Issues

The best technology for your travels

1.
Pocket Cable
Native Union

The new cable from Native Union is superbly pocketable and designed to avoid tangling. It has USB-C connectors at each end of its 17cm cable, with both able to fold back into the case for tidiness. It’s capable of supporting strong charge levels, so it’s compatible with laptops as well as phones. Get it in one of five colours, including an eye-catching bright orange.
nativeunion.com

2.
Soundlink Max
Bose

The new Bose speaker is small enough to pack in your carry-on but sounds huge. Rugged enough to resist shocks, water and dust, it boasts a rope handle that can be swapped out for a shoulder-length strap for further versatility. The battery lasts for 20 hours and the speaker can even charge your phone while playing audio.
bose.com

3.
Galaxy Fold 6
Samsung

Leave your tablet at home and take this instead. The new Samsung folds out to a bright and attractive 7.6-inch display with a centre crease that’s now near-invisible in use. An improved camera system, fast processor and larger external display add to the appeal, even if it’s still a little thick when folded.
samsung.com

4.
Tracking Card
Nomad

The new Nomad tracker will help should you ever lose your wallet or have it stolen. It uses Apple’s Find My system, which means it sends a silent message to any passing Apple device when marked as lost, with its location then securely relayed to your own chosen device. Barely bigger than a bank card, it can be charged via any MagSafe charging pad, making its integration into daily life a breeze.
nomadgoods.com

Illustrations: Yusuke Saitoh

Tuned in

The traditional commute may have taken a hit from flexible working, parking restrictions and people eschewing car-ownership but drive-time radio is still speaking up around the world – even if some audience members are listening on their laptops at home. Station bosses want engaged listeners, while advertisers want to connect with everyone, especially people humming along as they edge along in traffic jams. It’s a coveted slot for those behind the mic too – hosts get here only by having spent years honing their craft, perfecting a welcoming tone that’s both authoritative and relaxed. 

Here, we celebrate the drive-time hosts who drum up engagement and continue to reel in remarkable audience numbers. Whether in Amman, Mexico City, Singapore, Seattle or Berlin, these presenters have fine-tuned their shows to match the time of day and mood of their city – not to mention the relaying of those all-important traffic updates. It’s this spontaneity that instils drive-time radio with a unique charm that can’t be replicated by podcasts or music-streaming services, despite the rhetoric that these mediums continue an unassailable rise. 

These six presenters might play music, broadcast news or engage listeners with games and competitions but each has mastered how to accompany their audience at a crucial part of the day – while making breakfast, during the commute, post-pick-up with a car full of children or easing into the evening at home. What unites them all is the relationship with listeners (something that isn’t necessarily shared by podcast hosts and music makers) and a clear understanding that what they do isn’t one-sided. Instead, it’s a collaborative endeavour that’s all about bringing people along for the ride.

Singapore

The hallway that leads to the CNA938 recording studio gives guests a tour of Singapore’s radio landscape. You’ll see door after door adorned with the logos of popular English, Tamil, Malay and Chinese-language stations, while their diverse music and chatter is safely soundproofed as they broadcast live to listeners across the city-state. 

CNA938 is the radio station of Singapore’s multimedia news channel CNA. Its studio has large windows that overlook the open-plan newsroom. It’s relatively quiet when Andrea Heng and Hairianto Diman, hosts of the flagship English-language morning drive-time show Asia First, take to the air at 07.00. By mid-morning, though, the newsroom is bustling. 

“Growing up, drive-time was always on – when you’re sitting in the car with your dad as he takes you to school, that kind of stuff,” says Heng. “It’s the time when you catch up with everything that’s happened overnight around the world.” 

As the station’s opening show, Asia First sets the tone for the day. Despite its news focus, the spirit is conversational and often fun – in part due to Heng and Hairianto, whose friendly banter and natural rapport belie the fact that Hairianto only joined as a co-host in May. He and Heng are adept at handling the range of issues that come across their desk – be they wars and elections or extra legroom on aeroplanes – and flit seamlessly between the gravitas required for serious topics and the humour better suited to lighthearted ones.

The duo also enlivens commutes with an interactive “Question of the Day” segment, where they ask a question on air and listeners send in responses via Whatsapp. The pair solicit opinions on everything from at-home work policies to Taylor Swift.

Knowing that many listeners are alone in their cars and could be stuck in traffic, Heng and Hairianto see themselves as hosting a chatty dialogue with the audience rather than simply acting as newsreaders or staid presenters. Which is to say: they welcome dissent. 

“We have comments that come in saying, ‘No, we don’t agree with what you’re saying’ – and then that becomes a conversation as well,” says Hairianto. 

The listener submissions channel is always open and Heng and Hairianto occasionally share random messages. This spontaneity gives Asia First an endearing intimacy and can reveal the surprising topics that the audience want to give their two-cents on: a recent news item about dental hygiene prompted a listener to chime in with toothbrush recommendations. Fresh take.

“It’s direct and personal, and we keep it that way,” says Heng. “That’s something only radio can do.”

Amman

“Getting you home and playing your favourite music” is the simple promise that rings out from Play 99.5, in between pop tunes, lively ads and the mellifluous voice of Dana Darwish. The host has been accompanying Amman on the afternoon commute on Jordan’s top English-language radio station for the past five years. It’s a demanding four-hour shift every Sunday to Thursday from 15.00 to 19.00. During that time, Darwish expects to have multiple audiences, as the average car journey in Amman lasts just 20 minutes. 

The journeys might be short but Darwish understands that her listeners are impatient to get home. “That’s Jordanians,” she says. “If we’re kept at a stop sign for two minutes we lose our minds.” As a result, Darwish tries to keep her tone relaxed: “I try to be as soothing as possible. Maybe one day I will shift careers and start doing sleep podcasts.” 

As well as playing the hits – Darwish is aware of her young audience, made up mostly of 16 to 25-years-olds – the host is keen to use her show as a force for good. “I’ve revolved my entire show around bringing other people’s stories to light,” she says. Segments such as “Under the Spotlight” call attention to the talents of ordinary people, while “Play with the Athletes” showcases the Jordanian sports stars that, according to Darwish, don’t get their dues in the country, such as the taekwondo athlete Julyana Al-Sadeq. 

Play 99.5 has also built a reputation for its “out-of-the-box” competitions. One in particular – sponsored by the vehicle brand Jaguar Land Rover – is “forever etched” in Darwish’s mind. “The competition was getting people to roar like a jaguar,” she says. “I sat in the studio for hours just listening to voice notes of people roaring.” The partnership isn’t just an example of the programme’s proclivity for mood-boosting silliness either. It’s one of the many brand collaborations that kept the DriveBack Show going as a commercial success. Similarly, Jordan Kuwait Bank has sponsored the show for almost five years. 

Darwish is aware that the live radio landscape is changing but she remains confident in the continued appetite for shows like hers. The live element, she posits makes every show unique and can’t be replicated. “If you think about football, whether you’re watching today or tomorrow, the game isn’t going to change,” she says. “But why do you want to watch it live? Because it’s happening now, everyone’s together and you see people’s reactions. Radio is the same. We’re in the traffic together, listening together, chatting together – it creates a community.”

Berlin

“I’m probably the only early morning presenter who doesn’t drink coffee,” says Marco Seiffert. Instead, the host drinks plenty of water at the break of dawn, during his drive into the Potsdam studio of Radioeins, a channel from Berlin-Brandenburg public broadcaster RBB.

Der Schöne Morgen (“The Beautiful Morning”) is steered by Seiffert along with his colleague Tom Böttcher every weekday, with the pair alternating with a female duo every other week. Since Seiffert joined in 2006, it has become the most listened to morning show in Berlin, Germany’s most competitive radio market. 

Seiffert sees the presenter’s role as catching his audience up with what’s happened during the night and what’s going on in Berlin and Brandenburg that day – as well as playing great music, of course. Instead of prank calls and prize draws, you’ll find witty jokes from the hosts and political analysis from leading journalists on all sides of the political spectrum. There’s also economics, arts, culture and sports coverage, and listeners can ask the kind of unusual questions that they’ve always wanted answered. 

Listeners are also encouraged to request songs that have somehow disappeared into the ether. Rather than being a Tiktok playback station too, music on Der Schöne Morgen serves as an exploration into new and unfamiliar realms. “Our selection requires a certain tolerance,” says Seiffert. “You’re going to find gems but you’re probably not going to like every single song. In my opinion, our listeners want to be reliably informed but they also want to be constantly surprised in terms of topics and music. Spotify and podcasts can hardly offer that.”

For the many listeners who tune in on their way to work – stuck in traffic or waiting at the train station – Seiffert sees the programme as a “familiar companion”. And despite serving listeners at rush hour, no one at the show is in a hurry. Live interviews often last up to four minutes, more than double the average of the show’s competitors. Der Schöne Morgen also doesn’t shy away from an argument. “Politicians can handle it,” says Seiffert. “You have to poke them a little, otherwise it gets boring.”

Overall, Seiffert puts the show’s success down to its authenticity: its hosts are allowed to be themselves, whatever their mood. “We don’t feel this inner pressure to be artificially cheerful,” he says. “I’m no different on and off air. If my favourite football team has just lost, I can be despondent. If I’ve been to a concert the night before, I might be a bit tired. It’s OK.”

The Der Schöne Morgen style is so unique in Germany that the show has developed a cult following far beyond the broadcasting area – and Seiffert, in particular, appreciates when listeners continue to tune in on holiday or after moving away from Berlin. “It’s always exciting for me when people take us with them wherever they go.”

Seattle

When the weekday clock strikes 16.00 on the US’s West Coast, a pre-recorded voice announces, “You’re listening to Drive Time with Evie Stokes on KEXP.” To avid listeners of the Seattle-based independent radio station, the name still takes some getting used to. For over 20 years, music-industry veteran Kevin Cole – who cut his teeth as a DJ at Minneapolis club First Avenue, where he counted Prince among his fans –commanded the afternoon slot.

Stokes took over the prime-time post in July, having worked her way up over 17 years from pulling records as an unpaid assistant to grinding out five-hour overnight shifts and, most recently, hosting Sunday afternoons. Now she peers out of the broadcast booth’s window while the station’s popular café and record store hums with customers. 

Drive Time reaches 75,000 listeners weekly, according to Nielsen Media Research. While those figures are relatively modest, KEXP’s outsized influence comes from its tastemaker reputation for breaking up-and-coming artists. Touring musicians detour to Seattle so they can record one of the station’s highly coveted “Live on KEXP” sessions. Stokes has hosted the likes of psychedelic rockers Crumb, southern gothic singer-songwriter Ethel Cain and London-based Afro-electronic outfit Ibibio Sound Machine.

Stokes’ promotion comes at a propitious time for KEXP, which acquired a new frequency and began broadcasting on FM radio across the San Francisco Bay Area in March. The expanded range has led to a double-digit percentage growth in listenership. Broadcasting until 19.00, Stokes soundtracks the afternoon commute on the West Coast, while remaining mindful of KEXP’s global listeners who tune in digitally. “A lot of people are winding down and settling in at home,” says Stokes. “I’ll ask them what they’re cooking for dinner. But then I have listeners in Australia going out for their morning run.”

She starts each show with a rough outline but allows the day’s mood to lead her. She’s also receptive to listener requests, even oddball ones. “A listener might request a song about horses and, before you know it, I’ve played seven songs on that theme,” she says.

Her empathetic voice also reaches her audience in their hour of need. A listener once requested comforting songs while lying in bed with a partner in the final moments of hospice care. “I looked for songs to bring them some peace,” she says, such as “Love is Stronger than Death” by The The.

These examples reflect Stokes’ attitude to radio and its uniquely live values. While she won’t shy away from solemnity when necessary, Stokes sees the afternoon peak as an ideal time to deploy her on-air philosophy, “Radio is best when it’s unexpected, thoughtful, fun to listen to and laugh-out-loud funny.” We couldn’t agree more.

Mexico City 

Eight years ago, when Mexican radio presenter Gabriela Warkentin launched W Radio’s morning news show, the drive-time slot in Mexico City was tired and saturated. “We didn’t want to recreate the same hard-hitting product as other stations,” says Warkentin, who also works as a columnist for Spanish newspaper El País and Mexican title Reforma. Así las Cosas (“That’s the way it is”) was the result: a grounded show that delivers the news without over-dramatising the region’s political events. 

“The city is characterised by a tense and often violent social landscape: W Radio wants to offer clarity about complex subjects,” says Warkentin, sitting behind her mic, surrounded by broadsheet newspapers as she readies herself to read the day’s headlines.

On air between 07.00 and 10.00 every weekday, Así las Cosas sets listeners up for the working day. “Morning radio is a window for real-time interaction,” says Warkentin, who gets feedback from her listeners through call-ins and the station’s Whatsapp and social media channels. “There’s a tradition of cultivating a relationship with an audience via the radio in a way that cannot be achieved with television.”

On occasion, Warkentin’s excitable tone rises like that of a football commentator but it’s always tempered by her sharp insights. Loyal listeners engage in a dialogue with the presenter, offering feedback that has shaped the show. “Initially, there was criticism when we opened the broadcast with tense news stories. It’s not that listeners don’t want to know; they just don’t want to hear it as soon as they get out of bed,” says Warkentin. To create a smoother wake-up call that doesn’t demand so much of listeners, she now holds off until the second hour to cover tough topics. The programme now opens with an eight-minute news summary before Warkentin is joined by an economic or political correspondent for an in-depth conversation about the most pertinent story of the day. Warkentin wraps up the third hour with sports and science news. In between news and discussion segments, she plays upbeat Latin American music. 

Being one of the first voices to break domestic and international news has made Warkentin resilient. “During Mexico City’s large-scale earthquake in September 2017, W Radio kept broadcasting past midnight to try to spread information as effectively as possible. Listeners were scared – and so was I.”

Warkentin’s morning programme remains a welcome daily comfort, not only for residents of Mexico but also for the nation’s expats in Dubai, Tokyo, Sydney and beyond. “The morning slot provides a cathartic social moment,” says Warkentin. As the clock strikes 09.00 and W Radio’s countdown reverberates around the studio, Warkentin has a final scan of her script to prepare to go back on air for the closing hour of the show. “The real power of radio lies in its collective companionship.”

Chain reaction

When it comes to cities, first impressions are often damning. Despite its plentiful baroque and neo-gothic architecture, Brussels isn’t deemed one of Europe’s great cities. If you were visiting the Belgian capital just five years ago, you would have had to do a lot of waiting at pedestrian crossings. Perhaps you wouldn’t have thought this very strange. Most large European cities, even those that are thousands of years old, adapted fairly frictionlessly to the advent of the car.

Indeed, Brussels worked particularly hard to transition from hooves and feet to four wheels. From the 1950s and 1970s, as part of an ominously named policy called the Manhattan Project, it built flyovers in downtown neighbourhoods, bulldozed large swaths of the city centre to connect its main northern and southern railway stations, placed metro stops beneath office buildings so that commuters could make a swift entry and exit, and constructed a new central rail terminus. The intention was to create a city that was utopian in its embrace of mechanised travel. The result was a city that literally became a byword for traffic, pollution and poor urban planning: “Brusselisation” means haphazard and ineffective redevelopment.

On a magnificently sunny July afternoon, monocle arrives in a city that is almost unrecognisable from that description. Brussels’ main thoroughfare, Boulevard Anspach, is full of people sauntering, strolling, strutting or simply standing still. There are many bicycles but not a car in sight. Then we hear a phrase that will be repeated to us many times over the next 36 hours: “This place used to be horrible.”

Brussels’ transformation from car-choked hellhole to walker’s paradise is largely the result of a series of highly interventionist regional mobility plans. The most famous of these, the Good Move Initiative, was launched in 2022 with the aim of – among other things, such as improving public transport and cycling infrastructure – reducing automotive traffic by 24 per cent by 2030.

Down a side street on the sun-drenched terrace of an Italian restaurant, we meet Pascal Smet, self-described “father of Good Move”. This soubriquet is not hyperbolic. Smet was the minister of mobility and public works in the Brussels-Capital Region government when Good Move was in the planning phase and secretary of state for urbanism and heritage when it was implemented. He is a disciple of Jan Gehl, the Danish architect and urban designer whose career has focused on re­orienting cities away from cars towards pedestrians and cyclists. “The core function of a city is interaction between people – and people cannot interact in their cars,” says Smet, leaning over his spaghetti amatriciana.

In a white linen shirt and natty wire-framed glasses, the 57-year-old, who represents the Dutch-speaking Socialist Party, Vooruit (“Onward”), is more fashionable than you might expect of a politician but he has the irrepressible energy of the soapbox campaigner. Despite having recently undergone hip-replacement surgery after a cycling accident, Smet doesn’t stop either talking or moving the whole time he is with monocle.

His limp seems to be an appropriate physical manifestation of the recent slings and arrows that his brainchild has endured. To say that Good Move has been polarising would be understating the effect that the initiative has had on Brussels’ politics. Its car policies were arguably the defining issue in the region’s parliamentary elections in June, elections that returned a majority of votes for parties that actively campaigned on an anti-Good Move platform. Though the byzantine nature of the Belgian electoral system makes analysing the results, let alone forming a government, difficult, even the father of Good Move concedes that it faces an uncertain future. “The overall majority of the people voted Good Move out,” says Smet. But this does not mean that Brussels’ car-free revolution is over or that it has failed.

A strange thing happened in June’s election. In Brussels, a French-speaking-majority city in a Dutch-speaking region, candidates and parties are split into lists based on language. In theory, voters can put their “X” next to someone who does not speak the same language as them but, in reality, this is rare. However, this year, despite there being only 50,000 registered Dutch-speaking voters in Brussels, the region’s Dutch-speaking parties received about 80,000 votes, meaning that 30,000 French speakers (out of about 200,000) voted on non-linguistic lines. The main beneficiaries of this were the Dutch-speaking Greens, who many believe were lent votes by French speakers who are pro-Good Move.

Good movers and headshakers: key figures in Brussels’ car debate

We meet the leader of Brussels’ Greens in Parc de Bruxelles, a large 18th-century royal park opposite the Belgian parliament building. Elke van den Brandt is also the incumbent minister of mobility. Even though Good Move was launched by Smet and the Socialists, today it is more associated with Van den Brandt and the Greens, who have greater representation in the Brussels parliament and have made the initiative the cornerstone of their agenda. Naturally, Van den Brandt arrives for our meeting on a bicycle, which she has ridden directly from negotiations to form a new government. She has a warm smile and manner but is bullish about the policy. “The future of Good Move is the future of Brussels,” she says. Is a scrapping or at least scaling-back of the plan on the agenda in the talks? She admits it is but shoots back: “Remember, the most expensive infrastructure is not cycling or walking. If you look at Copenhagen, they made all those cycling changes when the city was nearly bankrupt. They asked themselves, ‘What’s the cheapest way for people to get around?’ And they invested what money they had in cycling infrastructure.”

These are salient points. The first concerns what a city can afford to do. After all, politics is the art of the possible and, during financially straitened times, it is important to focus on what can be achieved with the means at your disposal. The second point concerns what a city wants to be. The Danish capital, with its plentiful bike lanes, excellent public transport and pedestrianised centre, is seen as a model for progressive urban leaders around the world but its transformation into a mobility mecca came after decades of debate and protest.

Indeed, Brussels’ metamorphosis has been achieved in a far shorter period of time. Beyond the politics, the data is astounding. Between 2022 and 2023, after a year of Good Move, 20 per cent fewer cars were counted in the city centre, with these numbers dropping as much as 50 per cent during rush hour. There was a 21 per cent drop in road accidents, and a 69 per cent drop in related fatalities, while levels of toxic nitrogen dioxide (no2) dropped by as much as 35 per cent at some particularly busy intersections – significant in a region that was estimated to suffer 900 premature deaths a year related to air pollution. But hard data, though important, is perhaps not as influential as that difficult-to-quantify thing: emotion. How people travel around the place in which they live is a highly charged issue; in Brussels tempers have frayed on several occasions since Good Move was rolled out. Whereas in the city centre, known as the Pentagon, cars have been almost completely banished, in neighbourhoods beyond its boundaries, implementation has been trickier.

Two months after the closure of large roads in the centre, concrete blocks and works barriers started appearing in working-class neighbourhoods such as Schaerbeek and Cureghem, which also have large immigrant populations. In both areas, after construction vehicles were set ablaze and police were attacked, the roadblocks were removed. 

Pro-Good Move politicians believe that this was largely a problem of communication. Van den Brandt blames the mode of delivery. “The participation phase was during coronavirus, so we had a lot of online meetings,” she says. But Smet blames the message itself. “I learned that you cannot go to the people and tell them, ‘We are going to get rid of the cars,’” he says. “You say, ‘We want to have a car-free square because we want your kids to play, we want you to sit on a terrace and have something to eat.’”

A five-minute cycle from the Pentagon, Cureghem is a largely African and Maghrebi neighbourhood. On a blazing Friday afternoon, large groups of men congregate in the shade outside the mosque and around the area’s many garages and secondhand car dealerships – it is immediately obvious that the automotive industry is a large employer here. monocle’s guides, Damiaan and Alessio, usually so voluble, seem a little subdued. It is difficult to get people to speak to us, much less to give their full name or have their photograph taken. But 46-year-old Boubacar does explain that the roadblocks just “appeared, with no warning,” after which, “you felt like you were in a labyrinth, like you were stuck in your neighbourhood”.

This is a common charge levelled at Good Move by black and Arab Bruxellois – that it’s designed to keep them away from the rest of the city’s largely white population. Indeed, an Arab parliamentarian from Vooruit, Fouad Ahidar, left the party and campaigned on an independent ticket, focusing primarily on two issues: Palestine and Good Move. His new Team Fouad Ahidar party won three seats to Vooruit’s two. While Ahidar was a vocal presence during the campaign, residents say that the city’s political leaders abandoned them in the immediate aftermath of Good Move’s introduction to Cureghem. “We didn’t understand who we had to talk to, which politician this had come from,” says 46-year-old Mamadou, leaning against a vintage Mercedes.

Two years later, however, during the election campaign, they had many championing their cause. These included the Workers’ Party of Belgium (pvda), a far-left group that won 15 out of 89 seats in the Brussels parliament. monocle meets one of its MPs, Jan Busselen, in a hotel bar. A lot of what we have heard and seen in Brussels seems to align with the view that, though the way that Good Move has been implemented can be contentious, the means justify the ends. Busselen disagrees. “It’s a very paternalistic way of looking at people – that we’re going to put measures in place and people aren’t smart enough to comprehend that it is better for them,” he says. “And it is dangerous because it pushes naturally left-wing voters into the arms of the right and conspiracy theorists.”

As Smet says, private car ownership also has another dimension in immigrant communities. “They’re a symbol of success, freedom, a ticket to a girlfriend and an extension of your living room,” he says. Ans Persoons, an ally of Smet’s who assumed the role of secretary of state for urbanism and heritage after he resigned following a scandal involving the mayor of Tehran, says, “It’s not about mobility and public space. More than anything, it’s about identity and gentrification.”

She’s right – mobility and public space are ineluctably political and as such have been sucked into the wider culture war concerning identity that has subsumed European politics in recent years. Cities around the world – but especially in Europe, where the transition away from cars is happening more quickly – have seen the issue lead to violence. “If you change things, there’s a lot of reaction,” says Van den Brandt. “It’s no different in Paris or Berlin.”

But unlike those places, Brussels’ politics is now defined by whether you are pro- or anti-car. Smet is unequivocal. “People will say that the biggest mistake that humanity ever made was introducing the privately owned car to an urban environment,” he says. But while his future, for now, looks to be away from frontline politics, Van den Brandt and Persoons will have to continue the battle of persuading people that getting rid of cars is a good move. Arriving in Brussels on a sunny afternoon, it is difficult not to get a favourable impression of the changes that the city has made in this regard. And if its leaders can continue to make improvements to people’s mobility, in years to come, Brusselisation might start to be seen as a positive thing.

Inside Canyon’s quest to revolutionise city cycling with high-performance e-bikes

“This is a do-everything bike,” says Arthur Janzen, Canyon’s global category director for urban and recreation, suitably dressed for a ride in shorts and a T-shirt. “No matter where you go, the bike supports you.” We’re on a two-wheeled tour of the bike brand’s global HQ in Koblenz. In the hills above us is German wine country and the sun is shining as we ride down a path next to the Rhine, testing the bike that Janzen is referring to, the Pathlite:On SUV, as well as the Roadlite:On CF. These are two of the latest e-bikes in this category.

Canyon, with its huge number of pedal and e-bikes – from road to mountain – on offer via its website, is clearly ambitious. It’s determined to be at the forefront of a bicycle industry that’s continuing to develop at almost the same lick as the automotive trade.

The Roadlite has wireless gear changing, lights integrated with its battery and a motor by Porsche-owned company Fazua. The Pathlite, a trekking bike with fat tyres, comes with the option of abs (the anti-lock braking system pioneered by car designers) to stop from you going over the handlebars, as well as a belt-drive system that lets the rider change gears with a twist of the right handlebar rather than a click shift. Both offer graded levels of pedal assist – and cost several thousand euros.

The company’s new HQ – a collection of box-shaped, black-and-white buildings comprising offices, a showroom and an e-bike centre – opened last year. When Monocle meets the company’s CEO, Nicolas de Ros Wallace, he is sitting in a Vitra armchair in an office filled with high-performance bikes and cycling paraphernalia. De Ros Wallace, who has Spanish, Italian and British roots, is sporting one of the brand’s black T-shirts and, though we’re assured that dressing in company kit isn’t compulsory, most people here are embracing the look. De Ros Wallace came onboard in 2021, after leadership roles at Zara and, most recently, Nike, where he oversaw the Jordan segment from the sportswear behemoth’s European base in the Netherlands. He still commutes to Canyon from Utrecht.

De Ros Wallace says that urban bikes represent about 5 per cent of global sales, something that he wants to increase. “One of our strategic pillars is urban mobility,” he says. “But it doesn’t have to come by bringing down performance. It has to come by pulling up urban mobility.” He is determined to bring a design-forward, technology-filled approach to city biking, an area that he thinks offers big opportunities for growth as metropolises reassess their transport infrastructure.

Canyon, which employs nearly 1,700 people worldwide, including at a hub in Amsterdam, isn’t aiming to be the next Specialized or Giant Bicycles. In fact, being the biggest bike company in the world isn’t part of its game plan. “Others play that role,” says De Ros Wallace. “Our ambition is to be the most innovative and inspiring.” The brand is banking on differentiation to stand out from the pack as it looks to tweak its catalogue. Part of the plan, being an e-commerce player, is striving to provide the best customer service and extending the ways in which consumers can interact with the brand. This has been done through investment in an app and a forthcoming membership scheme. Canyon’s physical presence is also being extended with the growth of its Canyon Factory Service (CFS) centres – essentially repair workshops – that are currently operating in towns including Rotselaar in Belgium and Eindhoven in the Netherlands. Munich’s CFS is slated to open in early 2025.

Founded as a bicycle retailer called Radsport Arnold in the 1990s by brothers Roman and Franc Arnold, the company moved into manufacturing and by 2002 had renamed itself Canyon. Franc is no longer involved, while Roman sold a majority stake to Belgium-based investor Groupe Bruxelles Lambert (GBL) in 2020, retaining equity in the company as well as chairmanship of the board. Despite its desire to push into cities, Canyon’s brand DNA still draws on its sporty beginnings, with a focus on high performance, and there remains a strong link to athletes. This is something that Monocle sees while touring the showroom, where bikes used by cyclists including Dutch superstar Mathieu van der Poel are on display next to floor-to-ceiling windows. More than 50 riders were on Canyon bikes at the Paris Olympics and the company sponsors some 270 athletes, as well as having several high-profile ambassadors, including US basketball player LeBron James.

The link to sporting excellence is clearly aimed at making Canyon both inspirational and aspirational. “We build the best bikes for the pros but we also want to trickle down,” says Sven Reutter, a Canyon product manager, as we visit the Innovation Lab, part of the brand’s R&D centre, which features a soldering station and a set of small 3D printers. 

The R&D is just one part of the Koblenz-based design and engineering machine. Canyon is keen to point out its state-of-the-art facilities, including a test lab where such things as frame stiffness are tested and gizmos including a 3D optical scanning arm are deployed to ensure that frames have been made correctly. There’s also a destructive test lab – which sounds more fun than it looks – where Canyon ensures that new bikes can stand the test of time before going into production.

A short drive from the HQ, Monocle visits a big factory facility where the bulk of Canyon’s higher-end bikes are assembled. Hundreds of parts are needed to put the bikes together and these come from around the world, from Portugal to Taiwan. The factory, where a flashing green light indicates that work is about to begin on a line of bikes awaiting stages such as gear wiring or motor attachment, can produce up to 400 bicycles a day before they are boxed and shipped. So are there any plans to manufacture outside Germany? “For us, local for local is the ideal: Europe for Europe; Asia for Asia; the US for the US,” says De Ros Wallace. “It’s the ideal but not the reality because much of the industry is in Taiwan.” Still, there are plans to open a warehouse in Asia to make logistics more efficient.

Canyon hopes to forge ahead, despite the industry looking a lot flatter than it did during the pandemic, when everyone seemed to want to hop on two wheels and get fit. Sights are set on growing the current sales of €741m to more than €1bn by 2025, with plenty of opportunity to increase market share in the US, where the company has a southern Californian outpost, as well as southern Europe and Asia. Canyon is also aiming to extend its clothing line and move into accessories such as shoes and helmets. “We’re investing heavily in talent,” says De Ros Wallace, who owns five bikes – all of them Canyons, of course. “We are the right size to manoeuvre.”

From car to chopper

It’s a warm July afternoon and the rotor blades of a canary-yellow Airbus H135 helicopter are turning lazily on the roof of the ÖAMTC headquarters in eastern Vienna. In the near distance, the radar atop the city’s international airport’s air-traffic-control tower seems to mirror their movement. Then, suddenly, as if the wind has just picked up with furious haste, the blades whizz into action, propelling the helicopter up into the clear blue sky, leaving a burst of downwash in its wake.

The ÖAMTC (Der Österreichische Automobil, Motorrad und Touringclub) was founded in 1946 as an automobile and motorcycle club serving the burgeoning numbers of Austrian car owners. For decades it mostly provided breakdown cover but, in recent years, as a future without internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles has become ever more likely, the ÖAMTC has undergone a reinvention. Today it is a one-stop shop for all things mobility. It still provides its members with roadside assistance but is also branching out into, among other things, travel and tourism. Its glassy, ufo-like headquarters in the Austrian capital, which opened in 2017, is meant to symbolise this transition. Perhaps most radically for a motorists’ association, today there are many cyclists among the ÖAMTC’s 2.5 million members who can take advantage of roadside bicycle assistance delivered by mechanics who ride around on electric bikes. On the car side of things, meanwhile, increasing numbers of electric vehicles (EVs) are being serviced, meaning that technicians must be as well versed in the battery-powered as in the ICE.

Launched in 1983, the association’s air rescue service, which provides medevac assistance across Austria, was the precursor to this diversification. The ÖAMTC has 21 air bases across the country, with a 31-strong fleet of Airbus H135s. The upkeep of these €7m aircraft is financed partly through ÖAMTC membership fees and partly through government funding and insurance contributions. Though the ÖAMTC is an NGO, it works closely with state and regional authorities, a common practice in Austria and Germany, where clubs and associations (known as Vereine) frequently perform critical state-adjacent duties.

Co-ordinating the ÖAMTC’s air-rescue operations is CEO Marco Trefanitz, a cool-as-a-cucumber former telecommunications executive, who doesn’t bat an eyelid or raise his voice when the helicopter whisks into action. “The whole system is organised by the state, which runs the dispatch centres in the nine provinces of Austria and sends calls through to us,” says Trefanitz as he invites Monocle to sit down in the rescue team’s helipad-side rest area, which features an array of dumbbells and exercise machines. There is an adjacent kitchen and storage room, as well as a command centre dominated by a large monitor streaming live footage from around the country, alongside real-time weather maps. Long-haired and open-shirted, Trefanitz, who assumed his position in 2012, doesn’t look like the typical Austrian CEO. There’s a bit more pressure in his new job than in his previous one but he insists that it is far more rewarding. “The work here is not about me or shareholder value. Everything we do at the ÖAMTC is about how we can improve to better help our members and our patients.”

About five minutes after rushing off, the H135 returns. “Storno,” mouths Captain Robert Gallmayer as he climbs out of the cockpit: “cancelled”. False alarms are routine. About 10 per cent of calls are made as a precaution rather than a necessity, says Gallmayer after the rotors have died down and it’s possible to talk normally again. Often, he is already airborne while the call is still in progress; sometimes, the operator might conclude that ground vehicles are sufficient for the job, which means flying back to base to refuel and await another call. Gallmayer, lead pilot among 13 at the Vienna base (there are 71 across the entire ÖAMTC), has already flown two missions today, a normal number for this time of year as hundreds of thousands of Austrians begin their summer holidays. Both Gallmayer’s earlier missions involved dropping divers into the Danube in search of missing swimmers; one was pulled out alive, while the other sadly could not be found. 

Another common call requires retrieving someone who has had a stroke or heart attack from a mountainside or forest track. Indeed, car accidents or breakdowns are in the minority, with helicopters only called to the scene when the injured need to be rushed to hospital. During the summer, there are usually about five or six missions a day, and the feedback section of the ÖAMTC air rescue’s website gives heartening indication of how successful these predominately are. Pride of place among the comments and photos is given to a child’s drawing of those famous yellow helicopters. Below it reads, simply, “Thank you for saving us.”

Reaching for the sky

About three minutes ago, Monocle took off from downtown Brisbane. There’s an empty seat to our left and two more behind us. The cabin is suspended beneath the wings of a pilotless electric aircraft, whose silver propellers hum away. “Wave if you feel woozy,” says a disembodied voice. But airsickness won’t be a problem, not least because we’re sitting in a chair on an airfield in Hampshire, England, wearing a VR headset. The voice belongs to an employee of Wisk, the California-based Boeing subsidiary that built the pilotless air-taxi model in the middle of the tent.

It’s quite a ride. The air taxi would offer a quick, scenic alternative to a tedious 30-minute car journey. And, if all goes according to plan, it might be a transfer option for visitors to the 2032 Brisbane Olympics. But will people be willing to fly in a vehicle without a human being at the controls? “It’s like a driverless car,” says Wisk’s Carrie Bennett, who has clearly encountered this reservation before. “It’s fascinating at first but then you forget about it because everything just works. And you don’t have to worry about a child chasing a ball across the street.”

The Farnborough Air Show is huge. It has more than 500 exhibitors and some 35,000 people visit over its five days. This year’s iteration is quite quiet in terms of big orders for commercial jets, though that’s possibly a reflection of an industry still searching for its level in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. At the last Farnborough before the virus struck, in 2018, a record 1,464 orders were placed with the two biggest manufacturers, Airbus and Boeing. In 2022, that figure was 441. This year, it’s 256. Manufacturers are also beset by supply-chain difficulties, which are off-putting for potential buyers. Airbus has an order backlog of 8,585 aircraft; at current rates of production, that represents more than a 10-year wait. (Nevertheless, it’s demonstrating the A321XLR, an extra-long-haul variant of its single-aisle workhorse, which Iberia hopes to start flying this year.)

Among those making purchases, Qatar Airways has made a particular effort, to the extent that the entrance to Farnborough’s main exhibition hall resembles one of its tonier Business Class lounges, complete with a string duet and a Diptyque scent dispensary (the airline has confirmed an extension of its Boeing 777-9 order from 40 to 60). A physical presence is, however, no guarantee of sales. Brazilian manufacturer Embraer has parked on Farnborough’s aprons a handsome black and turquoise E190F cargo jet but has announced no new commercial deals (Embraer has, however, sold six A-29 Super Tucano attack aircraft to Paraguay’s air force).

If there’s one thing that demonstrates just how far the Farnborough Air Show has come since it was first staged in 1948, it is its focus on clean and renewable energy. Representatives of the aviation industry seem determined to stress that the environment has no stauncher allies. Suspend your cynicism, however, and you’ll see that there’s a lot going on in this realm. The hoardings of ZeroAvia boast of the UK-US firm’s inclusion on lists of top green-technology companies. Rudolf Coertze, its head of research and development, explains that the firm is working towards having its zero-emission hydrogen-electric powertrains adapted to small passenger aircraft the size of a Cessna Caravan or a Dornier 228. And he says that it won’t stop there. “There is no reason why this wouldn’t ultimately work with a Boeing 737 or Airbus A320 – and that could be coming by 2035. It would remove a large fraction of emissions caused by aircraft.”

Small aircraft will serve as pioneers in this regard. The Cassio is French start-up Voltaero’s rear-propeller electric-hybrid aircraft. There are high hopes for the plane and Global Sky has reserved 15 of them during the show (232 were pre-ordered before the end of Farnborough). Jean Botti, Voltaero’s CEO and a former chief technical officer at Airbus, is an enthusiastic salesman. He sits us in the pilots’ seats and explains how the airframe can be adapted to carry passengers, post or cargo, or perform rescue operations. Future, larger models will have retractable undercarriages and pressurised cabins. “It could replace a lot of light aircraft and also compete with business aviation,” Botti tells Monocle. “There’s a lot of criticism of private jets and, of course, this is much, much cleaner. It will also be cheap to fly: €400 to €500 per hour.”

For all the talk of a cleaner, quieter future for aviation, some aspects are eternal. The most sophisticated machines will still need the most basic parts, someone will always be needed to build them and a marketplace as busy as the Farnborough Air Show will always help to sell them. Beagle Aircraft is based nearby in Dorset; customers for its components include BAE and Leonardo. Among the exhibits at its Farnborough stall are a cargo door from a business jet, an outer leading edge from the wing of a German Air Force Tornado and a flight simulator. “We didn’t make that,” says Beagle’s order-book manager, Tom Rosser. “But if you don’t have something to draw people in, they’ll walk by. And for the five or so minutes when they’re on the simulator, you have a captive audience. That lets us explain why the things that we make are important.”

Coming to Farnborough, says Prosser, isn’t just an exercise in PR outreach. A lot of meaningful business gets done here. “For a company our size – just 100 to 120 people – it wouldn’t be worth doing as a loss leader,” he says. “Last year we paid for the stand with the sales that we made on the first day. And the lunches definitely help to get agreements over the line.”

Top three deals at Farnborough

Flynas
The biggest deal at this year’s event was between Airbus and Riyadh-based Flynas, Saudi Arabia’s first low-cost airline. Flynas is best known as the airline of choice for budget-conscious pilgrims visiting Mecca: during the last Hajj season, the airline filled 100,000 seats. It is now significantly expanding its all-Airbus fleet, ordering 130 A320s and 30 A330s, with delivery to begin in 2027 – a huge move by an airline whose current fleet consists of just 64 aircraft.

Japan Airlines
This year, Japan Airlines (JAL) finalised orders for 20 Airbus A350-900s and 11 A321neos, and for 10 Boeing 787-9s, with an option on 10 further 787s. The A350 order was reduced by one from the terms announced in March: the 21st had been intended as a replacement for the JAL A350 lost in a runway collision at Tokyo Haneda in January but JAL has decided that it can live without it. Boeing was clearly grateful for the 787 order: the firm’s senior vice-president, Brad McMullen, went out of his way to thank JAL for sticking with the company. 

Korean Air
Boeing’s recent difficulties were reflected by a restrained presence at Farnborough. The much delayed 777-9, for example, was only represented by a mock-up of its cabin. So, Boeing will have appreciated the vote of confidence from Korean Air, which signed for 20 777-9s, 20 787-10s and options on another 10 787-10s – a reported outlay of $12.6bn (€11.5bn). Due for delivery in 2028, these will be a significant boost to Korean Air’s fleet ahead of the completion of its long-planned acquisition of Asiana Airlines.

Inside Mioveni: How Dacia transformed a village into a global auto hub

The rumble and thud of heavy industry is overwhelming. Inside the stamping department at Dacia’s production plant in Mioveni, Romania, sheet metal is being sandwiched under pressure to create doors for the car brand’s new Duster model. For the robotic machinery to do its thing, huge, heavy moulds are being manoeuvred across the hangar by a yellow crane arm that spans the entire 15-metre length of the roof. “This is the high speed line,” shouts Alina Predescu, the department’s senior manager and a Dacia employee for the past 15 years, referencing the equipment on display. The combined 12 lines that operate here produce 4.5 million pieces a month. Next, they’re passed to the body shop where the cars start to take form.

To call Mioveni a production hub would be an understatement. Opened in 1968 during the early years of Nicolae Ceausescu’s Socialist Republic of Romania, the Dacia factory is a beast that almost never sleeps. Operating 24 hours a day over three shifts, it rests only on Sundays. A car is produced here every 55 seconds, while 350,000 cars roll off its production line each year. The figures are a testament to the phenomenal success of Dacia in recent years. The brand was long seen as a budget, no-frills player but has morphed into much more. Dacia now sells more than 650,000 cars a year and its Sandero recently became the best-selling car in Europe. The relationship, though, is reciprocal; Dacia wouldn’t be where it is today without its historic mothership plant, located about a 90-minute drive northwest of the capital, Bucharest.

When Monocle visits the plant – a series of grey, flat-roofed buildings surrounded by large car parks – we’re told to imagine it more as a town than a factory. On a map, its 288 hectares look almost as big as Mioveni itself, which sits below the plant’s slightly raised vantage point next to woodland. Before Dacia arrived, Mioveni (pronounced with a short “I” at the end) was a sleepy village of about 6,000 inhabitants. Today the automotive town is home to 30,000 people. Many Mioveni residents have either worked here or know someone who has – attracted by what one employee calls a job opportunity “gold mine”. With revenue of €5bn a year, the plant represents some 2 per cent of Romania’s GDP and about 2 per cent of its exports. 

Dacia began by mass-producing cars for the local market through a licensing agreement with Renault. Car kits were dispatched from France and assembled in Romania under a local brand name, though the plant shifted to making its own parts not long after. Dacia’s debut model, the 1100, was based on the Renault 8 and its second car on the Renault 12. That relationship came full circle in 1999, when the Paris-based multinational bought the brand. Renault’s CEO at time, Louis Schweitzer, had been to Russia and seen the success of Lada. He was convinced that there was a worldwide gap in the market for Dacia, especially in post-Iron Curtain Eastern Europe. 

With Renault’s arrival, efficiencies were greatly increased. Monocle is anecdotally told that before that, in the 1970s and 1980s, 30,000 employees were producing 100,000 cars a year, with capacity tripling at the plant between 2004 and 2010. “The factory has changed each year,” says the plant’s general manager, Sile Fulga, who has been here since 1987, wearing a Dacia logo wristband to protect his watch. “In 2000, we didn’t have any robots.” 

Underlying Dacia’s expansion has been an idea that counters the trends of the automobile industry. There has been a push back against the expensive bells-and-whistles cars that had already started to come onto the market at the end of the 1990s. “The idea was to say, what if we have a piece of the group that would not play the game of always more,” Dacia’s CEO Denis le Vot, also group chief supply chain officer, tells Monocle. Under Renault’s stewardship, Dacia launched the no-nonsense Logan model in saloon and estate versions, which came with wind-down windows and no air conditioning.

The car bodies being welded together by automated arms when Monocle visits are very different from those of the original Logan. Given how popular SUVs are worldwide – representing more than half of all sales in Europe – Dacia’s decision to pivot to an SUV look for most of its cars has proved prescient, even if many of them are smaller superminis, compact SUVs and crossovers. But Le Vot says that, though some aspects have changed, “the spirit is the same”. The less-is-more concept, for example, still prevails. 

Some might call them under-equipped but Le Vot prefers to say that Dacia produces cars with only the essential features. “We like to quit anything that is not strictly necessary,” he says, adding that the idea of “essentiality” is nonetheless shifting all the time given the types of vehicles coming onto the secondhand market, often a direct competitor of Dacia. Its cars feature manually adjusted seating, plastic over leather upholstery and understated screens; air conditioning, once deemed a luxury, is now part of the package. For a long time, Dacia also shunned lane-keep assist – the sometimes tedious feature that steers you back onto the road should you drift outside the lines – as too much technology, but new EU safety regulations mean that this is now part of the brand’s essentiality too. 

One of the less visible reasons why Dacia has become a superstar of the region – and beyond – is the way it has been run by Renault. Though brand studios in France might get design input, Dacia has been allowed to keep plenty of devolved powers, maintaining a 3,000-strong engineering corps in Bucharest, as well as a Romanian design team. There is a strong focus on what the Dacia CEO calls “design to cost”. Dacia cars are created with a sharp focus on the core things that matter to consumers in a process meant to separate real value from unnecessary technical glitz. Despite its range of cars, with the exception of its single electric model, Dacia also keeps the same platform across its catalogue – all the bits out of the consumer’s view, including the bulk of the body structure, axles and even a lot of the powertrains – which lowers costs. Lastly, Dacia taps Renault Group HQ and its R&D, which Le Vot refers to as “big brother”, to borrow technology developed years earlier.

The city of Mioveni is dominated by the St Peter and Paul Cathedral, with its distinct orthodox spires, which sits just off a main thoroughfare. Inaugurated little more than a decade ago, it’s one of the many buildings constructed here since the 1970s – many of them nondescript communist-era blocks – as the population started to grow. Walking around town, the influence of Dacia is difficult to miss. The yellow taxis driving around the streets are Dacias, as are the police cars, both Logan models. The workers in blue overalls fixing up the square arrive in a Dacia pick-up, while a family of three we talk to is driving a workhorse Dacia Solenza from 2003 that needs pushing to get its engine going. 

Later, we meet members of a local Dacia classic car club, all eager to show off their vintage models. Catalin Francu was a driver for Dacia in the 1980s and 1990s during the company’s original foray into rally car racing (Dacia recently announced that it would be joining Dakar Rally from 2025). Like many people, for Francu there’s a pride and perhaps even sentimentality attached to a brand that is still seen as indivisible from Romania itself. “I was born with Dacia,” he says. “And for many Romanians, it’s the same thing.” Both Alin Stanciu, owner of a 2003 Dacia 1310 estate, and Catalin Filip, whose 1969 1100 turns plenty of heads as people walk past, agree. Stanciu talks about a “nostalgia” for Dacia that clearly comes from where he has grown up. “It’s normal because everyone has a connection to the plant,” he says. “Four members of my family worked there.”

Still, present-day Dacia wants to be seen as much more than Romanian, even if CEO Le Vot calls it the heart of the brand. “Dacia is Romanian but Dacia goes way beyond Romania,” he says. “The uniqueness of the brand is not specifically the geography, though the history is linked to the geography.” For one, Romania is no longer the top sales market, with top spot going to France followed by Italy. The Mioveni plant also isn’t the only factory producing cars. Le Vot is quick to add that Mioveni has a “bright future” but there are two plants in Morocco that make what the CEO calls the “low drive”, more budget cars such as the Sandero and Logan, as well as the seven-seater Jogster. The Mioveni plant focuses on higher-end cars, including the Duster. 

Part of that gradual shift in brand orientation involved a redesign of the Dacia logo in 2021, which started to feature on new cars from the following year. It’s one of the many logo iterations we see on Dacias during our time in Romania. The kissing “D” and “C” feels modern and has been coupled with Dacia moving away from its traditional blue to an olive green. This has been complemented by lifestyle advertising that makes Dacia feel outdoorsy. Le Vot, quoting the brand markers, says that it’s all part of being “robust and outdoors, eco smart and essential but cool”.

Alongside the brand’s first electric car, the China-made Spring, which hit the UK in October (a first-generation model has been available in other markets for longer), 2025 will see the release of a large suv, the Bigster – a bid to cash in on that lucrative segment of the market. It will be made right here in Mioveni, from the metal stamping to the final conveyor-belt quality control. 

Alongside the evolving look and feel, Le Vot argues that the way Dacia is perceived continues to shift. While he says that Dacia is “still the cheapest on the block” for those who want it, buyers aren’t just secondhand car owners looking for the only new car they can afford. Premium brands have become so expensive, he says, that plenty of new Dacia owners have gravitated from higher-end players. It means that 70 per cent of Dacia’s sales are now made up of its most expensive models. “The market is coming to us,” he says. And with it, Dacia’s evolution continues apace.

The Agenda: Business

Hovercraft: Japan
Bouncing back

As modes of marine travel go, the hovercraft has a pleasurable whiff of yesteryear. Big in the 1960s, it has all but disappeared from view, falling out of favour due to high operating costs. In Japan, however, the hovercraft is about to be revived. Oita prefecture has bought three Griffon 12000TDs and is set to put them into operation before the end of the year. Oita used to have a popular hovercraft, the Oita Hover Ferry, which launched in 1971 and ferried as many as 440,000 passengers a year between the airport and the centre of the city in a swift half-hour. When a new expressway to the airport was built, passenger numbers dwindled and the route was dropped in 2009.

Nine years later the governor realised that the hour-long drive to the airport was a backward step and looked for a way of speeding up the journey. And so, Oita has come full circle with three new 45-knot craft, made by Griffon Hoverwork in the UK, and a sparkling new terminal in Nishi-Oita. Oita has big ambitions for the 30-minute route: the projections are for 300,000 to 400,000 passengers annually and, since it will be the only hovercraft route in Japan (the world’s only other year-round passenger service runs from Portsmouth to the Isle of Wight in the UK), it should attract tourists too. Aside from trips to the airport, weekend excursions around Beppu Bay are planned. The craft have been named by the public as Tanso, Baien and Banri, after three Confucian scholars. The prefecture is anticipating an economic ripple effect to the tune of ¥61.4bn (€379m) over the first 20 years. 

E-motors: France
Fresh start

Though most motorcycles still use petrol, the industry is undergoing a transition thanks to entrepreneurs such as Simon Dabadie, founder and CEO of DAB Motors, a boutique electric-motorcycle brand based in Bayonne in southwest France.

An engineer with deep roots in the industry, Dabadie started the company in his garage six years ago. “I wanted to make something disruptive, not just a mobility instrument,” he says. “Humans need emotion and beauty, even in machines. We infuse culture, technology and just the right touch of madness in our designs.”

Initially noticed for its petrol bikes, DAB Motors shifted gears to an electric concept in 2021.  “We forgot everything we know about motorcycles. The beauty of electric motorcycles is that you can start from scratch.”

The challenge, however, is scaling production without compromising on design. “We have huge know-how in Europe, in automotive and motorcycle manufacturing,” he says. “I want to keep this local approach when we are manufacturing our bikes. We decided to make fewer products but do them really well.”

With high-profile collaborations with Burberry and the company’s acquisition by Peugeot Motocycles last year, DAB’s presence at the top of a niche market is solid. The company is due to launch a limited-edition run of 400 bikes, the DAB 1a, made at the Peugeot factory in Beaulieu Mandeure.

Dabadie (pictured) hopes that his creations will transform mobility in urban environments. “I would love to see our bikes travelling in cities, solving the problem of noisy scooters and making people smile.”

The Entrepreneurs
Gregory Scruggs on: Wheels of fortune

UK-based Icelandic entrepreneur Gunnlaugur Erlendsson, founder and CEO of tyre start-up Enso, is obsessed with tyres. He sees the topic as an underappreciated issue facing the world’s transition to cleaner transport. Electric vehicles, for all their benefits, are heavier than their non-electric counterparts so they send tyres to the landfill more quickly. That suits the tyre industry, which is eager to simply sell more just fine. Traditional tyres also generate dust particles that worsen air quality and poison waterways. “The world economy runs on tyres but we never really think about them,” says Erlendsson.

He founded Enso in 2016 with a mission to build longer-lasting and less polluting tyres with higher-quality raw materials. After years of research, the company began production at an Algerian plant and subjected the new tyres to a year-long Transport for London trial. They were shown to reduce emissions by 35 per cent and extend EV driving range by 10 per cent, essential improvements for fleet vehicles operating in the UK capital’s Ultra-Low Emission Zone. Today some 1,000 London taxis roll on Enso tyres.

Enso was a 2023 finalist for Prince William’s Earthshot Prize but Erlendsson (pictured, on left, with the prince) has his sights set on market share as much as accolades. By December, Enso tyres will be sold in the US, the world’s second-largest automotive market. In June, Enso signed a letter of intent with the US Export-Import Bank to invest $500m (€463m) in a manufacturing facility slated to open in 2027. At full capacity, the factory could make 20 million tyres, or 8 per cent of the domestic market. No one company currently dominates the US tyre market, which makes it ripe for newcomers. “It’s not enough for us to just develop the technology,” says Erlendsson. “We need to actually put these tyres on the market at scale.”

For more ideas that are gaining traction, listen to Monocle Radio’s business programme, ‘The Entrepreneurs’.

Celebrating the unsung heroes of service

How to live: rewarding service
The winner is…

Why it’s time to recognise those who offer the sunny service that makes getting from A to B a joy. 

It’s all well and good for an airline to have a dazzling new Business Class product or a rail company to have ultra-silent sleeper carriages but if you don’t have the staff and service to match, there’s little point in bringing anything new to market.

Off the back of the Olympic Games in Paris, I’ve been thinking that perhaps it is time for a global award programme for superior service. Anyone care to partner with us on this sponsoring this venture? While it’s important to recognise athletes, actors and various performing artists, what about an international awards show for the people on the front lines for brands big and small every day, round the clock? Consumers surely spend more time talking about service that’s outstanding, poor and all points in between than they do the person making millions as the over-engineered brand ambassador.

On a recent train ride, the conductor on Rhätische Bahn (a benchmark in our ‘perfect train’ story) between Chur and St Moritz was so good at his job that he surely would have made the shortlist for ‘best performance on a platform and on board in a challenging environment’. A bewildered woman was shown to the correct carriage and her enormous suitcase carried up the stairs. Disoriented Belgians were shown past the dining car and to their seats. Tickets were inspected with efficiency and just the right amount of sunny chatter. This gentleman lifted the entire tone of the journey. Perhaps it’s time to recognise what passes for a warm welcome and help to raise the status of this most essential sector.

On the road again

After a deserved summer reset, it’s time to fold up the beach towels. September is a busy month for the Monocle team, and here’s what we have planned. 

Our fashion director, Natalie Theodosi, and fashion markets editor, Kyoko Tamoto, will hit all the main stops on the fashion-month circuit and report back from Paris to Milan. We’ll have a European presence on the design front, with our associate editor Grace Charlton attending Paris Design Week between 5 and 14 September, and design editor Nic Monisse holding down the fort at the London Design Festival from 14 to 22 September. And we’ll be keeping track of the rail industry at Innotrans, Berlin’s biannual trade fair on transport, from 24 to 27 September. Catch us if you can.

Election watch: Algeria

Date: 7 September

Type: Presidential

Candidates: President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, who has served Algeria since 2019, is seeking re-election. The principal candidates seeking to stop him are Abdelaali Hassani, leader of broadly Islamist party Movement of Society for Peace (MSP), and Youcef Aouchiche of the Socialist Forces Front. It is assumed that President Tebboune will win easily, though this is due less to the nation’s gratitude for his sagacious rule than the steps that his authoritarian regime has taken to make life difficult for its opponents.

Issues: The nature of President Tebboune’s governance is the subject of consternation, even if it’s not easy to express. Tebboune (pictured) stared down huge demonstrations in 2021 and has grown more stubborn since. Opposition figures and journalists have been harassed and arrested. And, 13 years since the Arab Spring, much of the discontent that motivated it remains unaddressed here: youth unemployment is about 30 per cent.

Comment: It is five years since mass protests forced out 78-year-old Tebboune’s predecessor, the then 82-year-old Abdelaziz Bouteflika. Algeria’s people deserved better than one elderly autocrat replacing another.

The interrogator
Warja Borges
Founder, Unique Aircraft

Borges holds an engineer’s degree in interior architecture. She worked at German studio Reiner Heim Aircraft Interior Design. In 2010 she founded Unique Aircraft. Working with major companies, Borges has designed all kinds of aircraft from smaller business jets to large Boeing/Airbus-type planes for private clients, governments and heads of state.

What is the typical budget range for the aircraft you work on?
Working on a business jet, clients’ requests are mostly refurbishments. Costs range from €500,000 to €2m, including the outfitting. My core business is one-of-a-kind interiors for large aircraft, planning the interior configuration from scratch. The range is huge, depending on the complexity of the interior, technical requirements and materials used. Starting at about €30m for narrow body, up to €200m for a wide-body aircraft. The main drivers for the budget are the technology and manpower.

What are the usual (and unusual) requests from clients?
A usual request for a Boeing/Airbus-type aircraft would be a main lounge area with seating and dining, ensuite master bedroom, galley and crew area, guest seating or bedroom and an additional lavatory. Sometimes we do get the request to implement some beloved items or features.

What is most important when designing an aircraft’s interior?
The basic is to know the certification regulations and limitations and engineering constraints. The focus is on the passengers, their comfort and needs. With this in mind, my approach is holistic, stimulating senses to create an overall and unique flying experience.
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Letters of interest

As calls for an Asian Nato grow louder, world leaders should study their history books to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. Here’s a quick test. First question: Do you know what Seato stands for? If you said Southeast Asia Treaty Organisation, pat yourself on the back. You’re either a Vietnam War veteran, a baby boomer or a student of political science, or perhaps all three. Acronyms are a dime a dozen in international relations but Seato dropped out of the lexicon in the late 1970s when the Bangkok-based multilateral organisation was dissolved. The anti-communist defence organisation made up of Thailand, Philippines, Pakistan, the US, UK, France, Australia and New Zealand was Asia’s Cold War equivalent to Nato, albeit a much looser alliance. Seato unravelled soon after Washington pulled out of Saigon in 1975. Thai diplomat Pote Sarasin was Seato’s first secretary-general and some of Thailand’s most notable envoys got their first taste of multilateral diplomacy when assigned to the Seato desk. Though the organisation’s HQ is no more, replaced in the 1990s by Thailand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Seato has a legacy. The Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), a postgraduate university north of Bangkok, was founded in the late 1950s as the Seato Graduate School of Engineering. Ambassadors continue to sit on the governing board of the university as part of their posting to Bangkok, though today’s roll call is more ideologically inclusive: France and Canada partake alongside China and Vietnam. In another sign of the times, AIT launched a Belt & Road Centre in 2019. A battle of ideas in classrooms and boardrooms certainly beats war in the seas and straits. Next question. What is Anzus? No, not Aukus. Anzus. 

Editor’s letter: Andrew Tuck on making cities work for everyone

In 2007, when we ran the first Quality of Life Survey, the debate about what makes for a good city was contentious but nothing like it is today. The metrics that any organisation uses to rate and rank cities are now picked over and scrutinised by folk keen to unearth bias, or suggest that you sit on some extreme of politics.

I recently travelled to Bratislava with our Vienna correspondent, Alexei Korolyov, to attend an urbanism summit called Start with Children, which posited the benefits for all if you placed kids at the heart of the urban-planning process – will it, for example, make streets safer, reduce childhood illnesses, make the city somewhere that parents will want to raise their offspring? As the various speakers came to the stage, it was clear that this approach had another benefit as a unifying idea, a filter that those on the left and right can often look through and agree on a way ahead: “If it’s really going to make my children’s and my grandchildren’s lives better, I’m in.” Restricting access for vehicles, removing car-parking spaces, can suddenly be seen as fair and needed and not a plot against civil liberties. My fear is that cities are going to face many flashpoints as they try to deliver on climate-change challenges – you can see it in the demonisation of the notion of the 15-minute city and in the attempts to pit cyclists against drivers. What’s key is making everyone welcome in this debate.

Yet we still believe that there is immense value in taking an annual survey of how key cities are performing and looking at how the changes that they are implementing are working out – and if that’s contentious then we are up for the debate. Beyond the city ranking, we dive into lots of other elements of good urban design too. In our Business pages, we look at the work involved in keeping our cities clean – from jet-washing monuments to eradicating graffiti and clearing garbage from our rivers. It’s hard to maintain urban pride if you live in a place where rubbish fills the streets and mindless tagging scars great architecture, so the lessons to be learned in these pages are to be adopted – and sent to your elected officials. 

In Design, we look at Urbidermis, a street-furniture company that was originally part of Spanish lighting brand Santa & Cole. Again, the provision of, say, park benches might not be something you have often pondered but, done right, street seating changes the pace at which we take in our cities, offers the weary and old places to linger, and even engineers social encounters. And in this month’s Expo, we look at neighbourhoods that work: places where people have a good place to buy food, a bar to hang out in, a restaurant where they’ll learn your name and a pace of life that offers both calm and excitement. I particularly love our dive into Naples, a city that might struggle on some metrics but which its residents love with a deep passion – you’ll see why when you turn the pages.

The bigger idea of how we begin a conversation about how our cities should function, one that doesn’t descend into opprobrium, is the subject of our illustrated Monocle Manifesto, which unpacks the elements of the social contracts that you need in place so that everyone can go about their day feeling safe, at ease. It contains a series of simple moments of care and attention that hopefully just about everyone can subscribe to.

This is, of course, our double issue, which will be on newsstands for some eight weeks. But we have plenty of other media moments to keep you engaged over the coming weeks and, hopefully, add to your own quality of life. Look out for our Paris Edition and Mediterraneo newspapers for starters. As for the Monocle team, we’ll hopefully be heading off to sample some summer moments in cities slick and alluring, gritty and passionate – though there are a lot of projects and ideas to bring to fruition this summer too. Whatever your plans are, we look forward to keeping you informed and entertained. Have good summers (or winters to our friends south of the equator).

If you would like to send over any ideas, thoughts and recommendations, then feel free to drop me a line at at@monocle.com. — L