High-concept Designs Illustrate a Future by Bike

• Erik Nilsson

  December 9, 2012

  Could these bikes become reality? Of course not. They are all examples of “concept” bikes from people who have no idea how bikes actually work and why they are the way they are.

  This slideshow is noteworthy in that it includes two bikes with hubless wheels. The normal rule is, you only need one of those per “bike of the future” feature article. Regardless, do I have to explain why hubless wheels are never going to be practical? There is nothing “new” about this idea. They look “futuristic” because they are, in a word, impractical. Hubless bike wheels have a bearing surface that is 2 meters long, and every single bit of that bearing has to be very strong and stiff, yet flexible enough to absorb the bumps that the spokes are not there to take. That’s all straightforward, if you like your wheels to cost more and weigh more than an entire bicycle.

  That leaves a cardboard bike that is best described as a hoax, because the designer claims it will be all made of cardboard, but the single prototype he has shown is cardboard wrapped around conventional components. Oh, and an electric bike that is neither buildable nor rideable, from a designer of pretty fantasies who is “admittedly not an engineer.”

  Oh, and a backpack.

  Awesome. You know, there are real people who are building real bikes that are actually interesting. This is a collection of CAD drawings and conceptual prototypes of things that will not work. Will. Not. Work.

  Any idiot with a CAD program and ignorance of how bikes are actually built and ridden can make a “bike of the future.” Stop giving these people attention. They aren’t designing any future for anyone.

• farrbott

  November 27, 2012

  I want all these bikes, impossible to choose but the london garden bike is so blade runner i must have it. The back pack i need now.

Comments are closed.