Velo de Ville E-Foldy

Velo de Ville’s E-foldy is an unusual one-off design aimed at making a practical e-folder. That’s one of the harder tasks for an e-bike company. At first glance you might love its funky looks or disagree and think it looks ungainly. I liked it most of all from a practical point of view as it proved to both ride very well and fold reassuringly securely. It’s Velo de Ville’s first electric folder (first folder of any kind in fact) so for a first attempt at a brand new design – despite a few caveats – it’s a pretty impressive debut.   

Despite its French name Velo de Ville is based in Germany and its big selling point is e-bike customisability. As Rebecca observed after meeting the brand a couple of years ago, price-wise they seem to be on a similar level to fellow German brand, Riese & Müller. 

To update Rebecca’s 2023 report, purchase is still by online configurator, but this now works for those browsing or buying in the UK and they also have demo models at a decent spread of UK dealers.  

Enough of the promising back story, let’s dive into the detail of the E-Foldy itself.
 

The design

The design is clearly aiming to be small and light as it uses the smallest practical wheels at 16in, allied with a lightweight Mahle hub motor system, hydraulic brakes and seven derailleur gears (a single speed option is also available). Seeing as it is the fold that stands out, let’s take a look at that first.

The E-Foldy is a ‘hinge-in-two’ design, so the first folding step is to swing the rear wheel of the bike alongside the front. This is much quicker and easier than the method of breaking the frame in two, though it means the seat tube area of the frame projects rather clumsily from the rear of the folded package, even when telescoped down.

At 16.8kg, it falls into that grey area that is liftable for some and not for others. If you want to spend a minute or two removing the seat (1.2kg) and battery (1.2kg) you can reduce the weight to a more manageable 14.4kg. 

Once folded, you get a long, fairly slim package of 115cm x 64cm x 41cm – a little bigger than the Hummingbird (whose fold it most closely resembles) and much less compact than class leader Brompton which folds down to around 60cm x 60cm x 28cm (and whose electric line of 16in wheeled models has just been upgraded).

But, unlike many other folders, both halves of the bike and the handlebars are all well-secured by straps with a click-on style fitting at the end. That means you don’t have to worry about any part of the bike flapping about or, even worse, the whole affair unfolding as you lift it up. Even better, the wide rear rack with roller wheels mean it’s easy to push the bike along on flat, even surfaces if you leave the seatpost extended, rather like wheeled luggage. The rack itself looks very capable of taking a decent load – it is MIK HD attachment ready (a system with a range of clip on and off carrying accessories) and is rated at an impressive 27kg.

In essence, it’s pretty quick to fold securely which makes for an easily handleable package and the overall spec is pretty impressive too – it uses the same lively and lightweight Mahle X30 motor system with 171Wh battery that I recently rode and liked on MMR’s E-Woki.    

Velo de Ville E-Foldy, by Richard Peace

What impressed me most of all about the E-Foldy was the ride quality however.
 

The E-Foldy road and trail tested

I wouldn’t normally start a ride quality section by singing the praises of the bike’s tyres but the 16in x 2.15in (55mm x 305mm) Schwalbe Motion Big Apple tyres are a dream to ride.

Add in the stable geometry and the E-Foldy is at home on all manner of surfaces and will even handle mild off-road terrain, such is the suspension effect of those small, super-wide tyres. Modern tyre technology is so good that even small, squat tyres like these feel pretty fast on tarmac as well as rolling smoothly over humps and bumps to give a surprisingly comfortable ride. Especially reassuring is the confidence you get from the extra width whilst riding over cobbles and tram lines.  

More than this though, it feels super stable at speed whilst retaining the manoeuvrability and tight turning circle you would expect from such a small-wheeled e-bike. The power delivery is smooth yet lively – especially once you’ve dialled up the power to levels two or three out of three. 

A big plus is the presence of the wireless display unit that lets you change power levels whilst riding and also gives a readout for the percentage of battery charge remaining. As with MMR’s E-Woki, this is an added extra and comes at a cost of £99.

Given this is a Mahle offering – a high quality German manufacturer – button pushing is disappointingly fiddly and it has an unimpressive old-school black and white display. Still, the main the main thing is that you can change power levels whilst riding. With the battery tucked away in the rear triangle, it would be impossible to do so without the buttons on the display to hand.    

The seven derailleur gears mean hill climbing is very effective, especially in top power level and even though the bike slowed to around 5mph on my ultra-steep hill climb, bottom gear still allowed a fair bit of pedal effort to coax the bike to the top. This is not bad for a small motor and it would have been even easier if a lower ‘granny gear’ had been fitted.   

Range is always going to be a massive variable on a bike like this. On the flat, the motor system is light enough and the power-off freewheel slick enough to enable many miles of riding where you barely consume any power. However, hit a few steep hills and you are soon making inroads into the battery’s meagre 174Wh capacity. 

A final quibble is that, though the bike came with the optional lightset, this is powered by its own batteries and not hardwired into the main battery. This is an odd omission as the Mahle system can be easily set up to take compatible hardwired lights. 
 

Competitors

Despite my carping, I really liked the E-Foldy. It’s a great compromise as few e-folders ride this well and fold as compactly and securely while still coming in at a reasonable weight.

When it comes to premium-priced small-wheeled folders with gears, Brompton is naturally the big competitor – especially given their recent move to using the rear hub motor e-Motiq system. The new Electric T Line is Brompton’s lightest folding e-bike, at a claimed 11.2kg without a battery, and 14.1kg with it. This is significantly lighter than the E-Foldy but with a super-steep price tag of £5,799. Also, even if you opted for a heavier, lower spec model (the range starts at £2,999) you cannot get more than four gears.  

> Best folding e-bikes 2025 – our favourites from those we’ve ridden (and folded and unfolded)

Similarly, if two gears are enough, the PRO16 UK from UTO (formerly Eovolt) looks nicely designed and competitively priced at £2,799, though at 18.5kg it’s no lightweight. And if one gear is enough, check out the UTO OG16 or the highly rated FLIT M2.

The MiRiDER 16 GB3 is also a strong contender if you don’t mind the 19.1kg weight.

A final word on the £2815 price tag of my test model. It includes £39 extra for the custom purple and if you were happy with one gear you could save an extra £39. Providing your own lights would save a further £30.

Unless/until the likes of Decathlon, Dahon and Lemmo launch their new interesting looking models in the UK, the E-Foldy will be one of the few 16in-wheeled, secure-folding, multi-geared e-bikes that looks able to give Brompton a run for its money. 

velo-de-ville.com

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