes, investing 300m to turn them into bike lanes. Ecox wanted to take advantage of this opportunity.

They asked us to prove their uniqueness with a strong statement: they’re not only retailers but innovators and new mobility experts.

Our thinking was inspired by France’s big transport strike, which paralyzed Paris at the end of 2019. This created a problem for drivers, especially for those for whom being on time could be a matter of life or death: emergency doctors.

We recognized there was an overlap between those doctors’ problems and Ecox’ mobility solutions.

We decided to help Ecox help emergency doctors to prove to everyone their unique role in the saturated e-bike category.

2019 and 2020 have been really intense years for France. The Yellow vests protest movement saw millions of people invade the streets of all big cities in the country, this was followed by massive strikes in the public sector which led to public transportation stopping to operate. Then there were more protests. And more. Eventually, the big cities got totally congested. Using a car wasn’t an option anymore. Some services that were assumed to be natural couldn’t operate anymore. Such as doctors reaching their patients in time. That’s when a client specialized in mobility solutions approached us with a will to do something positive that would draw attention to their electric bikes. We had a simple thought: who should never get stuck in traffic and benefit an e-bike the most? Well, those doctors. So we built them the perfect vehicle so that they could never be late or stuck again.

Driving in Paris is a painful ordeal. However, for emergency doctors being late is not an option. So, we decided to help them move faster to improve their response time when dealing with medical interventions in big cities. Our idea is a new mobility solution for a brand that defines itself as being new mobility expert: a city-proof emergency vehicle. Emergency Bikes is a unique combination of innovative technologies tailor-made for doctors enabling them to cross Paris faster and proving to every e-bike potential customer Ecox’ expertise on new mobility solutions.

It’s a unique result for a unique collaboration between the mobility and the health industry. We didn’t invent anything. First doctors in history probably used bikes. But we improved this way of working to the modern world, thanks to highly innovative materials and modern accessories. Getting inspired by the past to shape the future is our conception of innovation.

A driver spends 140 hours a year stuck in traffic jams in town (TomTom Traffic Index). According to INRIX (leading provider of traffic information): Paris is the most congested city in Europe. Emergency Bikes was born out of this observation: urban traffic is becoming more and more complex. For some, being late isn’t a real problem. But for some others: being on time isn’t an option: the emergency doctors.

On one hand, those doctors don’t just “lose time” in traffic, they lose vital time. When an emergency occurs, every minute lost in traffic by doctors reduces the chance of survival by 10%.

On the other hand, Ecox is able to provide new mobility solutions.

There was an overlap between doctors’ problems and Ecox’ solutions.

We decided to help Ecox help emergency doctors move faster by creating this unique product. That was our strategy to touch the most people possible.

The project was born in December 2019 when Paris was paralyzed by a huge transport strike, impeding all vehicles except for bikes. Ecox was convinced by the idea, as were doctors from the Paris Emergency Services. We collaborated over 10 months to develop an emergency vehicle tailored to doctors’ needs. The first fleet of Emergency Bikes was distributed in September 2020. Our objective was to conquer the streets of Paris, but we’ve ended up far beyond with Emergency Bikes now conquering the streets of some of the world’s biggest cities. The work didn’t run in traditional media, but in the street. And the medias noticed. The bike itself became the media, receiving widespread coverage across 44 countries across the globe. Thanks to this success, the Emergency Bikes are currently being revised for a V2 which will be adapted to the needs of many more emergency services.

1.2bn media impressions across 44 countries over 6 months. EB helped the brand distinguish itself as a provider of tailor-made mobility solutions.

We received coverage from general and specialized press, hundreds of articles online and on TV, thousands of tweets from all over the world.

International coverage drew the attention of governments (Israel, India…) and big cities (Moscow, Los Angeles…), who asked Ecox to develop their own EB.

Next generations are now being developed for over 26 emergency services worldwide.

Tech brands have approached Ecox to work on future versions. Ecox hired someone to lead the long-term development of EB.

Most importantly, EB changed the lives of doctors who now move twice as fast in town and reach an average 3 more interventions/day (40% increase). EB have driven an evolution of emergency services in town – proven by the interest showed by governments and cities across the world.