Montreal’s Ecolo Cycles produces bicycles with electric motors. Technically, they are called “electricity-assisted bicycles” and the company is doing well, last year selling $1.5-million worth of electricity-assisted bicycles and scooters in Quebec alone.

The company is launching a new, fully loaded $3,000 electricity and pedal-powered scooter that has a range of 100 km and zips along urban streets at 32 km/h. Next year, after testing by Transport Canada, they will introduce two sporty electric scooters that will reach speeds of 70 km/h and 90 km/h.

So, it looks like this electric bike is quickly turning into a scooter!

Via: Canada.com

Bixi, the bike sharing/rental service has finally arrived in Montreal. You can rent bikes by the hour at over 300 self-service stations in Ville-Marie, Plateau-Mont-Royal and Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie. Other stations will be available in Outremont, Sud-Ouest and Villeray–Saint-Michel if the first phase of the roll-out goes well this summer. Find a Bixi station near you.

To try the service at first, you can go to any station and insert a credit card/debt card to rent a bicycle for the hour or the day – just $5 for 24 hour access. Once you’re hooked, you should subscribe to the bike sharing service at the Bixi website. One year subscriptions are just $78; or you can opt to try it for 30 days, at $28.

The BIXI system has been honoured in TIME magazine’s list of the best inventions of 2008 and received the GOLD award for best product of 2009 in the Energy & Sustainability category of the Edison Best New Products Awards.

Toronto is looking into bringing Montreal’s Bike sharing service into town. Bixi officially launches in Montreal in the Spring of 2009 and promises to offer 2,400 bikes to share at 300 different stations located throughout Montreal.

Around 10am Oct. 24, a large flatbed truck pulled up to the southeast corner of Bloor and Spadina. As it unloaded seven sleek black-and-silver bikes, matching modular locking racks and a solar-power automated kiosk onto the street, a trio of workers dressed in matching red rain-jackets began demonstrating Montreal’s popular bike sharing system to onlookers. Bixi — a combination of bicycle and taxi — had peddled its way into town to show off its fancy new hardware to an envious cycling community.

“[This demonstration] is to give Torontonians a chance to see what a made in Canada bike share program looks like,” says Yvonne Bambrick, spokesperson for the Toronto Cyclists Union, who along with the Community Bicycle Network and Toronto Coalition for Active Transportation co-sponsored the event. “It’s pretty wild that it’s not just in Paris.”

Via Eye Weekly