The Better Bike Lock

Now that you can get into your house without a key, why not do away with your clunky bike lock and key? A new Kickstarter project called Lock8 wants to replace your awkward and archaic cable or u-lock with their keyless, smartphone-activated bike lock.

Lock8’s compact lock fits in your bike’s rear-dropout and has a coil lock that extends from its base. The lock has several innovative features:

• Its built in geo-locator tells you where your bike is at all times.
• If the lock is tampered with, cut, sawed, torched or cooled with freon, sensors in the lock will set off an alarm and a push notification will be sent to your phone.
• You can send notifications to friends in case you’re not near your bike.
• You can walk away from the bike unlocked, and push notifications will be sent if your bike is moved.
• You can connect with Facebook to give your friends an e-key to borrow your bike.

The whole unit will only weigh about a pound. A built-in battery will charge via induction. There is no subscription charge unless you rent your bike to multiple parties (+5). They expect that charge to be around $2/month.

Lock8 is available with a £79 ($126) pledge and they will ship to the US and Europe. With £42K pledged of a £50K goal and 21 days remaining of their campaign, Lock8 will surely get its funding, which makes a lot of sense to us. If you’re spending a lot of dough on your bike, why not give it the best, most advanced, protection you can?

Via Engadget