Gent, 6 July 2015 – On Wednesday 18 and Thursday 19 November 2015, the TWIN consortium will officially present the electric bicycle training, which they have been developing in the past 1.5 year. All training institutes in Europe, which either already offer electric bicycle training or, which are interested in starting up such training will receive an invitation for this 2 days’ workshop.

The TWIN consortium is currently in the process of finalising a 4 days’ training. The target group for this training consists of retailers and their mechanics, who wish to assess their knowledge and competences in the field of electric bicycles and, if necessary, who wish to improve their knowledge and competences.

The first and second day of training will focus on theoretical knowledge. The third and fourth day will be centred around practical training: measuring, analysing, error diagnostics, use of diagnostic tools, etc., all this for different systems and models both in the 25 km/h and the 45 km/h category.

An on-line questionnaire will allow candidates to evaluate their knowledge and competences. What’s more, this test allows them to determine which training they require to perfect themselves.

This is the training package that will be presented in the November workshop. The participating training institutes will be expected to evaluate the package so that it can be further optimised for the end of the project.

Before the workshop, the training package will be extensively tested by means of 2 pilots. One will take place in the Czech Republic in cooperation with ekolo.cz. For the second pilot, which should take place in October, TWIN is still in search of an interested training institute. Any interested party is invited to contact Ramon Salceda or Annick Roetynck (see details below).

The November workshop takes place at Innovam in Nieuwegein (NL) and is also an excellent opportunity to visit the state-of-the-art Dutch training institute. There will be a limited budget available to partly compensate the participation of training institutes. The exact modalities for such compensation will be communicated after the holiday period. The workshop will also be open to the press and to all interested representatives of the electric bicycle industry.

The training package is only a first step as part of a larger initiative that will be further developed after the completion of the TWIN project. The TWIN partners are currently in the process of outlining the concept of the TWIN Academy, a European knowledge and information centre for towheel- training.

Training institutes that wish to optimize their training offer or that wish to launch new training will no longer have to invest considerable efforts in developing the necessary training material themselves. State-of-the-art and up-to-date training material will be readily available from the TWIN academy. Moreover the Academy will offer train-the-training sessions, which will allow the institutes to implement the training very quickly.

Finally, the TWIN-training offer will be officialised and strengthened by means of a European certification system. This will be embedded in the European Qualification Framework, which provides for a harmonised qualification structure. Consequently, a twowheel mechanic diploma in, say Croatia, will be equal to the same diploma obtained in Sweden.

The training institutes that are involved in the TWIN project are however already today in a position to assist other training institutes and suppliers in Europe with any training issue or question they may have. If a supplier or an institute is for instance looking to update its training material or to develop very specific training courses for twowheel dealers or mechanics, they may find it time- and effort-saving to call upon the TWIN training institutes. These are Syntra-West in Belgium, CELF in Denmark and INNOVAM in the Netherlands. All three of them have a long-standing record in training bicycle and electric bicycle dealers and their mechanics. They are experienced both in generic technical and commercial training as well as in brand-specific training.

If you are interested in having a try-out of the electric bicycle training package for dealers and their mechanics in your training institute, please contact Ramon Salceda, email r.salceda@innovam.nl, tel. +31 30 60 87 952.

If you wish to participate in the November workshop or if you require any further details on the TWIN project, please contact Annick Roetynck, tel. +32 9 233 60 05, email a.roetynck@pandora.be

You can also find further information on TWIN at twinldv.worpress.com.

The TWIN project is funded with support from the European Commission.

This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.