Impossible is a new electric bike you can keep in your backpack

We’ve seen folding bikes before. We’ve seen electric bikes before. What we haven’t seen before is a portable electric bike that’s stylish, relatively light, and easy to carry around. Yet despite its name, as PSFK points out, the Impossible is all of those things.

Or it will be, anyway. It’s currently a prototype: its inventors are raising money on Kickstarter to refine the design, test it, and bring it to market. But the demand is obviously there: they’ve already smashed their initial goal of CAD $55,000 (that’s Canadian dollars to you and me), bringing in $91,041 (£51,446) at the time of writing with over a month still to go. (The campaign closes on Boxing Day, if you get a chunk of cash at Christmas and are looking for a new way to get around…)

The design isn’t going to fool anyone into thinking you’re training with Team Sky, but it is cute and looks like it could work well for zipping around – especially if you want to hop on a bus or train occasionally.

It has a brushless electric motor, meaning instead of a brush that swaps polarity in order to spin a turbine, it has a magnet on the rotor controlled by external electromagnets. The upside is, it’s smaller, weighing 11 pounds and folding into a shape 17 inches tall (less than half a metre), meaning it should fit into most rucksacks. When pedalled, it can get up to speeds comparable with other bikes, while the motor can go up to 12 mph (and really help up hills).

If you fancy one for yourself, they’re offering them for CAD $430 (£243) for white, $460 for black, and expect to ship the first batch worldwide next August.

Want to read more? We’ve chosen our 20 favourite coats and 16 favourite ankle boots to get ready for the winter weather.

If you’re more interested in getting a new camera than new clothes this season, you might be interested in these camera accessories for your iPhone, which beg the question: Do you need a camera if you own a camera phone?