Panther Develops and Produces Rental Bikes for Tel Aviv

LOEHNE, Germany – In close cooperation with the Israeli logistics company FSM, Panther Werke AG developed a dedicated rental bike for the city of Tel Aviv. Recently the first batch of 300 bikes out of a total of 2,000 left the Panther factory at Löhne.

A year ago, FSM won the public tender of the city of Tel Aviv on the development of a bicycle rental system for the Mediterranean city. For the bike, the Israelis turned to the German bicycle producer as the Panthers Werke AG has already successfully built rental bikes for several projects

Painted in bright green and fitted with a 3-speed gear hub the bicycles were specially designed for daily use by many different people. The special electronic lock, essential for public rental bikes, as well as the know-how for the electronic distribution system were provided by Israeli suppliers. The duration of the contract between the city of Tel Aviv and FSM is at least 10.5 years.

At the start of the project 150 rental stations are planned with 2,000 bicycles. For the future, the city council plans more stations and a bigger fleet to up to 6,000 bicycles. The official start of the rental system is planned for April 2011.