These comments just read like a whole bunch of people who never rode a bike and yet are somehow experts on everything about bikes.
This thing is not for Le Tour and you don't go fast on it and you don't go up giant hills on it. That makes a lot of the concerns here go out the window.
These types of bikes shaped objects often have all kinds of issues with trying to use bike parts designed for standard bikes on something that is very different. Issues with needing enormous chains, huge cable runs, etc.. when designers try things like this they are worrying about issues like that more than whether you can climb a mountain on it or stuff it into a corner at high speed without going out of control.
The thing with these is the cost to design & manufacture components that need to be different than normal bikes can be astronomical, so anything they can do to design the frame to use normal components in a normal/non-compromised way pays off in a huge way.
The ideas behind this aren't that different than the Cruzbike being front wheel drive to get rid of a lot of the component/drivetrain issues that recumbent bikes are famous for.
The comment asking about riding positions drop bars was hilarious.
Lots of Americans in the comments is probably why, plus the Hacker News tendency toward armchair expertise.
The American grid system tends to produce hills that are unmanageable on a town or cargo bike, so bicycles are a fitness/enthusiast thing. And US cities are much more spread out, too. In more walkable European cities, these bikes make a lot of sense.
These would work beautifully in Dutch cities, although you can easily see from the design that its native biotope is Paris, where cars are increasingly being pushed out of the narrow streets.
The discussion is very much a case of people from the USA having the far too rare realisation than most places in Europe have nothing in common with their country.
There are so many excuses for why Americans don't ride. I have not heard about the grid system making the hills too steep before, but I suppose it applies to San Francisco, so I concede that could be a legitimate excuse. I went to SF with a heavily laden tourer bike and I found the hills manageable as you get a breather at the stop lights. I made good progress despite the hills. I might have only had 40kgs of cargo, but I did get an idea of the challenges.
There is much to criticise but there is so much to like. The sprawl of US cities was not a problem for me, it was a lot easier and less stressful on US roads than what we get in the UK. The shoulders on most US roads are defacto cycle lanes, which I really liked since a good speed could be maintained.
As a British observer, I can't help but laugh at how everything in the US is bigger. I do my grocery shopping by bicycle and I am the only person in the supermarket carrying 30kgs of stuff up a very steep hill. Everyone else drives. My bike is a normal one, but I feel that, if I was American, then I would be compelled to have some special needs bike, either a cargo bike or electric, to 'haul' even more stuff.
Everything just has to be bigger!!!
The book of excuses for not cycling is massive in America, but, I have never been to a better place for utility cycling. The whole place is really well set up for utility cycling, you just have to see it that way.
Fitness cycling is a high status pursuit, much like those silly games like tennis that were invented just to show how high status you are. Golf is the classic, so much arable land not under the plough is a true flex of wealth.
Fitness cycling shows that you are not working class, that you have the resources to not work. Utility cycling is low status, it shows you can't afford a car or you have been banned.
With utility cycling there is always a reason for the ride, it is not out of choice, if you don't do the ride, there will be consequences such as not having a job or having no food in. Yet there was a time before the car when all cycling was for utility reasons.
Cruzbikes have front-wheel drive via a very short chain. This allows them to use off-the-shelf components that all bikes use for a front hub. This is more like a unicycle hub, which are wildly different from bike parts (I would know, I built this: https://imgur.com/a/we-made-electric-assist-unicycle-long-ve...)
Right now, there is only one multi-geared commercially available unicycle hub, and it only has 2 gears, and costs $1500 (Schlumpf drive). As for ebike motors that can be coaxial with pedals, as far as I know 2 have ever been made, by myself and by Justin @ ebikes.ca.
The entire unicycle community would be thrilled if they actually built this because then we could buy these hubs. But I would be very surprised to see this launch with a unique hub, instead of a cruzbike-like hub.
Yep. There was a Kervelo concept chainless recumbent design that worked similarly and looked very cool (with a 14-speed hub!), but I hear they couldn't get it funded to actually be produced.
Tricycles are inherently unstable in turns, especially when not loaded down, because they cannot lean. And when carrying a load, the same rules of physics apply, resulting in a lot of torsional forces on the frame. There's a reason we see so few of those on the roads, amidst an explosion of various human-powered modes of transport.
In both cases, the rider effectively sits atop of where the handlebars would be on a traditional trike. You can see in the first video the lads have a hard time keeping all wheels on the ground.
One notable difference between the new model and the old is that they seem to have changed the geometry of the frame so that the driver doesn't lean into the turn (the turning wheel stays upright). They don't demonstrate it in motion very well, but that kind of turn action will tend to throw the rider "out" of the turn, making the trike fall over opposite of the direction of the turn. The old version tends to fall "into" the turn.
I can't think of many advantages to this design, other than the driving unit and cargo are modular. Even then, the rider would not be able to travel without the cargo portion.
Trikes are tricky, they don't go very fast, they don't turn well, and they're wider than most other pedal-powered vehicles, making them hard to use on existing cycle infrastructure.
> There's a reason we see so few of those on the roads, amidst an explosion of various human-powered modes of transport.
Cargo/passenger trikes are growing in popularity here where I live in London. I see probably a dozen a day which are an even mix of people ferrying kids about in a Danish/Dutch style "bakfiets" thing (you seem to be able to get 1-4 small people in the front of one of these depending on how picky they are about being squashed in) and cargo/parcel delivery which seem to be more modernized designs anecdotally. Whereas the model for a courier company used to be a person on a bicycle or motorbike doing one delivery at a time it seems more and more to be shifting to a person on a cargo bike doing multiple related deliveries in an area, and somewhat competing with traditional logistics just with a faster turnaround. The hook for parents seems to be if you have more than one kid it's still possible to use a bike to get around rather than a car (which is a very inconvenient mode of transport within London generally) and it's much faster and with bigger range compared with trying to get your offspring to walk (which might not even be possible for any kind of reasonable distance depending on age).
The advantage to these designs is that you have a bicycle that can carry cargo. Having decided that is the criterion you want to hit, having a modular version may well be beneficial.
The disadvantage you cite (that the driver can't lean) really doesn't factor too much into this use case because they aren't trying to travel at speed. Urban settings have much more stop-start movement in straight lines than cornering, and if you think about a parent with kids in the front of a bike they probably aren't trying to go super fast because they want to know they can definitely brake fast if the need arises.
There's even a rear steering cargo trike company in Denmark. It's weird but I had an explanation that it was meant for low speed and maneuverability with cargo rather than as an exercise machine or high speed transportation.
I've ridden a few trikes like you'd use for a small food stand and they aren't so bad to drive around. Would I take one mountain biking or on a hill climb? No, but that's beside the point. I also don't use my phone for all my CAD work.
I rode something like this as part of a tour in switzerland, when turning left I was told to lean to the right (which is obviously different to a two wheeler where you lean in the direction of the turn), otherwise you'd pop-up on two wheels easily enough!
And you really have to push the handle bars, for steering. Again, very different to a two-wheeler.
>when turning left I was told to lean to the right (which is obviously different to a two wheeler where you lean in the direction of the turn), otherwise you'd pop-up on two wheels easily enough!
Can you explain the mechanics behind that? When turning left, wouldn't the bike be at risk of tipping to the right? Wouldn't leaning to the right make that worse?
Leaning in on a two wheeler is rolling the frame to the left further.
That same frame roll/tip on a trike causes the right wheel to leave the ground. In order to counter act that, and essentially prevent the frame from rolling/tipping at all in the turn, is to move your weight to the right so that wheel stays grounded.
If you really push and try you can get the left wheel up on a left turn but it’s more effort than popping a wheelie on a two wheel bike. It’s hard to do on accident.
I would guess it has to do with the direction of force changing, the left and rear tires getting closer and the right and rear tire distance getting farther and what that implies regarding the distance each wheel needs to travel in the turn.
Edit: maybe tilt is a better word than roll and tip, basically putting the frame less upright is what I mean by that
The common aspect is that both the Netherlands and Denmark are flat. The danish/Dutch trikes are really just unsafe when you pick up significant speed like down a hill. I am a long time cyclist, who raced for years. I've never felt as unsafe on a bike as when I tried riding and a fast bike speed on a Christiania.
Luckily cargo bikes aren't for speeding and racing but for carrying cargo. It would be like using a truck to race instead of a mid-engine super light sports car.
Durch cargo trikes are generally assumed safer than their two-wheeled alternatives here.
No they are not popular in the Netherlands. Easily 90% of cargo bikes are two wheeled, because tricycles are really only for novice/disabled cyclists. Going above say 20km/h is just plain dangerous with a tricycle, definitely not stable at higher speeds in even the most gentle curve
There are a couple of advantages of tricycles that go beyond novice/disabled. They don’t need a kickstand, so they’re easy to park when loaded. They don’t need balancing at stops. They generally have better load capacity.
There’s also tricycles which can lean into a corner which makes them similarly agile as two-wheeled bikes. They’re still wider, though.
Trikes are certainly not for long distances and a sporty style, but as a short distance cargo/kids hauler, they’re cheap, reliable and effective. I know quite a few people
Who are happy with them.
Three wheel motorcycles are popular amongst bikers who get too old to handle a two wheeler. Some have two wheels in front, one in back, and look almost like cars, others are just a standard motorcycle chassis fitted with two rear wheels.
Yes when my kids were young I tried out a bunch of cargo bikes and the christiania trikes feel so unnatural and unsafe it's really hard to describe. I still ended up with a trike but it's a leaning one which feels just like a normal bike (and it's very narrow so fits through doors into backyards...). This is what I got:
https://chike.de/en/ it was the best purchase I ever made! For anyone thinking about a cargo bike when having small kids; go ahead your kids will love it, you will love it!
Yes, the tricycle. Masterfully combining the exposed position of a bicycle with the space requirements of a car.
They really don't make sense in motorcycles, A large part of the point of a motorcycle is that you are willing to give up a lot of comfort and safety in exchange for having a very small nimble personal transport. Nothing wrong with this tradeoff, but why would want a vehicle that takes up the same amount of space as a car that gives you the safety and comfort value of a motorcycle?
At the speeds you can go on this, motorcycle is a bad comparison. Depending on the rear module used, this could definitely use most of the bike infrastructure in my city without a problem. There’s already a bike delivery company that uses e-trikes to great effect moving goods around the city center - in the downtown core 35kph keeps up with traffic 85% of the time, so taking the road is also an option.
I personally set aside the safety & comfort sacrifice of the motorcycle but cannot accept the performance loses. Similar to when I see people maneuvering a bicycle over rough or varied terrain while sitting down; you might as well be driving a car.
The instability in turns was what made the "Big Wheel" fun when I was a small child. Too low to the ground to really tip over but easy to make it spin out.
I had a conventional tricycle too, don't recall ever falling over on it, though it could get tippy. You learned to lean to offset that.
If you're trying to keep all of the wheels on the ground you're not using it efficiently. With trikes when you go around a curve the inner wheel lifts off the ground, especially as many trikes have solid rear axles. It feels scary to have it pitch outward in the turns, but it is how the machine works.
The problem is that trikes don't steer with countersteering. When you transition to one wheel lifted, you have a brand new mode of operation with a misaligned rear wheel.
If they're not drive why connect them at all? Why not have them mounted independently and eliminate the need for an extra part? My only real guess is it's easier for carrying capacity.
I suspect it because with a single piece axle the torsion forces trying to twist the wheels into negative camber are taken by the axle and the forces on the two wheels negate each other, leaving the frame to only have to deal with vertical linear force.
it's the inner wheel with a tilt/lean. Your weight has to get out over the COG to balance. The feeling ranges from foreign to terrifying and I'm not sure why you wouldn't just go with an excellent cargo bicycle that avoids the entire issue.
Some cars like the Mini Cooper S do lift a rear wheel when turning sharply under braking -- I've seen this a lot in autocross racing. I normally only see front engine/FWD cars with limited suspension travel do it though. Trikes are less stable & will lift a wheel more easily overall.
The principle is the same, the distinction has more to do with suspension (or lack thereof) and the solid rear axle. The same strategy of lifting the inside rear tire is used in competitive go-kart racing: https://youtu.be/cMAtgPX6st8?t=312 . If the carts had a differential then it would be a different story (and they would be cars and not karts according to the SuperFastMatt taxonomy)
Automobiles have 4 wheels. The geometry of the situation is very different. This is also why cars have differentials, because otherwise the car would be fighting against the turn.
Basically when you turn your trike turns into a bike.
there are trikes that can lean. this is one, and not the one i remember see an article on a few years ago, so there's at least two companies out there doing it.
Using a video of duffers trying the bike for the first time is not very convincing. I expect that with experience you'd get the handle on the trike design and control it quite well.
It's always exciting to see this idea get revived for the first time in ninety years every ten years!
I've pedaled around on a couple variations of this design. Like everyone who had never ridden one but saw it on the internet, I also confidently imagined it would violently hurl me to the ground at the slightest provocation. I was wrong, which strangely seems to be a pattern for confident opinions I've formed based on things I've only seen on the internet. Having not been for a ride on this particular iteration, I will not post confident opinions about it on the internet.
The best (granted, of two...) version I've tried was semi-recumbent, with a standard geartrain and flevobike-style steering. The steering was a little weird at first, but I quickly figured out how to fully steer it hands free. Fully unloaded it was possible to tip it with hard front braking while turning, if you pitched your body weight into the effort. Loaded, it was absolutely nailed to the ground. You're just a mule winching a load down the road at that point. Sometimes it's fun to be a mule, piloting a weird bike-cart.
It turns out everyone flamewarring about stability on the internet forgot to get mad about drive wheel traction limits when pulling a load uphill. Which for me was a loading consideration rather than a problem. The underseat steering was brilliant for reasons I'd never thought about. But don't take my word for it, ride one and decide for yourself.
One thing that most non-cyclists may not realise, is that (because of your lower speed) it is actually an advantage to keep your cargo sight when riding through an urban area.
(You don't want people steal your cargo while waiting for the traffic lights.)
Or, when transporting kids, you want to be able to see them, talk with them, keep an eye on them. I have cycled over 30,000 Kilometers in and around Amsterdam on various bikes - and written many different posts on it:
https://willem.com/blog/bike/
(including on cargo bikes like Babboe)
In Copenhagen, Denmark, these are used all over the city to, well, deliver cargo.
Then, annually they have a fun cargo-bike race called "Svajerløb" [0]
The event is based on traditional races that took place between the 1930s and 1960s. In the race, riders typically complete four laps - the first lap ridden with an empty cargo bike, then stopping to load up their bikes with cargo before completing three more laps with the full load. [1]
Are there many of this configuration? (Load in the back as a tricycle). I see lots of good cargo bikes (and I LOVE cargo bikes), just not many of this design. But facebook doesn't let me browse much without an account.
I'm across the strait in Malmö and it's very rare to find the cargo in the back. Mostly senior citizens ride a variant of this bike with two wheels in the back, a small pannier. Maybe because it suits their balance better.
But recently a coffee bike has been turning up here in Malmö with a classic 50s design just like the Cycleauto one, but the wheel is not mounted under the rider.
https://gastro-bike.com/en/coffee-bike/ This is not it but it's close. The one we have here is more of a rounded 50s design on the carriage. I don't have any pics.
For everyone complaining about tricycles, one thing I've seen here and there in Europe being used for inner city deliveries is what I learned is called "Velove Armadillo", a 4-wheeled cargo bike
The issue with this design is the front 3 geared hub. It says it would reduce maintenance needs. The derailleur and chain are often cheaper and require very little maintenance other than oiling and maybe cleaning. They last literally last 1000s of miles. There isn't a maintenance concern typically. In fact I think it is harder to maintenance hubs from what I've read.
These sorts of issues plague a lot of bike designs where they try to do something radically different. The reason why the derailleur and chains are used so often is because they are relatively cheap, work well and require maybe a few cheap tools to remove/refit parts (I have done this myself many times).
Also as for the modular design. Why would I care about a modular design if I wanted something like this. You aren't going to be a courier one day and then suddenly running Gelato stand the next.
> The issue with this design is the front 3 geared hub. It says it would reduce maintenance needs. The derailleur and chain are often cheaper and require very little maintenance other than oiling and maybe cleaning.
Internally geared hubs are a mature technology and really require even less maintenance than a chain/derailleur combo, being completely enclosed. Also, not every hub needs to be a fancy Rohloff, so even if it needs to be replaced in toto, it's not bank-breaking.
I've found the exact opposite when looking at this in the past. The last time I bothered looking there are sturmey archer designs which have an odd slop in the pedalling, shimano designs (which are ok) and Rohloff (super expensive).
Contrast that to chain, cassette and the entire wheel is probably cost less than a hub. A new chain and cassette can be found at any bike shop and they are inexpensive. The maintenance concerns regarding chains are derailleurs are vastly overstated by the proponents of such hubs.
I have built and repaired my own bicycles since I was a kid. I've found that anything remotely fancy becomes a PITA. There is a reason why most bicycles use Shimano or Shimano compatible kit, it is cheap, available anywhere and reliable.
>Why would I care about a modular design if I wanted something like this. You aren't going to be a courier one day and then suddenly running Gelato stand the next.
I have a thought like this regarding my compute needs in my house all the time, and then another need pops up, and I'm so glad I can wrangle an existing expensive piece of kit to also cover the new need. Just between the Gelato stand and personal item transport could be one such need
The need to switch between the examples given is niche (I deliberately chose something I thought was ridiculous to illustrate the point), in a niche market. This is probably why this design didn't last long.
Only because the need to haul anything heavy or large by muscle power is niche. That segment has just been taken by larger combustion or electric engine'd vehicles. Where large loads are commonly hauled with tractors, it's a very common theme to have detachable tools, not tractor per tool.
Farming isn't comparable and doesn't have the same needs. You already admitted that the use case presented have been largely taken up by other types of vehicles. There isn't really a market for this.
>The need to switch between the examples given is niche
This is what I argue against, that given it's purpose, a need to switch is important. The use case for hauling things has been taken up by other things, but the use case for detachable loads hasn't gone anywhere where loads need to be hauled.
>Farming isn't comparable and doesn't have the same needs
Farming needs wheeled vehicles to transport heavy materials, I think it's exactly comparable.
> Farming needs wheeled vehicles to transport heavy materials, I think it's exactly comparable.
No because the farmer has to do many different things with the same piece of equipment. The number of people doing a courier job on a bicycle and then running a Gelato stand are almost nobody.
If I wanted to tow something, I wouldn't use a bicycle anyway. I am not even that convinced by existing cargo bikes tbh and this is coming from someone that built their own bicycles for 20 years. I would use my land rover.
The bummer is that the transmission is only unidirectional, but a unicycle needs bidirectional control, with very little backlash. Every economical planetary gear hub involves over-running pawls, alas.
This is wild—in the best way. The design was so practical it basically looped around to being fashionable again. Honestly feels more “modern” than some of the e-bike overengineering out there today.
Three wheeled cars and trikes mostly moved to having the two wheels in front for stability when cornering. Same reason why 3 wheeled all terrain vehicles were taken off the market. Otherwise, cool idea.
I was so excited to try a cargo bike I made sure to rent a Cristiana bike on a holiday to Copenhagen with my pregnant wife. Then I crashed while turning with her as a passenger. She was displeased.
We now ride a two wheeled urban arrow. Three wheelers seem incredibly unstable except perhaps for ones with independently pivoting wheels like the babboe carve
When you buy one, they come with the warning to drive around first without cargo. But yeah, you need to take it easy. Safe speed is perhaps 10-12 km/h on a bike path with other bicycles, and you need to slow down to almost a complete stop for 90 degrees turns.
Perhaps I should add to this that they're actually super stable at slow speeds, compared to two-wheelers, especially when loaded. My wife prefers a cargo bike to her usual non-cargo bike, I think for this very reason.
While super unstable three wheelers are good for very heavy or large loads. Like moving a refrigerator. Start stop city traffic with +100kg load is easier on three than two wheels. Must say I never liked riding the Christiania bikes myself.
The old ones in NL easily take 300kg. You just have to learn not to attempt sharp corners. A normal bike also allows you to jerk the steering wheel 90 degrees at high speed.
It begs the question, are you carrying extreme loads, like refrigerators, on a daily basis? If not, then this is like buying an F-350 when you're mostly taking your kids to school. If so, then maybe none of these are the right design and you might want to look into something like a cargo trailer.
Well yes a ton of people are ferrying multiple kids plus their school bags everyday. They are far from common enough to get compared to F-350s. Nobody would commute on them daily if they didn't have a recurring need to haul something. They are far too expensive to buy as a beater.
Maybe a better alloy? The urban arrow also has an aluminum frame though, which is the normal recipe for snapped frames. Having broken a couple myself, and not being a racer, I always opt for steel now.
On January 10th 2016, Clarkson came clean in his article in the Mail on Sunday and admitted that the whole thing was rigged. Clarkson wrote,
“You may remember: I drove it (the Reliant Robin) around Sheffield and it kept falling over. Well now’s the time to come clean. A normal Reliant Robin will not roll unless a drunken rugby team is on hand. Or its windy. But in a headlong drive to amuse and entertain, I’d asked the backroom boys to play around with the differential so that the poor thing rolled over every time I turned the steering wheel”
And yet, several of my friends located the general Sheffield area agree that while the video was a bit over the top, generally, Robins tended to do that. That Sheffield is a surprisingly hilly city with sometimes hard turns meaning you have auto-acceleration on hills down, and often are a bit faster than you'd like, probably doesn't help either.
Yet, the unconventional steering mechanism and rider position might pose challenges in terms of ergonomics and maneuverability, especially when compared to traditional cargo bikes
While interesting, I feel like this would be difficult or at least feel extremely weird to ride. When you steer on a 2-wheeled bicycle, you countersteer, which is pushing the wheel left in order to go right, or vice-versa. But this has a steering wheel that I assume works like a car, you turn the wheel left to go left. It would feel weird riding a bicycle while having to remember to steer like a car.
Probably less weird than you think. For one thing, it uses a steering wheel like a car, so that steering motion would feel more natural, and most people don't know they need to countersteer on a bike, they just do it without thinking. Even if it used handlebars, people ride trikes all the time without any real problems.
That front bike section looks so cool. I guess it's so alien looking because the whole section turns instead of just the wheel which affords it more creative license than a traditional handlebar attached to a fork.
I bet it also feels alien to turn a steering wheel with your feet on bike pedals.
I'm not sure where you grew up, but in the US we had a kid's toy called a Big Wheel which your feet had to turn with when you turned the handlebars. It was wildly awkward, terribly designed, but we got really good at it, anyway. The pedals would even scrape concrete on turns often enough to wear them down.
I was under the impression these had been out for a while. Last May, when my wife and I went to France, these cargo bikes all over the place, especially in Paris.
had the same experience, even in private windows without any plugin. People really goes to great length to make sure their text is unreadable for some of their users.
Funnily enough, it works "great" on Librewolf (with quote around "great" because that design is awful, eating most of the screen estate with a fixed menu)
Off topic - the the colour scheme choices for the Cookie selection pop-up on that site are awful. I'll admit I'm colour blind, but I assume those are hard for others to see when the switches are on or off? Unless that was their plan?
There's probably a good reason nobody has touched this design in 90+ years. As the last photo demonstrates, banging the back of your leg against a trailer hitch every time you turn would get annoying real quick.
Looks like something that can easily be solved by tweaking the curve. I also don't think you'll be doing such sharp turns often, and at that angle and speed you may as well get off.
On the contrary, it's a fundamental flaw in the design. The second to last photo shows the trailer directly over the pedal which will inevitably either push the rider's leg off or limit the turn radius.
It's pictured at the furthest back position for the pedals though which means your leg will mostly go forward of the pedals and not much back. I would trust people having actually ridden this to not have their legs slammed into the trailer vs how it looks on one render or photo.
feels like these types of human-powered cargo vehicles work better when they're pushing the load vs towing a trailer, either the 2 wheeler cargo that's got the payload way out front, or the reverse trikes. The closest I've tried to this type of geo is a regular bike towing a 2-wheeled trailer, and that has both logistic & performance issues. This setup has you really tall/forward, and the trailer interfering with the pedaling & leg movement.
This design is unstable and expensive to produce with a complicated in wheel transmission. It is novel, but almost certainly more expensive and less reliable than existing designs.
In wheel gears have been in use for over a century very successfully. I had a Raleigh bicycle with Sturmey Archer gears as a child. It never gave me any trouble, unlike the derailleur gears I had on later bicycles.
> In wheel gears have been in use for over a century very successfully.
They've been barely viable the whole time. Sturmey Archer are the last maker in business; they went bankrupt a couple of decades back and for some years there was serious concern that manufacturing would never resume.
...what? There's a whole bunch of manufacturers, so many that there's an entire Wikipedia page disccusinge them at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_hub_gears. There's at least 8 different manufacturers on there, some with many different models. Some were introduced as recently as 2023, so it's hardly some abandoned legacy technology.
It's true that internally geared bikes are common, especially in Europe. But internal gear hubs that are coaxial with pedals are almost unheard of. The only production one ever is the Schlumpf Unicycle hub, which costs $1500 and only a few hundred have ever been made. It also has only 2 gears. It's certainly possible to do, but I have doubts about a company opting for that incredibly expensive option of creating a new hub instead of reusing standard bike parts.
You've not come across hub gears on bikes before, have you? They were pretty much the standard before derailleur gears became popular, and modern ones can have up to 7 speeds.
I’ve ended up with some electronic road SRAM which is seriously quick in comparison (except for the slow rider), but do miss the smooth internal hub and the stationary gear changes.
Oh, nice, the state of the art has advanced since I last read about hub gears, which was ... oh dear, about twenty years ago? No wonder things have improved :)
Cycle rickshaws/pedicabs have been in use for several decades in India and other poorer parts of the world. And they are miles better in usability than whatever this is.
One of those "obvious in retrospect" designs, neat. Makes me wonder if there are complications to doing it this way, or if everyone else just likes selling more complete packs than necessary.
Pedals directly on the front wheel means no shifting the chain, which means you better have not skipped leg day if there is even the slightest hill on your route while you are fully loaded.
Isn't it the other way around? One revolution of your pedals gets one revolution of the wheel. Normally you'd get several revolutions out of it. So you need to pedal faster than you're used to, but each push is easier. It's like being in a very low gear suitable for climbing hills.
The penny-farthing solved this problem by having a very large wheel.
When I am in hill climbing gear, I turn more revolutions on my pedals than the tires turn. The higher that ration (pedal turns:wheel turns) the 'easier' it is to pedal, but the more turns you need to go forwards.
A bike that is a 1:1 'fixie' would indeed struggle with hills like the OP suggests. However, this bike has a secret hub within the wheel that does gearing, so you have (iirc) 3 ratios you can use to get up to speed or climb hills.
The chain is the transmission, and the shifting mechanism works with it. But you can easily have more compact gearboxes directly on the wheel without the need for a chain.
I ride a cargo bike through the city, probably 100 miles of commuting through a downtown corridor every week. Pedestrians are basically zero worry relative to cars and people on those rental scooters.
I have an e-assist on mine, so I can absolutely outrun anyone menacing, and biking so much gets you in healthy enough shape that most folks think, "Nah, I'll wait for an easier target." And if that didn't do the trick, pepper spray is a reasonable option.
People on foot are really, really not the worry. Mindless drivers who think they are invincible so they don't pay attention to their environment are FAR more dangerous.
This idea is absurdly underbaked…other commenters mentioned that it’s going to flip, and it is. Not to mention that no bike shop in the world will know how to work on these things.
There’s lots of reasons that this design died in the 1930’s after a short run.
But…so you know I’m a reasonable guy despite my blithering criticism…I love weird alternative vehicles and I hope that version two of this is a massive success because this world needs more tiny vehicles and fewer 8’ tall Ford F-150’s.
> This idea is absurdly underbaked…other commenters mentioned that it’s going to flip, and it is.
Assuming the rear is loaded with cargo, you'd have a low center of gravity over two wheels. To tip over, one of the rear wheels would need to come up, but that's where most of the weight is.
And I suspect the engineers who built this probably didn't just completely miss "oh wait, what if it tips over!?" Unless you've a) got some experience with this domain and b) got some experience with this bike, I don't know how you could know this bike is going to flip over.
Revive? These things are still in active use all over Europe .. backfiet .. and while they’re fun, they can be exhausting if you overfill them with groceries, kids, roadkill, oilyballs, etc.
There’s a tricked out one in my ‘hood (Vienna) that has electric assist. I guess that’d be practical for a daily ride …
When I look up backfiet I see a typical cargo bike, what the article is discussing is a design where you directly drive the front wheel (with a 3 speed hub in this case). Seems worse, but nifty.
You can see how it's different from a backfiet though, right? the article describes:
> places the rider directly above the front wheel. They pedal this wheel directly; there's no chain, reducing maintenance needs. A three-speed gearbox in the hub makes starting easier.
> An additional benefit to the two-piece frame is that the bike can be broken down for transport, allowing the user "to load it into a trunk for easy transport from point A to point B."
> Lastly, the company says the shorter wheelbase of their arrangement provides a tighter turning radius, making the bike easier to maneuver in urban environments.
These comments just read like a whole bunch of people who never rode a bike and yet are somehow experts on everything about bikes.
This thing is not for Le Tour and you don't go fast on it and you don't go up giant hills on it. That makes a lot of the concerns here go out the window.
These types of bikes shaped objects often have all kinds of issues with trying to use bike parts designed for standard bikes on something that is very different. Issues with needing enormous chains, huge cable runs, etc.. when designers try things like this they are worrying about issues like that more than whether you can climb a mountain on it or stuff it into a corner at high speed without going out of control.
The thing with these is the cost to design & manufacture components that need to be different than normal bikes can be astronomical, so anything they can do to design the frame to use normal components in a normal/non-compromised way pays off in a huge way.
The ideas behind this aren't that different than the Cruzbike being front wheel drive to get rid of a lot of the component/drivetrain issues that recumbent bikes are famous for.
The comment asking about riding positions drop bars was hilarious.
Lots of Americans in the comments is probably why, plus the Hacker News tendency toward armchair expertise.
The American grid system tends to produce hills that are unmanageable on a town or cargo bike, so bicycles are a fitness/enthusiast thing. And US cities are much more spread out, too. In more walkable European cities, these bikes make a lot of sense.
These would work beautifully in Dutch cities, although you can easily see from the design that its native biotope is Paris, where cars are increasingly being pushed out of the narrow streets.
The discussion is very much a case of people from the USA having the far too rare realisation than most places in Europe have nothing in common with their country.
There are so many excuses for why Americans don't ride. I have not heard about the grid system making the hills too steep before, but I suppose it applies to San Francisco, so I concede that could be a legitimate excuse. I went to SF with a heavily laden tourer bike and I found the hills manageable as you get a breather at the stop lights. I made good progress despite the hills. I might have only had 40kgs of cargo, but I did get an idea of the challenges.
There is much to criticise but there is so much to like. The sprawl of US cities was not a problem for me, it was a lot easier and less stressful on US roads than what we get in the UK. The shoulders on most US roads are defacto cycle lanes, which I really liked since a good speed could be maintained.
As a British observer, I can't help but laugh at how everything in the US is bigger. I do my grocery shopping by bicycle and I am the only person in the supermarket carrying 30kgs of stuff up a very steep hill. Everyone else drives. My bike is a normal one, but I feel that, if I was American, then I would be compelled to have some special needs bike, either a cargo bike or electric, to 'haul' even more stuff.
Everything just has to be bigger!!!
The book of excuses for not cycling is massive in America, but, I have never been to a better place for utility cycling. The whole place is really well set up for utility cycling, you just have to see it that way.
Fitness cycling is a high status pursuit, much like those silly games like tennis that were invented just to show how high status you are. Golf is the classic, so much arable land not under the plough is a true flex of wealth.
Fitness cycling shows that you are not working class, that you have the resources to not work. Utility cycling is low status, it shows you can't afford a car or you have been banned.
With utility cycling there is always a reason for the ride, it is not out of choice, if you don't do the ride, there will be consequences such as not having a job or having no food in. Yet there was a time before the car when all cycling was for utility reasons.
Cruzbikes have front-wheel drive via a very short chain. This allows them to use off-the-shelf components that all bikes use for a front hub. This is more like a unicycle hub, which are wildly different from bike parts (I would know, I built this: https://imgur.com/a/we-made-electric-assist-unicycle-long-ve...)
Right now, there is only one multi-geared commercially available unicycle hub, and it only has 2 gears, and costs $1500 (Schlumpf drive). As for ebike motors that can be coaxial with pedals, as far as I know 2 have ever been made, by myself and by Justin @ ebikes.ca.
The entire unicycle community would be thrilled if they actually built this because then we could buy these hubs. But I would be very surprised to see this launch with a unique hub, instead of a cruzbike-like hub.
Yep. There was a Kervelo concept chainless recumbent design that worked similarly and looked very cool (with a 14-speed hub!), but I hear they couldn't get it funded to actually be produced.
Not every bike needs to bomb downhill at 40mph
I’ve done 60 kph, similar speed I’d say, on this one. Rides like a dream.
https://www.r-m.de/en-au/bikes/load-75/
People comparing these with racing bikes is so unbelievable.
Tricycles are inherently unstable in turns, especially when not loaded down, because they cannot lean. And when carrying a load, the same rules of physics apply, resulting in a lot of torsional forces on the frame. There's a reason we see so few of those on the roads, amidst an explosion of various human-powered modes of transport.
Here's the original: http://youtube.com/watch?v=RuPwRQOUhl4
Here's the reimagined modern version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA7qGYNFuY0
In both cases, the rider effectively sits atop of where the handlebars would be on a traditional trike. You can see in the first video the lads have a hard time keeping all wheels on the ground.
One notable difference between the new model and the old is that they seem to have changed the geometry of the frame so that the driver doesn't lean into the turn (the turning wheel stays upright). They don't demonstrate it in motion very well, but that kind of turn action will tend to throw the rider "out" of the turn, making the trike fall over opposite of the direction of the turn. The old version tends to fall "into" the turn.
I can't think of many advantages to this design, other than the driving unit and cargo are modular. Even then, the rider would not be able to travel without the cargo portion.
Trikes are tricky, they don't go very fast, they don't turn well, and they're wider than most other pedal-powered vehicles, making them hard to use on existing cycle infrastructure.
> There's a reason we see so few of those on the roads, amidst an explosion of various human-powered modes of transport.
Cargo/passenger trikes are growing in popularity here where I live in London. I see probably a dozen a day which are an even mix of people ferrying kids about in a Danish/Dutch style "bakfiets" thing (you seem to be able to get 1-4 small people in the front of one of these depending on how picky they are about being squashed in) and cargo/parcel delivery which seem to be more modernized designs anecdotally. Whereas the model for a courier company used to be a person on a bicycle or motorbike doing one delivery at a time it seems more and more to be shifting to a person on a cargo bike doing multiple related deliveries in an area, and somewhat competing with traditional logistics just with a faster turnaround. The hook for parents seems to be if you have more than one kid it's still possible to use a bike to get around rather than a car (which is a very inconvenient mode of transport within London generally) and it's much faster and with bigger range compared with trying to get your offspring to walk (which might not even be possible for any kind of reasonable distance depending on age).
The advantage to these designs is that you have a bicycle that can carry cargo. Having decided that is the criterion you want to hit, having a modular version may well be beneficial.
The disadvantage you cite (that the driver can't lean) really doesn't factor too much into this use case because they aren't trying to travel at speed. Urban settings have much more stop-start movement in straight lines than cornering, and if you think about a parent with kids in the front of a bike they probably aren't trying to go super fast because they want to know they can definitely brake fast if the need arises.
> There's a reason we see so few [tricycles] on the roads, amidst an explosion of various human-powered modes of transport.
Perhaps in the US and western Europe, but tricycle tuk-tuks and cycle rickshaws are extremely common in other parts of the world.
In The Netherlands 3 wheel bikes are fairly common to haul kids and dogs.
I can easily get mine on two wheels if I take a sharp, fast, turn - but after you do it once you learn the limits and it's a very stable bike.
Same in Denmark. It is almost a must have for inner city families. Much more common than two wheel Long Johns.
Two very common models are:
https://www.christianiabikes.com/classic/
https://www.ladcyklen.dk/ladcykel/nihola-ladcykler.html
There's even a rear steering cargo trike company in Denmark. It's weird but I had an explanation that it was meant for low speed and maneuverability with cargo rather than as an exercise machine or high speed transportation.
I've ridden a few trikes like you'd use for a small food stand and they aren't so bad to drive around. Would I take one mountain biking or on a hill climb? No, but that's beside the point. I also don't use my phone for all my CAD work.
I rode something like this as part of a tour in switzerland, when turning left I was told to lean to the right (which is obviously different to a two wheeler where you lean in the direction of the turn), otherwise you'd pop-up on two wheels easily enough!
And you really have to push the handle bars, for steering. Again, very different to a two-wheeler.
I ride a christiania bike daily, and leaning right while turning left is a surefire way to have your left front wheel lift off the ground.
>when turning left I was told to lean to the right (which is obviously different to a two wheeler where you lean in the direction of the turn), otherwise you'd pop-up on two wheels easily enough!
Can you explain the mechanics behind that? When turning left, wouldn't the bike be at risk of tipping to the right? Wouldn't leaning to the right make that worse?
It's the same when you drive a motorcycle with a sidecar. The way you drive it is just completely the opposite of driving a normal motorcycle.
FYI: I have both and the first time I drove my sidecar I ended up in a hedge :D
A good overview of the physics and how to ride these is the yellow book from Ural: http://welcome-ural.ru/documents/HowToRideUral.pdf
Leaning in on a two wheeler is rolling the frame to the left further.
That same frame roll/tip on a trike causes the right wheel to leave the ground. In order to counter act that, and essentially prevent the frame from rolling/tipping at all in the turn, is to move your weight to the right so that wheel stays grounded.
If you really push and try you can get the left wheel up on a left turn but it’s more effort than popping a wheelie on a two wheel bike. It’s hard to do on accident.
I would guess it has to do with the direction of force changing, the left and rear tires getting closer and the right and rear tire distance getting farther and what that implies regarding the distance each wheel needs to travel in the turn.
Edit: maybe tilt is a better word than roll and tip, basically putting the frame less upright is what I mean by that
The common aspect is that both the Netherlands and Denmark are flat. The danish/Dutch trikes are really just unsafe when you pick up significant speed like down a hill. I am a long time cyclist, who raced for years. I've never felt as unsafe on a bike as when I tried riding and a fast bike speed on a Christiania.
Luckily cargo bikes aren't for speeding and racing but for carrying cargo. It would be like using a truck to race instead of a mid-engine super light sports car.
Durch cargo trikes are generally assumed safer than their two-wheeled alternatives here.
You mean like this DAF Turbo Twin overtaking a 405t16 in the Paris-Dakar? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AWCNnlk8rkU
No they are not popular in the Netherlands. Easily 90% of cargo bikes are two wheeled, because tricycles are really only for novice/disabled cyclists. Going above say 20km/h is just plain dangerous with a tricycle, definitely not stable at higher speeds in even the most gentle curve
There are a couple of advantages of tricycles that go beyond novice/disabled. They don’t need a kickstand, so they’re easy to park when loaded. They don’t need balancing at stops. They generally have better load capacity.
There’s also tricycles which can lean into a corner which makes them similarly agile as two-wheeled bikes. They’re still wider, though.
Trikes are certainly not for long distances and a sporty style, but as a short distance cargo/kids hauler, they’re cheap, reliable and effective. I know quite a few people Who are happy with them.
I'm in Limburg and I'd say three wheeled cargo bikes are closer to 30 to 40% of the market
Three wheel motorcycles are popular amongst bikers who get too old to handle a two wheeler. Some have two wheels in front, one in back, and look almost like cars, others are just a standard motorcycle chassis fitted with two rear wheels.
Yes when my kids were young I tried out a bunch of cargo bikes and the christiania trikes feel so unnatural and unsafe it's really hard to describe. I still ended up with a trike but it's a leaning one which feels just like a normal bike (and it's very narrow so fits through doors into backyards...). This is what I got: https://chike.de/en/ it was the best purchase I ever made! For anyone thinking about a cargo bike when having small kids; go ahead your kids will love it, you will love it!
Yes, the tricycle. Masterfully combining the exposed position of a bicycle with the space requirements of a car.
They really don't make sense in motorcycles, A large part of the point of a motorcycle is that you are willing to give up a lot of comfort and safety in exchange for having a very small nimble personal transport. Nothing wrong with this tradeoff, but why would want a vehicle that takes up the same amount of space as a car that gives you the safety and comfort value of a motorcycle?
At the speeds you can go on this, motorcycle is a bad comparison. Depending on the rear module used, this could definitely use most of the bike infrastructure in my city without a problem. There’s already a bike delivery company that uses e-trikes to great effect moving goods around the city center - in the downtown core 35kph keeps up with traffic 85% of the time, so taking the road is also an option.
My uncle always said: "those things combine the weaknesses of a motorcycle with the weaknesses of a car"
I personally set aside the safety & comfort sacrifice of the motorcycle but cannot accept the performance loses. Similar to when I see people maneuvering a bicycle over rough or varied terrain while sitting down; you might as well be driving a car.
Might as well be driving a car… well, except for the climate impact, cost, maneuverability, and pedestrian death toll.
fyi there are trike designs that can lean. Their two wheels are leaning on turns: first google result https://newatlas.com/butchers-and-bicycles-mk1-leaning-cargo... but there are many more models able to do it
Of course the guys find the old one tippy: there's no load in back. Put even twenty pounds on that platform and stability would be wildly improved.
The instability in turns was what made the "Big Wheel" fun when I was a small child. Too low to the ground to really tip over but easy to make it spin out.
I had a conventional tricycle too, don't recall ever falling over on it, though it could get tippy. You learned to lean to offset that.
If you're trying to keep all of the wheels on the ground you're not using it efficiently. With trikes when you go around a curve the inner wheel lifts off the ground, especially as many trikes have solid rear axles. It feels scary to have it pitch outward in the turns, but it is how the machine works.
The problem is that trikes don't steer with countersteering. When you transition to one wheel lifted, you have a brand new mode of operation with a misaligned rear wheel.
> especially as many trikes have solid rear axles
Do you (or anyone I guess) happen to know why? Low speed differential non-drive axles are not that complex, and would sermingly help a lot.
If they're not drive why connect them at all? Why not have them mounted independently and eliminate the need for an extra part? My only real guess is it's easier for carrying capacity.
I suspect it because with a single piece axle the torsion forces trying to twist the wheels into negative camber are taken by the axle and the forces on the two wheels negate each other, leaving the frame to only have to deal with vertical linear force.
Isn’t it the outer wheel that would lift off the ground?
it's the inner wheel with a tilt/lean. Your weight has to get out over the COG to balance. The feeling ranges from foreign to terrifying and I'm not sure why you wouldn't just go with an excellent cargo bicycle that avoids the entire issue.
You would think so but no. The inner wheel is the one that lifts.
What’s the explanation that this is different from bi-wheelers?
It wants to roll over, just like a car would if it had very sticky tires and took a sharp turn at speed.
The fun bit is that on three wheels it steers like a car, but on two wheels it steers like a bicycle.
What makes this true of trikes but not of the typical automobile?
Some cars like the Mini Cooper S do lift a rear wheel when turning sharply under braking -- I've seen this a lot in autocross racing. I normally only see front engine/FWD cars with limited suspension travel do it though. Trikes are less stable & will lift a wheel more easily overall.
The principle is the same, the distinction has more to do with suspension (or lack thereof) and the solid rear axle. The same strategy of lifting the inside rear tire is used in competitive go-kart racing: https://youtu.be/cMAtgPX6st8?t=312 . If the carts had a differential then it would be a different story (and they would be cars and not karts according to the SuperFastMatt taxonomy)
They do. Volkswagens from the 80s and 90s that have solid dead rear axles "tripod" around corners.
Automobiles have 4 wheels. The geometry of the situation is very different. This is also why cars have differentials, because otherwise the car would be fighting against the turn.
Basically when you turn your trike turns into a bike.
If you have a large preferably rusty box in front of you the cars treat you like royalty.
there are trikes that can lean. this is one, and not the one i remember see an article on a few years ago, so there's at least two companies out there doing it.
https://youtu.be/9LwqIIqysZ0
Using a video of duffers trying the bike for the first time is not very convincing. I expect that with experience you'd get the handle on the trike design and control it quite well.
I see the word "tricycle" and I'm reminded of the Piaggio MP3, from the parent company of Vespa. It has two front wheels and one rear.
It is the Velorex that pops into my head.
It's always exciting to see this idea get revived for the first time in ninety years every ten years!
I've pedaled around on a couple variations of this design. Like everyone who had never ridden one but saw it on the internet, I also confidently imagined it would violently hurl me to the ground at the slightest provocation. I was wrong, which strangely seems to be a pattern for confident opinions I've formed based on things I've only seen on the internet. Having not been for a ride on this particular iteration, I will not post confident opinions about it on the internet.
The best (granted, of two...) version I've tried was semi-recumbent, with a standard geartrain and flevobike-style steering. The steering was a little weird at first, but I quickly figured out how to fully steer it hands free. Fully unloaded it was possible to tip it with hard front braking while turning, if you pitched your body weight into the effort. Loaded, it was absolutely nailed to the ground. You're just a mule winching a load down the road at that point. Sometimes it's fun to be a mule, piloting a weird bike-cart.
It turns out everyone flamewarring about stability on the internet forgot to get mad about drive wheel traction limits when pulling a load uphill. Which for me was a loading consideration rather than a problem. The underseat steering was brilliant for reasons I'd never thought about. But don't take my word for it, ride one and decide for yourself.
https://web.archive.org/web/20130309080557/http://hpm.catore...
The bit about confidently expecting to get yeeted off the bike based purely on internet logic is hilariously relatable
One thing that most non-cyclists may not realise, is that (because of your lower speed) it is actually an advantage to keep your cargo sight when riding through an urban area. (You don't want people steal your cargo while waiting for the traffic lights.)
Or, when transporting kids, you want to be able to see them, talk with them, keep an eye on them. I have cycled over 30,000 Kilometers in and around Amsterdam on various bikes - and written many different posts on it: https://willem.com/blog/bike/ (including on cargo bikes like Babboe)
In Copenhagen, Denmark, these are used all over the city to, well, deliver cargo.
Then, annually they have a fun cargo-bike race called "Svajerløb" [0]
The event is based on traditional races that took place between the 1930s and 1960s. In the race, riders typically complete four laps - the first lap ridden with an empty cargo bike, then stopping to load up their bikes with cargo before completing three more laps with the full load. [1]
It's super fun.
[0] https://www.facebook.com/Svajerloeb/
[1] https://copenhagenize.com/2017/10/arrange-svajerlb-cargo-bik...
Are there many of this configuration? (Load in the back as a tricycle). I see lots of good cargo bikes (and I LOVE cargo bikes), just not many of this design. But facebook doesn't let me browse much without an account.
I'm across the strait in Malmö and it's very rare to find the cargo in the back. Mostly senior citizens ride a variant of this bike with two wheels in the back, a small pannier. Maybe because it suits their balance better.
But recently a coffee bike has been turning up here in Malmö with a classic 50s design just like the Cycleauto one, but the wheel is not mounted under the rider.
https://gastro-bike.com/en/coffee-bike/ This is not it but it's close. The one we have here is more of a rounded 50s design on the carriage. I don't have any pics.
For everyone complaining about tricycles, one thing I've seen here and there in Europe being used for inner city deliveries is what I learned is called "Velove Armadillo", a 4-wheeled cargo bike
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAaVXKBamd0
You can even hook up a trailer to it for even more cargo.
There’s lots more too, in various forms depending on what you’re hauling: https://cargobike.guide/
The issue with this design is the front 3 geared hub. It says it would reduce maintenance needs. The derailleur and chain are often cheaper and require very little maintenance other than oiling and maybe cleaning. They last literally last 1000s of miles. There isn't a maintenance concern typically. In fact I think it is harder to maintenance hubs from what I've read.
These sorts of issues plague a lot of bike designs where they try to do something radically different. The reason why the derailleur and chains are used so often is because they are relatively cheap, work well and require maybe a few cheap tools to remove/refit parts (I have done this myself many times).
Also as for the modular design. Why would I care about a modular design if I wanted something like this. You aren't going to be a courier one day and then suddenly running Gelato stand the next.
> The issue with this design is the front 3 geared hub. It says it would reduce maintenance needs. The derailleur and chain are often cheaper and require very little maintenance other than oiling and maybe cleaning.
Internally geared hubs are a mature technology and really require even less maintenance than a chain/derailleur combo, being completely enclosed. Also, not every hub needs to be a fancy Rohloff, so even if it needs to be replaced in toto, it's not bank-breaking.
I've found the exact opposite when looking at this in the past. The last time I bothered looking there are sturmey archer designs which have an odd slop in the pedalling, shimano designs (which are ok) and Rohloff (super expensive).
Contrast that to chain, cassette and the entire wheel is probably cost less than a hub. A new chain and cassette can be found at any bike shop and they are inexpensive. The maintenance concerns regarding chains are derailleurs are vastly overstated by the proponents of such hubs.
I have built and repaired my own bicycles since I was a kid. I've found that anything remotely fancy becomes a PITA. There is a reason why most bicycles use Shimano or Shimano compatible kit, it is cheap, available anywhere and reliable.
>Why would I care about a modular design if I wanted something like this. You aren't going to be a courier one day and then suddenly running Gelato stand the next.
I have a thought like this regarding my compute needs in my house all the time, and then another need pops up, and I'm so glad I can wrangle an existing expensive piece of kit to also cover the new need. Just between the Gelato stand and personal item transport could be one such need
The need to switch between the examples given is niche (I deliberately chose something I thought was ridiculous to illustrate the point), in a niche market. This is probably why this design didn't last long.
Only because the need to haul anything heavy or large by muscle power is niche. That segment has just been taken by larger combustion or electric engine'd vehicles. Where large loads are commonly hauled with tractors, it's a very common theme to have detachable tools, not tractor per tool.
Farming isn't comparable and doesn't have the same needs. You already admitted that the use case presented have been largely taken up by other types of vehicles. There isn't really a market for this.
>The need to switch between the examples given is niche
This is what I argue against, that given it's purpose, a need to switch is important. The use case for hauling things has been taken up by other things, but the use case for detachable loads hasn't gone anywhere where loads need to be hauled.
>Farming isn't comparable and doesn't have the same needs
Farming needs wheeled vehicles to transport heavy materials, I think it's exactly comparable.
> Farming needs wheeled vehicles to transport heavy materials, I think it's exactly comparable.
No because the farmer has to do many different things with the same piece of equipment. The number of people doing a courier job on a bicycle and then running a Gelato stand are almost nobody.
If I wanted to tow something, I wouldn't use a bicycle anyway. I am not even that convinced by existing cargo bikes tbh and this is coming from someone that built their own bicycles for 20 years. I would use my land rover.
This is neat but I'm not sure sbout sitting on top of the wheel. An electric version would be great
For people questioning the viability of trikes, here is what the Dutch postal service uses:
https://www.bikeshift.com/nl/assets/components/phpthumbof/ca...
And this is ehat they are testing for future: https://fulpra.com/
> And this is ehat they are testing for future: https://fulpra.com/
That front part looks more like a moped or light motorcycle than a bike. But with that kind of load on the back I suppose it makes sense.
I can't stop thinking about riding this without the trailer, as a unicycle with gears.
Alternatively, a mini wheel attachment for instant penny farthing, similar to https://bicymple.com/.
The bummer is that the transmission is only unidirectional, but a unicycle needs bidirectional control, with very little backlash. Every economical planetary gear hub involves over-running pawls, alas.
Guys (I'm sure women do too, but I haven't seen it) riding wheelies seem to manage.
But I take your point -- I've ridden a unicycle extensively, but never a wheelie.
This is wild—in the best way. The design was so practical it basically looped around to being fashionable again. Honestly feels more “modern” than some of the e-bike overengineering out there today.
Three wheeled cars and trikes mostly moved to having the two wheels in front for stability when cornering. Same reason why 3 wheeled all terrain vehicles were taken off the market. Otherwise, cool idea.
I was so excited to try a cargo bike I made sure to rent a Cristiana bike on a holiday to Copenhagen with my pregnant wife. Then I crashed while turning with her as a passenger. She was displeased.
We now ride a two wheeled urban arrow. Three wheelers seem incredibly unstable except perhaps for ones with independently pivoting wheels like the babboe carve
When you buy one, they come with the warning to drive around first without cargo. But yeah, you need to take it easy. Safe speed is perhaps 10-12 km/h on a bike path with other bicycles, and you need to slow down to almost a complete stop for 90 degrees turns.
Perhaps I should add to this that they're actually super stable at slow speeds, compared to two-wheelers, especially when loaded. My wife prefers a cargo bike to her usual non-cargo bike, I think for this very reason.
While super unstable three wheelers are good for very heavy or large loads. Like moving a refrigerator. Start stop city traffic with +100kg load is easier on three than two wheels. Must say I never liked riding the Christiania bikes myself.
The old ones in NL easily take 300kg. You just have to learn not to attempt sharp corners. A normal bike also allows you to jerk the steering wheel 90 degrees at high speed.
It begs the question, are you carrying extreme loads, like refrigerators, on a daily basis? If not, then this is like buying an F-350 when you're mostly taking your kids to school. If so, then maybe none of these are the right design and you might want to look into something like a cargo trailer.
Well yes a ton of people are ferrying multiple kids plus their school bags everyday. They are far from common enough to get compared to F-350s. Nobody would commute on them daily if they didn't have a recurring need to haul something. They are far too expensive to buy as a beater.
> Nobody would commute on them daily if they didn't have a recurring need to haul something. They are far too expensive to buy as a beater.
I really can’t tell, are you referring to an F-350 or a cargo bike?
otoh there are large bicycle trailers that can carry those refrugerators.
Weren’t most of the babboes recalled?
https://www.babboe.nl/klantenservice/terugroepactie
Yes, but due to unrelated issues (the frames would break)
And what is the innovation that means the urban arrow frames will not break ?
Maybe a better alloy? The urban arrow also has an aluminum frame though, which is the normal recipe for snapped frames. Having broken a couple myself, and not being a racer, I always opt for steel now.
See also: Reliant Robin.
Obligatory Top Gear link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQh56geU0X8
On January 10th 2016, Clarkson came clean in his article in the Mail on Sunday and admitted that the whole thing was rigged. Clarkson wrote,
https://www.reliant.website/topgear.shtmlIIRC they also put a big metal plate in the roof to make it even more top-heavy
And yet, several of my friends located the general Sheffield area agree that while the video was a bit over the top, generally, Robins tended to do that. That Sheffield is a surprisingly hilly city with sometimes hard turns meaning you have auto-acceleration on hills down, and often are a bit faster than you'd like, probably doesn't help either.
There are a couple of long time bike messengers here in DC who've been using this same rig for 15+ years. One has a rear seat for one of his kids.
Yet, the unconventional steering mechanism and rider position might pose challenges in terms of ergonomics and maneuverability, especially when compared to traditional cargo bikes
While interesting, I feel like this would be difficult or at least feel extremely weird to ride. When you steer on a 2-wheeled bicycle, you countersteer, which is pushing the wheel left in order to go right, or vice-versa. But this has a steering wheel that I assume works like a car, you turn the wheel left to go left. It would feel weird riding a bicycle while having to remember to steer like a car.
Probably less weird than you think. For one thing, it uses a steering wheel like a car, so that steering motion would feel more natural, and most people don't know they need to countersteer on a bike, they just do it without thinking. Even if it used handlebars, people ride trikes all the time without any real problems.
That front bike section looks so cool. I guess it's so alien looking because the whole section turns instead of just the wheel which affords it more creative license than a traditional handlebar attached to a fork.
I bet it also feels alien to turn a steering wheel with your feet on bike pedals.
A USA company has/had a patent on a pivoting bottom bracket bike transmission like this and has been making bikes for a while.
https://cruzbike.com/
I'm not sure where you grew up, but in the US we had a kid's toy called a Big Wheel which your feet had to turn with when you turned the handlebars. It was wildly awkward, terribly designed, but we got really good at it, anyway. The pedals would even scrape concrete on turns often enough to wear them down.
There are also adult versions: https://youtu.be/moRE8IlNiMU
Those look dangerously fun. Looks like there's electric and gas powered versions, as well.
Much respect to the mad lad slowing his descent in flipflops, by the way.
Berm Peak reviewed a cargo bike some months ago:
https://youtu.be/H7w57U3ijHY?si=EWXoYPNVpkwxh-oT
I was under the impression these had been out for a while. Last May, when my wife and I went to France, these cargo bikes all over the place, especially in Paris.
With a front wheel design like this one?
Exactly like the first two photos in the article, yes.
It's totally mad and impractical; I love it!
Am I the only one unable to open that website ?
It half-opened for me, bogged down, and on re-load crashed the Firefox tab.
had the same experience, even in private windows without any plugin. People really goes to great length to make sure their text is unreadable for some of their users.
Funnily enough, it works "great" on Librewolf (with quote around "great" because that design is awful, eating most of the screen estate with a fixed menu)
Yeah unfortunately it breaks Firefox for me.
Cube has a model called "Trike Hybrid" that has a similar, more practical design: https://www.cube.eu/de-de/e-bikes/transport/trike-hybrid
This looks cool. I'd have to try it, myself, to see if it works.
However, it also looks like these are all renderings. It would be interesting to see a live demo.
The one actual photo looks quite different from the renderings.
Off topic - the the colour scheme choices for the Cookie selection pop-up on that site are awful. I'll admit I'm colour blind, but I assume those are hard for others to see when the switches are on or off? Unless that was their plan?
Lol @ what appears to be paddle shifters or paddle brakes [0] under a steering wheel on a bike??
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA7qGYNFuY0&t=77s
There's probably a good reason nobody has touched this design in 90+ years. As the last photo demonstrates, banging the back of your leg against a trailer hitch every time you turn would get annoying real quick.
Looks like something that can easily be solved by tweaking the curve. I also don't think you'll be doing such sharp turns often, and at that angle and speed you may as well get off.
On the contrary, it's a fundamental flaw in the design. The second to last photo shows the trailer directly over the pedal which will inevitably either push the rider's leg off or limit the turn radius.
It's pictured at the furthest back position for the pedals though which means your leg will mostly go forward of the pedals and not much back. I would trust people having actually ridden this to not have their legs slammed into the trailer vs how it looks on one render or photo.
Please do not mention spray from cars in front of you! XD
feels like these types of human-powered cargo vehicles work better when they're pushing the load vs towing a trailer, either the 2 wheeler cargo that's got the payload way out front, or the reverse trikes. The closest I've tried to this type of geo is a regular bike towing a 2-wheeled trailer, and that has both logistic & performance issues. This setup has you really tall/forward, and the trailer interfering with the pedaling & leg movement.
This design is unstable and expensive to produce with a complicated in wheel transmission. It is novel, but almost certainly more expensive and less reliable than existing designs.
In wheel gears have been in use for over a century very successfully. I had a Raleigh bicycle with Sturmey Archer gears as a child. It never gave me any trouble, unlike the derailleur gears I had on later bicycles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hub_gear
> In wheel gears have been in use for over a century very successfully.
They've been barely viable the whole time. Sturmey Archer are the last maker in business; they went bankrupt a couple of decades back and for some years there was serious concern that manufacturing would never resume.
...what? There's a whole bunch of manufacturers, so many that there's an entire Wikipedia page disccusinge them at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_hub_gears. There's at least 8 different manufacturers on there, some with many different models. Some were introduced as recently as 2023, so it's hardly some abandoned legacy technology.
But modern hub gears are no longer standard, and relegated to specific use cases.
There's a lot of friction in hub gears (at least the one I rode a decade ago), and fixing them is generally impractical.
Shimano Nexus is from 1995. What did you ride twenty years later, in 2015? I call BS on the friction argument.
It's true that internally geared bikes are common, especially in Europe. But internal gear hubs that are coaxial with pedals are almost unheard of. The only production one ever is the Schlumpf Unicycle hub, which costs $1500 and only a few hundred have ever been made. It also has only 2 gears. It's certainly possible to do, but I have doubts about a company opting for that incredibly expensive option of creating a new hub instead of reusing standard bike parts.
You've not come across hub gears on bikes before, have you? They were pretty much the standard before derailleur gears became popular, and modern ones can have up to 7 speeds.
Modern ones can have more than 7 speeds. The Rohloff Speedhub has 14 speeds, and the Shimano Alfine is available with either 8 or 11 speeds.
They are so so nice to ride.
I’ve ended up with some electronic road SRAM which is seriously quick in comparison (except for the slow rider), but do miss the smooth internal hub and the stationary gear changes.
Oh, nice, the state of the art has advanced since I last read about hub gears, which was ... oh dear, about twenty years ago? No wonder things have improved :)
I meant the whole design. The hub gear is no different than on any other bicycle and can be reliable.
Cycle rickshaws/pedicabs have been in use for several decades in India and other poorer parts of the world. And they are miles better in usability than whatever this is.
What's the advantage to a trike? Heavier load? Two wheels is less parts, less maintenance, and most importantly better maneuverability.
When you stop it doesn't fall over. Big plus.
Especially when you have so much cargo that it's impractical to hold the bike upright manually.
Really good looking :)
You should definitely put a repairable Gouach e-bike battery on it haha https://gouach.com
One of those "obvious in retrospect" designs, neat. Makes me wonder if there are complications to doing it this way, or if everyone else just likes selling more complete packs than necessary.
Kids these days would take the unicycle front and just roll around doing their free wheelie thing.
Pedals directly on the front wheel means no shifting the chain, which means you better have not skipped leg day if there is even the slightest hill on your route while you are fully loaded.
Isn't it the other way around? One revolution of your pedals gets one revolution of the wheel. Normally you'd get several revolutions out of it. So you need to pedal faster than you're used to, but each push is easier. It's like being in a very low gear suitable for climbing hills.
The penny-farthing solved this problem by having a very large wheel.
When I am in hill climbing gear, I turn more revolutions on my pedals than the tires turn. The higher that ration (pedal turns:wheel turns) the 'easier' it is to pedal, but the more turns you need to go forwards.
A bike that is a 1:1 'fixie' would indeed struggle with hills like the OP suggests. However, this bike has a secret hub within the wheel that does gearing, so you have (iirc) 3 ratios you can use to get up to speed or climb hills.
>A three-speed gearbox in the hub makes starting easier.
It was not direct drive.
It apparently has a gearbox in the hub.
Electric motor though?
The chain is the transmission, and the shifting mechanism works with it. But you can easily have more compact gearboxes directly on the wheel without the need for a chain.
Bike is short for bicycle. That means exactly two wheels.
Sounds like a great way to get robbed
I ride a cargo bike through the city, probably 100 miles of commuting through a downtown corridor every week. Pedestrians are basically zero worry relative to cars and people on those rental scooters.
I have an e-assist on mine, so I can absolutely outrun anyone menacing, and biking so much gets you in healthy enough shape that most folks think, "Nah, I'll wait for an easier target." And if that didn't do the trick, pepper spray is a reasonable option.
People on foot are really, really not the worry. Mindless drivers who think they are invincible so they don't pay attention to their environment are FAR more dangerous.
Please excuse my hacker-newsyness…
This idea is absurdly underbaked…other commenters mentioned that it’s going to flip, and it is. Not to mention that no bike shop in the world will know how to work on these things.
There’s lots of reasons that this design died in the 1930’s after a short run.
But…so you know I’m a reasonable guy despite my blithering criticism…I love weird alternative vehicles and I hope that version two of this is a massive success because this world needs more tiny vehicles and fewer 8’ tall Ford F-150’s.
Best of luck!
> This idea is absurdly underbaked…other commenters mentioned that it’s going to flip, and it is.
Assuming the rear is loaded with cargo, you'd have a low center of gravity over two wheels. To tip over, one of the rear wheels would need to come up, but that's where most of the weight is.
And I suspect the engineers who built this probably didn't just completely miss "oh wait, what if it tips over!?" Unless you've a) got some experience with this domain and b) got some experience with this bike, I don't know how you could know this bike is going to flip over.
Revive? These things are still in active use all over Europe .. backfiet .. and while they’re fun, they can be exhausting if you overfill them with groceries, kids, roadkill, oilyballs, etc.
There’s a tricked out one in my ‘hood (Vienna) that has electric assist. I guess that’d be practical for a daily ride …
When I look up backfiet I see a typical cargo bike, what the article is discussing is a design where you directly drive the front wheel (with a 3 speed hub in this case). Seems worse, but nifty.
You can see how it's different from a backfiet though, right? the article describes:
> places the rider directly above the front wheel. They pedal this wheel directly; there's no chain, reducing maintenance needs. A three-speed gearbox in the hub makes starting easier.
> An additional benefit to the two-piece frame is that the bike can be broken down for transport, allowing the user "to load it into a trunk for easy transport from point A to point B."
> Lastly, the company says the shorter wheelbase of their arrangement provides a tighter turning radius, making the bike easier to maneuver in urban environments.
Bakfiets no? That’s what the Dutch call it and they use them widely. Especially the electric versions you can get nowadays.
Did your read the article? It’s talking about a totally different design to a standard bakfiet.