Mexican police officers may soon be patrolling the U.S.-Mexico border mounted on electric bikes made in Ukraine.
Called TopCop, the bikes are already on their way to the Mexican city of Mexicali located near the U.S. border, their Ukrainian manufacturer Delfast announced on Feb. 10.
Police officers from a department in Mexicali will start testing the bikes and if everything works out, Delfast will supply many more of their bikes to make the work of police officers more efficient in one of the most air-polluted cities in Mexico.
“The whole world is switching to electric transport, and we are helping contribute to this,” Delfast chief marketing officer Iryna Aniskina told the Kyiv Post.
The Delfast e-bikes can speed up to 80 kilometers per hour, go for 240 kilometers on a single charge with no pedal assistance, and include GPS trackers, remote launch and motor blocking.
Apart from police in Mexico, the company also offered their bikes to U.S. police in Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin, who, Aniskina says, have expressed interest in cooperation.
Founded in 2014 by two Ukrainians, Daniel Tonkopiy and Sergey Denisenko, Delfast started by providing courier delivery services in Kyiv. But when the company was searching for a high quality electric bike to improve its services, they found the market was empty and pivoted.
Discovering an opportunity, “we’ve created our own bike,” said Aniskina.
After a successful crowdfunding campaign, the company changed its activities to bike production and even broke a Guinness World Record in 2017 with its Prime model for the longest e-bike ride on a single charge without pedaling.
Today, the company boasts an impressive sales geography including the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, Norway, Australia, Japan and even South Africa. Besides B-to-G (business-to-government) projects, the company sells their bikes to delivery services and other businesses.
“We even have a client who produce ecological yogurts and decided to deliver them on electric bikes,” Aniskina said.
At the same time, only two Delfast bikes were sold in Ukraine last year. Among obvious reasons is the price – it varies from $3,500 to $7,000 for a bike.
“It’s high for Ukraine, but for Western Europe or the U.S., this is not an incredible amount of money.”
Although the company is globally oriented, the U.S. is Delfast’s target market with 60% of its sales already made there.
Although Aniskina didn’t disclose exact sales numbers to the Kyiv Post, she says the financial numbers have grown by five times since Delfast started to produce e-bikes in 2019.
“This year we plan to grow several times more,” Aniskina said.
