In the night from Monday to Tuesday last week, thieves broke into an Austrian bike store in St. Johann im Tirol and thought they were already safe with 56 stolen bikes when the handcuffs clicked 240 kilometers away. In a concentrated operation, police officers were able to locate and stop the van with the thieves and their loot on the highway and return the bikes to the owner of the bike store.

The rapid success of the manhunt was due to the fact that the e-bikes were equipped with the BikeTrax GPS tracker. The system is about the size of a lighter and is hidden in the bike. Nothing can be seen from the outside, but if the bike is moved without permission, the tracker sounds an alarm on the owner's cell phone. This means that the victim is not only informed of the theft, but can also see where their bike is. As BikeTrax relies on a power supply, the tracker only works with e-bikes so far.

"On average, we have one to two crimes per week that can be solved with the help of our anti-theft device," says Stefan Sinnegger, CEO of PowUnity GmbH. He continues: "This theft is so far the biggest that we have been able to uncover using our system and even trumps the success in Berlin, where a theft of 20 e-bikes was prevented. Without BikeTrax, the store and the insurance company would have suffered a loss of over 100,000 euros."powunity.com