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Ford built a high-tech electric bike that can check your heart rate

Ford is experimenting with making high-tech electric bikes to help beef up its offerings in mobility services.

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The automaker showed off two of its bikes at CES this week: one for commercial use called MoDe Pro and one for consumers called the ModeMe.

The ModeMe is especially interesting because of how it could integrate into Ford's larger mobility plans. 

Ford MobileMe
Ford's MobileMe e-bike. Cadie Thompson/Tech Insider

First introduced at the Mobile World Congress last March, the ModeMe is built to fit into the trunk of a Ford Fusion, which is the vehicle the company is using for its GoDrive car-sharing program currently being tested in London.

The idea is once a person drops the vehicle off at a car-sharing hub, they may still need to go a short distance before they reach their final destination. In such a case, the driver could just pop open the trunk and use the electric bicycle to get where they are going.

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While it’s still very much a concept and Ford hasn’t decided whether or not to implement the bikes, it has come up with a pretty impressive functioning prototype.

For starters, the ModeMe integrates with your smartphone via the GoDrive app to provide you data, safety warnings, and navigation.

Ford ModeMe
The e-bike fits into the trunk where it charges. Cadie Thompson/Tech Insider

A GoDrive user simply enters a destination in the GoDrive app once they check out a vehicle and once they drop it off at a hub and take the bike out, the navigation picks up where they left off, continuing to direct the user on the via app while riding the bike.

To help keep the user’s eyes on the road, the bike handlebars vibrate to indicate when a rider needs to take a turn. So if you are supposed to take the next left, the left handlebar will vibrate.

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The bike also has sensors that can sense a person’s environment. So if there is a possible danger, like you are about to veer into traffic, both handlebars will vibrate and a “Danger” message will appear on the screen of your phone to want you.

Ford ModeMe
Cadie Thompson/Tech Insider

If you wear a wearable device, you can integrate it with the app so you can see your heart rate on your smartphone screen while you are riding around. You can also use your biometric data to help control the motor of the engine.

Ford ModeMe Electric bike
Cadie Thompson/Tech Insider

For example, say you are riding to dinner and you don’t want to get sweaty before you arrive. You can change the settings to let the bike know that you want to keep your heart rate low while traveling. The bike will then sense your heart rate and once you get over 70 beats per minute or so, the motor will pick up and help you keep from breaking a sweat.

The bike has a range of about 30 miles of assisted riding on a full charge and has a max speed of 15 miles per hour.

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“We are still in experiment mode,” Tom Thompson, a Ford engineer, told Tech Insider. “We are still putting the whole product together and experimenting with features, trying to figure out what customers want and figuring out what the business case looks like, and what market we are going to go after.”

Ford Transportation
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