Helping us to make things better

If you haven't heard of the Lumos Ultra E-Bike helmet, and are wondering whether you missed the announcement, it's probably because we quietly launched it last year while taking pre-orders through our Firefly Kickstarter campaign. Why did we do that? - you may be asking (I can only assume you are, since you're here reading these posts). Well, to help explain our thinking behind that, here's a little insight into how Ultra E-Bike even became a thing.

The E-Bike Revolution is Here

We've known for a while now that e-bikes are becoming increasingly popular and that commuters (our people) are seriously getting on-board with the revolution. It's easy to see why - it provides the convenience of an electric assisted vehicle without the downsides of a car, like being stuck in traffic, or figuring out where to park, or just being a little bit of a nuisance to the environment.

We ran some surveys and found that a lot of our customers are e-bike owners and so would really benefit from a helmet that was rated for higher speeds. This coupled with the fact that our retail partners in Europe were also very keen on a version of Ultra that was suitable for the fast growing e-bike market all across Europe made it the obvious next project for us to work on.

Whilst Ultra is a great helmet, it's not technically rated for the top end speeds that electric bikes can reach. There's a European crash standard known as NTA 8667 which requires a helmet to protect the head at speeds of up to 45 km/h which generally requires a little more foam to help dampen the extra force one might experience in a higher speed crash. This usually means a slightly bigger helmet (think of motorcycle helmets and their sizes compared to regular cycling helmets).

We also heard from a lot of our Ultra customers that they would've loved front turn signals on their helmet, which we saw as an opportunity to address that feedback too. So we got to work...

Design phase

Something we do well at Lumos is that we dream big and come up with ideas that are pretty out there. But we're also unafraid to commit ourselves to realising those ideas. The thing that gives us confidence to follow through is that we know for a fact that we're solving problems that come with cycling on the road. We don't just make something that looks good for the sake of it. It needs to do its primary function well, which is to keep its wearer safe, through its active or passive safety features. 

The biggest pain point we wanted to address with Ultra E-Bike came with the territory of riding at higher speeds, which is that your face is exposed to higher wind speeds, making it a little uncomfortable to ride without protection. So we knew we wanted to integrate a face shield into the design right from the get go.

We developed a few concepts on integrating front turn signals into a face shield. When evaluating the ideas it was not hard to get everyone excited about the direction we ended up taking as it meant that we were building a truly innovative product again as we'd never seen anything like it on the market.

We also took the time to ideate around addressing a few other concerns that our customers had with Ultra, like a fully covered shell, a magnetic clasp and a more adjustable fit system. If you'd like to know more about that stage of the development process, you can refer to our previous update here. The end result was an excellent new helmet for the e-bike segment that really helps you to stand out on the road and keep you safe. It also doesn't hurt that it looks like something Tony Stark would wear if he rode an e-bike when not flying around in a suit.

The reviews are in

Although primarily designed for our European customers, we've opened up orders worldwide and have been delivering Ultra E-Bike to electric-assisted riders worldwide. The response has been overwhelmingly positive and we're constantly getting updates on how much people are loving their futuristic new helmet.

But it hasn't been all roses

If you follow our behind-the-scenes development updates, then you'll probably know that product development is a process that is fraught with risk, trials and tribulations and it requires a certain level of hardiness to get through it and achieve a great product in the end. Sometimes last minute changes need to be made due to unforeseen issues, resulting in us having to make the really hard decisions. But one thing we don't do at Lumos is give up, and that's why even though it took us 8 extra months to get our Firefly customers their Turn Signal Mounts, we made sure that it was worth the additional wait.

With our first run of Ultra E-Bike helmets, we had to make a few choices that we weren't super happy with, but as we were on a tight deadline to deliver to our partners, we decided to fix these things as a running update to the product. These things were by no means showstoppers and the helmets function perfectly fine, but we're picky about our products and so it was a big deal for us. Let me take you through those issues and how we've improved them along the way.

1. Face Shield Replacement

To replace the face shield on the first run helmet, requires a bit of extra skill and care from the customer. To do it, you need to peel back these sticky tabs to uncover the screw hole. Replacing the shield is then a case of unplugging and unscrewing the original and putting in the new one.

The problem is that the sticker tab loses stickiness over time and when you put it back on, it might not look new anymore. If you've ever opened up your computer mouse by peeling back the sticky feet to access the screws, you'll know what I'm talking about.

Ok, maybe it's not as common a pastime as I think it is.

We've fixed this with the new one so that it is now easier to replace the tabs and put them back without it looking bad.

Old version

New version

2. Slightly harder to press power button

As part of the upgrades to Ultra E-Bike, we increased the size of battery a little to also account for the additional lighting we were adding to allow the helmet to still run at similar (or in some case, longer) runtimes to Ultra. Increasing the box in the rear meant that the internals were shifted ever so slightly.  This caused the pin in the power button to be slightly short, requiring the button to be pressed a bit deeper, making it stiffer to press overall. We hadn't picked up on this in isolation, but when we heard from a few of our fans about how they noticed that it was a bit stiffer compared to their regular Ultra helmets, we went to check and indeed found that it was. This was a fairly simple fix and has been adjusted to bring it more in-line with the actuation required on Ultra.

3. Face Shield Coating

Every face shield comes with a hardening coating that helps to prevent it from getting sratched too easily. With our first run of Ultra E-Bike, we were convinced by our supplier to try out an anti-fogging coating on the inner side of the face shields to account for colder weather. We found that over time, this coating wouldn't hold up well and would start flaking off.

We weighed up our options and decided to eventually remove this coating in favour of another hardening coat on the inside as well. This decision was made easier, as through our limited testing, we found the anti-fog coating to also just not be particularly effective.

We will continue to search for a great anti-fogging solution and if we do find one, will make it available as a shield option in the future, now that replacing the shield is a breeze.

We're on a mission to continually improve our products

And that is exactly why we write these updates - to keep you informed of what we're doing behind-the-scenes and to also encourage you to get in touch with us if you have any of your own product feedback or ideas that you'd love to see us implement. We're always listening and working towards addressing as many things as we can with each new release.

If you want to be a part of our community of customers who are helping us to build better products, do join our Discord server, or reach out to us directly at product@lumoshelmet.co. You never know which one of the Product Team members will respond, you may even be lucky enough to get the attention of our superstar, Omar.

Wrap-up

I hope you've enjoyed that little bit of insight into our development process and agree with us that Ultra E-Bike really is the coolest e-bike helmet available. We've loved building the future of this particular segment and are looking forward to seeing what new products this helmet will inspire from other brands in this space. If you're interested in checking it out, it is currently on offer for the rest of the holiday period, as well as having its own special holiday bundle deal, which we think is incredible value for a complete cycling safety setup.

Until next time!

Stay safe and happy holidays!