The sleek red hub, called the Copenhagen Wheel, was to be unveiled Tuesday morning in Copenhagen. It can be retrofitted to any bike’s rear wheel, and it includes sensors that track air quality, a meter that logs miles and a GPS unit to track routes. All that data can be sent via Bluetooth to a rider’s smartphone and shared with others.

The laboratory is trying to eliminate the clunkiness of other electric bikes with heavy batteries and unwieldy wires by placing all the technology into the wheel, said Christine Outram, the project’s lead researcher.

“It’s a technology that can get more people on bikes,” she said.

But other experts are skeptical.

“Just the basic bike is so hard to beat,” said Steve Hed, a wheel designer and the owner of Hed Cycling Products in Shoreview, Minn., who has fitted wheels for the likes of Lance Armstrong. “The latest thing now are the simple, fixed-gear bikes, so simple and light you can throw them over your shoulder.”

This is a period of change in the bicycle design world, said Jens Martin Skibsted, a Danish designer who owns the biking company Biomega and the design firm Kibisi. Mr. Skibsted believes that over the next few years several popular new designs will emerge to serve an increasingly urban population trying to wean itself off cars.

In such periods of change, he said, “the winner will seldom be the one that’s most functional, but rather the one that can become an inherent part of our culture.”