Fixies—single-speed road bikes—have been quite the rage for some years now. The FLX Babymaker 2 takes the flat-bar road bike and gives it the e-bike upgrade. Put another way, it takes a good time and makes it better. We will look at the how and why in our FLX Babymaker 2 review.

The FLX Babymaker 2 uses an Aikema brushless, geared hub motor rated at 350W and paired with a 360Wh Samsung battery. And yes, that’s a relatively small motor and battery in absolute numbers, but. The but is that while the power of a motor is absolute, the amount of work it can do is relative to how much mass it is moving. Cut an e-bike’s weight in half—say 35 lbs. instead of 70 lbs.—and suddenly a 350W motor can offer terrific acceleration and sustained speed – which we’re happy to report the Babymaker 2 has in spades...

Single speed bikes (without a motor) have been around for a good long time – in fact Tour de France originator Henri Desgranges was a big fan and bikes with more than one gear were banned from the TdF until 1937! After that, they became somewhat more of a cult, mainly shared by fast, racy, city-style riders. In more recent times the advent of e-bikes and technology such as belt drives has undoubtedly given the single speed genre a new lease of life.

For many modern single speeds electric bikes you can enjoy multiple levels of pedal assistance which helps you dial in the assistance you need – it essentially provides you with a type of faux-gearing system. Thanks to this, it helps it to garner some more main stream appeal...