Zapp i300 electric city bike wins 2023 German Design Award

The Zapp i300 performance electric city bike, manufactured by British company Zapp Electric Vehicles, has been awarded the Excellent Product Design award in the motorcycle category in the 2023 German Design Awards, with the independent jury of design experts commending the i300’s ‘outstanding design quality’.

The Zapp i300 breaks new ground in both design and technology, combining the convenience and agility of a step-through form factor with a high-powered electric motor to offer performance motorcycle levels of acceleration.

To achieve this, Zapp’s design team created a unique and innovative ‘Z-shaped’ exoskeleton architecture. This distinctive design ensures the i300 is as lightweight as possible to maximise battery range and on-road performance, helping the i300 achieve a 0-30mph/48kph of just 2.3 seconds.

Another key innovation of the i300 is its ultra-portable double battery system. Each battery weighs 6kg and can be charged from 20% to 80% via standard 220v/110v wall sockets in under 40 minutes. The portability of the battery packs makes the i300 easy to charge anywhere and at any time without reliance on a public charging network.

Zapp EV says it "is committed to Gen-2 sustainable design and production and the i300 exemplifies Zapp’s mission to create truly sustainable products. Not only are most of the i300’s components recyclable, but its exoskeleton architecture lowers the number of components required for assembly, in turn reducing assembly steps and energy used."

The German Design Awards jury said: “The Zapp i300 Carbon ... impresses with a striking design language that perfectly embodies the demand for lightness, dynamism, flexibility and progressive technology down to the last detail. The portable battery with a practical carrying handle is further evidence of the well thought-out and contemporary design concept.”

Swin Chatsuwan, founder and CEO of Zapp, said: “We are deeply proud of what we have achieved with the i300, so it’s an honour to have our hard work recognised by the German Design Awards. The i300 is unique in many ways, but especially in its design. It is our exoskeleton architecture that helped enable further breakthrough innovations, such as our ultra-portable double battery system, and helped ensure the i300 is highly sustainable.”

Launched in June 2022, the i300 is a high-performance city bike capable of motorbike levels of performance in a step-through silhouette. The i300 is the first in a suite of high-performance electric motorcycle products to come. Zapp EV operates an advanced direct-to-customer (DTC) experience called DSDTC (Drop-ship-direct-to-customer).