Bike stands are a necessity for any professional mechanic or avid home tinkerer. Elevating your bike off the ground enables you to go to town on your steed, replacing, maintaining or cleaning any and all components to your heart’s content.
The rise of the ebike has created difficulties for manual stands, though. The addition of batteries and motors has made things significantly heavier, and the fiddly task of lifting a bike off the ground while clamping it in place around the seat tube can sometimes require two people (or superhuman upper-body strength that cyclists aren’t exactly renowned for).
While electric stands take the strain out of the equation courtesy of motors, their size and four-figure purchase price can be prohibitive even for professional mechanics. Hand-crank or foot-pedal operated solutions are also available, but they’re slow to raise and lower the bike, and there is still an element of effort as you winch a bike to the correct height.
Bikonic has an alternative solution – a gas-assisted workstand that raises and lowers the bike almost instantly. Launched in June 2024 and first covered on BikeRadar in November 2025, the bike stand uses a large gas strut (similar to those in a car boot or office chair) to take care of the heavy lifting – all you have to do is wheel your bike into position, clamp it with the pivoting head and let the stand do the rest.
Able to lift even the heaviest ebikes with the minimum of fuss, the Bikonic Gas Stand is a smart, unique solution in a competitive market. Its founder, Tony Ray, shares why he thinks it’s the obvious answer to an ebike owner’s maintenance needs.
Going for gas
Ray has been a cyclist since his grandad pushed him down a hill on a borrowed bike aged five, adding that he hasn’t slowed down since.
When a lifelong riding friend bought an ebike a few years ago, among all the positives were a couple of negatives. The bike was so heavy that his workstand tipped over as soon he tried to work on the bike, plus he needed another pair of hands to get the bike clamped into the stand in the first place, says Ray.
He realised there was a gap in the market for a workstand with some kind of assistance – such as a gas spring. Calling on a career developing digital post-production products for the film and TV industry, he got his product-development thinking cap on.
“A gas spring is proven, reliable technology that has been around for a century and has been tested in a billion car hatchbacks and office chairs,” Ray says. “This makes it super-cheap yet super-reliable.”
Although there was already a gas-operated stand on the market, it used a compressed air cartridge that has a limited lifespan of two years, or 30,000 cycles. Ray wanted something that would last a lifetime.
After a two-and-a-half year development programme that culminated in global patent applications, the Bikonic Gas Stand was born.
“Lifting an ebike puts a huge strain on your back,” says Ray. “This is made worse by the juggling act of holding the bike in mid-air with one hand while clamping the bike into place with the other.
“Our stand removes both the 'lifting' and the 'juggling' strain. It’s a semi-crowded market, but no other stand can do this – unless you pay for an electric stand.”
Alternative advantages
While electric workstands that can lift an ebike into place were already well established in the market, Ray believes the technology has a number of downsides.
“Size, cost and manoeuvrability,” he says. “Our stand addresses all three; you could buy four of our stands for the price of an electric stand and fit four of them in the same space, as well as roll one of them somewhere else if you needed to.”
At £625 (ex VAT), the Bikonic Gas Stand is towards the expensive end for DIY tinkerers, but is a significant saving for professional workshops looking for an alternative to electric-assisted workstands.
Designed and assembled by Bikonic in south Wales, and with plans to manufacture in the UK as soon as scale allows, Bikonic says you can trust its quality – something that's important when you’re mounting a five-figure ebike to it.
“With our stand, you have the choice to make it portable with foldable legs or permanent with a floor plate,” adds Ray.
Despite its heavy-duty construction, the workstand weighs in at around 21kg, making it lighter than most ebikes. It’s also easy to manoeuvre courtesy of a roller wheel mounted in the base.
Finished with a proprietary clamp system inspired by old-school workbench vices and lathes with big, steel levers and controls, and a hammered powder coat that will stand the test of time, the Bikonic Gas Stand is a premium, inventive piece of kit that will transform any workshop.
