Before BCT
CARBONTRIKES has been the lightest and fastest trike on the market for a long time, and most likely the best race trike you can buy. Most race trike riders would benefit from upgrading to Carbontrike but there was always two obstacles limiting this from happening:
- We couldn´t manufacture carbon trikes fast enough to meet the demand as all trikes was handmade in Sweden only by a few workers skilled enough for the job, and even harder to scale up the production
- We were at the wrong place, in Sweden, far from United States where most trikes are sold
The Joint Venture BCT
To eliminate these obstacles we formed a 50:50 Joint Venture together with US based Bacchetta Bicycles. We called the Joint Venture everything developed during the Joint Venture BCT (from Bacchetta-CarbonTrike). Bacchetta was probably the most known recumbent bicycle company in United States with 20 years of experience in mass production of recumbent bikes, including world record holding carbon fiber recumbents. Bacchetta had only built two wheeled bikes, never trikes, but through the Joint Venture they wanted to take a shortcut to the world's best carbon fiber trike to match their own record bikes.
The goal for the Joint Venture was:
- Develop world´s first carbon fiber recumbent performance trike for serial production
- Move CARBONTRIKES business from Sweden to St. Petersburg in Florida (where Bacchetta were situated), including help to obtain US visa for us (Lars Viebke and Artur Adson) to be able to stay in Florida and work with recumbent trikes and bikes several years to come
- Keep working together (CARBONTRIKE and Bacchetta) starting with selling all trikes together and share 50:50 both from the trikes and all parts and accessories developed during the Joint Venture (most with BCT-logos)
Development of CT2.0
Through Bacchetta's long experience of serial production of recumbents and the contacts they had built up over the years, we got direct with the world's best companies for serial production of carbon fiber composite parts within bike and automotive industry. Working together with these companies and use our experience from years of development and manufacturing of trikes in carbon fiber combined with world-class industrial design (by Artur Adson), and extensively use of modern tools as CAD, 3D-scanning and 3D-printing, and months of CNC to produce likely the world´s largest and most complicated serial production molds in steel for carbon fiber bikes and trikes.
The result was CT2.0 – second generation CARBONTRIKE and the world´s first mass produced carbon fiber recumbent performance trike and still the lightest trike on the market!
The Pandemic hits
But just as we had started production of the CT2.0 and got through the initial phase until the production was running smooth and we were preparing for moving from Sweden to United States the pandemic hit, stopping all plans!
During the Pandemic
Bacchetta tried keeping the trike business running for a while without having CARBONTRIKE involved in Florida, while we appealed to the US Embassy to get an exemption from the travel restrictions – without any success.
The trike business is paused
But running the trike business without CARBONTRIKE was just a compromise and when the pandemic lead to more problems as shortage of bike parts, we decided to stop the trike sales and put the trike business on pause until we could restart trike business after the pandemic and after we had moved CARBONTRIKE to United States.
CARBONTRIKE Buy-out Bacchetta from BCT
We also decided it was better separating the trike business from the bike business; let the trike specialists (CARBONTRIKE) run the trike business and the bike specialists (Bacchetta) take care of the bikes. CARBONTRIKES Sweden decided to Buyout Bacchetta from the Joint Venture to become 100% owner of the Joint Venture Entity, CT2.0 and everything developed during the Joint Venture including remaining trikes and parts and tools for producing 1000 trikes. The plan was to register CARBONTRIKE LLC in Florida and transfer the trike business to this company and use this business as the Enterprise for an Investor Visa to United States. This is in the process as we speak.
After the Pandemic
Since the pandemic ended, we have been preparing the move to Florida and the start of the trike business in Florida. This preparation has been fully legal to do but it is not legal to run the trike business before it is officially approved as an Investor Visa Enterprise.
And now...the trike business restarts soon!
But the day we will start CARBONTRIKE LLC in Florida getting closer!
We expect getting permission to start running the trike business and move now during the winter or latest during the spring!
We have already prepared the new trike shop and we have several CT2.0 in stock, ready to send to all riders who have been waiting patiently to finally make the ultimate upgrade to a CARBONTRIKE! |
