French Startup Chill Ride Introduces Cooling And Heating Vest

Liquid-cooling isn’t just for your engine.

By: Dustin Wheelen

May 25, 2021 at 3:39pm ET

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Motorcycles don’t come with climate control features like air-conditioning and heating. That leaves riders clinging to thermal gear in the winter and mesh jackets in the summer to stay as comfortable as possible. Apparently, those aren’t sufficient solutions for startup Chill Ride, and the budding apparel brand’s heating and cooling vest puts climate control in the rider’s hands.

Similar to the liquid-cooling systems found on most modern motorcycles, the Chill Ride vest apparatus includes a radiator and pump to circulate the coolant to throughout the system. Integrated into the front fender, the active cooling system leverages oncoming airflow to chill the vest’s liquid. Users then control the unit’s temperature via a control module affixed to the handlebars.

The Chill Ride vest directly taps into the motorcycle’s electrical system to draw power for both cooling and heating functions. Of course, the vest draws from the electrical source to warm the rider and bypasses the radiator and liquid cooling in the heating mode. Riders will also need to connect the to the handlebar-mounted control unit during each ride. Luckily, the hydraulic tether automatically detaches in the event of a crash.

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Chill Ride also ensures customers that the vest’s coolant is water-based and includes safe additives. The brand does note that users will need to refill the liquid in time, however. While the Chill Ride vest presents an intriguing solution to cold and warm weather riding, it won’t be available until summer 2022.

Until then, the brand’s Kickstarter campaign offers the cooling vest system for €649 ($795 USD). The crowdfunding stage will help fund the final design and production phases. We’re unsure how Chill Ride will produce model-specific fender systems or how the module will mount to motorcycles with clip-ons, but the startup has more than a year to overcome out those hurdles. Hopefully, they work out a feasible climate control system for motorcyclists by then.