Theft of an electric bike in the big city is a nightmare that has rarely found an effective solution beyond massive chains and GPS trackers. However, German technology giant Bosch decided to approach the problem from an unexpected angle. During the CES 2026 exhibition, the company presented a software update that not only protects the bike, but also turns it into a “hot potato“, which is practically impossible to resell.
All the magic happens in the eBike Flow app. Now, with just a few taps on the screen, any owner can mark their bike and its battery as stolen. At that moment, the vehicle receives a digital status of “stolen“ in the global Bosch infrastructure. No more anonymity! From now on, any attempt to connect the bike to a new account will trigger an alarm in the system, revealing the serial numbers of the main components to the potential buyer and sending an immediate notification to the rightful owner.
But the real punishment for thieves is functional isolation. Once blacklisted, the bike loses access to software updates, changing assistance modes and all the digital settings that make modern e-bikes so expensive and desirable. In effect, the Bosch motor remains in motion, but becomes a technological cripple. Even more unpleasant for criminals is that diagnostic tools in official workshops will automatically recognize stolen machines, making their legalization through repair an impossible mission.
Bosch's technical solution is elegant and effective: the motor, battery and display are digitally “locked“ to the owner's account, and only he has the power to remove this status. The goal here is not to physically stop the bike, but to economically depersonalize theft. When a vehicle cannot be updated, customized or resold without the risk of detection, its value on the black market collapses to zero.
This new feature will be available completely free of charge to eBike Flow users at the end of January 2026. It is the final layer of Bosch's multi-layered protection, which includes eBike Lock and eBike Alarm. With this move, Bosch is not just selling components, but offering security, making its systems an extremely unattractive target for the criminal contingent. We can only say: Bravo!