08
2008
Fancy trusting your life to a piece of plastic no thicker than a pencil as you weave in and out of buses, taxis, alpha males in white vans, lumps of broken glass from previous cyclist-crushings and pot holes?
That's supposed to be a rhetorical question, but if you just nodded "Yes" here's the solution to ending the life you're so very tired of - the Backpack Bicycle. It's designer Chang Ting Jen's entry in the International Bicycle Design competition.
The orange is nice, we'll give him that. But there reaches a point where any further miniaturisation of existing things just isn't practical. What sort of tiny journey along extremely flat surfaces would this bike cope with? Even though it folds down to a 60cm backpack and weighs just 5.5kg, wouldn't you be better off walking than trundling along at a very low speed? Surely you'd be there in the time it takes to unfold it?
(Via Design Blog)
Related posts: Dangerously flimsy electric bicycle | Solar bike
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The increasing usage of bicycles for multi-mode transportation includes these admittedly short range folding bikes. "Flimsy" may be a misconception if it's made of carbon fiber, titanium, or even aircraft grade aluminum. You may know much about technology, but evidently you're not very cognizant of materials technology. Even worse, you have basically no knowledge on bicycling safely, otherwise you'd have skipped the snarky cyclist crushing remarks.
Stick with writing about what you know.
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I wish you would not make the assumption that the bike is flimsy. I built a fiberglass ladies bicycle that my Daughter designed, and many people made the same comment. Keep in mind that fiberglass has a tensile strength of 45,000 pounds per square inch. When I was offered $1,200.00 for the bike, I let the buyer tap on the fiberglass with a hammer, to his satisfaction that the body was solid. (The buyer runs an auto body shop). When you add up the extra inches you have a solid structure. These bikes are similar that they are not made of the typical one-inch diameter pipe (tubes), there are many inches of surface, with the thickness of a quarter inch throughtout.
Before you right off whether a feather light folding bike made out of plastic could be safe, have a look at Italian designer Alessandro Belli's 9 lb. thermoplastic suspension folding bicycle (see the RideTHISbike.com article titled "Lightweight Folding Bikes - Top 5"). His bike is not some paper dream; prototypes have been road tested and proven to be capable of riding in a harsh, urban environment.
As to whether it would be worthwhile to have a folding bike for a short commute, the answer depends on how short is short. Just to go a typical city block, it would be pointless; however, most people need to travel 3-5 blocks (or more). Even on a slow bike, short commutes like these would be faster and more comfortable by bike.
aaahahahaha, you plastic geeks are losers!
a lot of accusations in this article...
Flimisiness, pencil-thickness, slow speed, time to unfold longer than the journey time (!)...
I wonder where all these come from (although I can have a guess)
Bad day? Needed to get all that anger out by writing fictive accusations?
FIY, there is a bike of similar dimensions (the Brompton) that has been available for a while, and according to reviews I found, none of these accusations apply to it.
The main difference is that it's made of steel and weighs twice as much as this concept.
The folded size is pretty much the same.
cyclistslol
I am the king of plastics technology, and I declare this bike to be shit, with my erect penis having a higher tensile strength. However, I don't doubt that it's deathtrappedness will impinge on its no doubt appearing on the back of every fucking Nathan Barley lickspittle that London contains.
This bike looks like it could EASILY puncture my tyre when I run one of these guys over.
I vote no this sharp bikes.
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