Agreed that bikes do often exhibit some level of modularity. But attaching a front or back cargo rack or kid carrier gets pretty finicky pretty quick: most e-bikers tend to just buy the (often quite expensive) 1st party gear, because it'll actually fit right.
This bike seems to have only a single major modular system, but it comprises such a massive part of the bike: there's a big stem-post that attaches to the drive unit. Being able to swap that stem-post out for other things allows for really big changes, imo. You could build some really cool really neat different top-sides atop this bike, with really weird cargo or kid shapes.
I would love to see smaller level modularity too. I'm really impressed by the Bronco, and how they've clearly worked very hard to make it a "car as a platform", opening up as much space as they can for aftermarket parts & 3d printing people to build everything from cup-holders/interior fixing to body-panels (dunno the best link for this, but for ex: https://thebronconation.com/more-bronco-modularity-fender-fl...). I see Rivian / Also tapping that energy here in a way that moves far beyond what bikes today offer.
I'm more familiar with racks for front and back. And it feels like those people with a very random assortment of connectors rod-clamps and other assorted hardware are invaluable friends to have for a lot of these installs.
There's usually some kind of screw mounts somewhere, different bikes with different geometries need lateral positioning & control & it feels like >50% of the time what comes with the rack doesn't quite work.
It looks like most of these bike seats assume the bike already has some kind of rack installed. If there's already two horizontal bars ready to go then yeah it should be pretty simple to install: the hard parts done.
I feel like this debate over bikes are modular / no they are not is kind of silly. There is some part swapping, and some affixment points, but these come with great inconsistency across bikes and parts. But much more so than that, it feels like there's such a limited of reconfigurability for most bikes. There's the same bike underneath whatever you do, and the number of serious affixment points strongly limits how you can build up.
The Thule seat clamps to the seat tube. Every normal bike you'd actually trust to hold up a child has a round seat tube. Not the piece of junk in the article, of course.
This bike seems to have only a single major modular system, but it comprises such a massive part of the bike: there's a big stem-post that attaches to the drive unit. Being able to swap that stem-post out for other things allows for really big changes, imo. You could build some really cool really neat different top-sides atop this bike, with really weird cargo or kid shapes.
I would love to see smaller level modularity too. I'm really impressed by the Bronco, and how they've clearly worked very hard to make it a "car as a platform", opening up as much space as they can for aftermarket parts & 3d printing people to build everything from cup-holders/interior fixing to body-panels (dunno the best link for this, but for ex: https://thebronconation.com/more-bronco-modularity-fender-fl...). I see Rivian / Also tapping that energy here in a way that moves far beyond what bikes today offer.