Swedish electric motorbike maker CAKE just unveiled another new platform at the 2023 Consumer Electronics Show. It’s called the Åik, which is another word from the ancient Gutniska language of the island of Gotland, and roughly means ‘big and heavy load.’ If you’ve guessed that means that it’s a utility bike, you’d be 100 percent correct.
This is CAKE’s first attempt at a true e-bike. Since it’s coming from a company that previously stuck to electric motorcycles, that’s also probably why it blurs the line between the two segments so thoroughly. If you’re familiar with CAKE’s general design language, the look of the Åik absolutely tracks. It’s clearly in the same family as the company’s electric motorbike offerings. Of course, there are plenty of differences, too, or else it wouldn’t be a completely separate platform.
As an e-bike, it has pedals—which aren’t present on CAKE’s other motorbikes. Even the Makka, which falls into the modern classification of the word ‘moped,’ does not have pedals—a point that the RideApart newsroom has debated at some length. Although the word ‘moped’ did, at one time, come from motorized pedal cycles, it’s evolved to mean any two-wheeler that is both low-speed and motorized—and frequently, those no longer have pedals. Know what does have pedals, doesn’t operate at highway speeds, and is motorized, though? E-bikes.
Gallery: CAKE Åik
Back to the Åik. Its electric motor makes a claimed 100 newton-meters (about 73.75 pound-feet) of torque. It uses an Enviolo Extreme rear hub for automatic, stepless gear changes. The frame, though shaped differently from the electric motorbikes in CAKE’s lineup so far, is made from the same extruded and forged 6061 aluminum that you’d find in its other builds. What looks uncharacteristically small on a motorcycle appears impressively beefy on an e-bike.
The battery options stand out from the rest of CAKE’s lineup, as well. Riders can choose from a single battery, or utilize up to three of its 750 watt-hour batteries linked together. Claimed range of a single battery, incidentally, is 74.5 miles. So, even though real-world figures may not quite live up to the optimistic figures touted by most OEMs, stacking three of them together should result in some pretty impressive figures, nonetheless. Crucially, since the Åik has pedals, a rider can still get themselves somewhere using their own leg power, even if they miscalculate their range and run out of juice.
The Åik is part of the CAKE :work series, and is intended to be a robust, utility-focused work bike. It’s the e-bike companion to the Ösa that I got to spend a lengthy period of time with in summer, 2022—and similarly, it has sturdy-looking front and rear racks. In addition to powering the bike, the batteries can also be used to power things like refrigerated cargo boxes that could come in useful on a utility bike.
According to CAKE, the Åik should begin deliveries sometime in May, 2023. It’s currently available for pre-order on the CAKE website. Pricing will vary by region, but in the U.S., pricing starts at $6,470.
