Why create a prone riding position e-trike?

This is a very frequent question I get when riding around Brighton streets on the Swerv. We have so many ways of transport from cars to buses to e-scooters and even segways. So why spend years developing a prone position e-trike?

The idea came to me when I was jogging during COVID. I used to jog a lot to boost my brains activity. This is something I really needed at the time as I often found myself sat at a laptop trying my hardest to complete assignments that were stressing me out from my university degree. My brain just didn’t tick well enough to get the simplest tasks done. That’s when I realised that there was an imbalance in my life. I was sat way too often at a desk trying to do tasks requiring a lot of focus. Eventually my brain felt depleted. A lot of us might drink coffee or go on social media to relax our minds but science shows that none of these are long term sustainable solutions to this imbalance we have created in our lives in this relatively new digital era. Running and cycling helped but it took too long and too much discipline to be able to cross over from frustrated and stuck in my head to feeling relieved and being more in my body.

I realised I needed to boost my brains neuroplasticity, the ability of my brain to develop new connections and neurons. And I needed a fun and easy way of doing this pretty much on demand. Knowing that my brain even has this ability gave me hope that I could find a way to complete projects I needed to, to pass my university degree. I discovered from an online course that the #1 thing that boosts the brains neuroplasticity is for us to do things in new ways. Using my new found skills from my design engineering course at Imperial College London, I started my process of design for a tool that would help me to instantly feel alive, invigorated and refreshed.

First concept drawing of the Swerv

I combined the design of the “Tron bike” from the movie “Tron” and a simple trike to sketch out the first ever Swerv. It took me three months to design and build and it did work. But my budget was really low and my time was limited so it was very rough around the edges, BUT IT WORKED! However I had tested the concept, it gave me the boost I was looking for, I validated the idea and as soon as I tried the first prototype I was completely HOOKED. This product needed to be developed further and fast!

First prototype of the Swerv made in 2020