Me on that bike: ah, muddy dirt road, my arc nemesis. And what’s that? a random pile of dog poop, my day’s ruiner.
Is there any regime where this is more efficient than spokes? I’d imagine that at high speed there’s an aerodynamic advantage (possibly similar to a track/TT disk wheel?), but I can’t imagine the bearings being better than current bikes. But bearing loss might (???) just scale linear with speed, so probably a win from aero in the end. But this isn’t counting weight, which I imagine is worse (but doesn’t matter much at high speed on flat ground).
Is looking cool important?
Broke: How many times will I need to repair this bike over a lifetime of ownership?
Woke: How many people will stare at me as I’m biking?
Bespoke: How many times will this bike get me laid?
For the last one it’s more competitive than you think. I’ve gotten laid thanks to a bike people didn’t even see. Gets you an ass that does wondets
In cycling? Super duper important.
Yes. The answer to that is yes. Especially for a render
Yeah why do we need another bicycle?
Also how does peddling move the wheels…? Missing something.
Peddle to the Metal
*Meddle
Meddl Loide!
I dont know anything specific about this particular model but these are concepts that have been recycled. The drivetrain is some flavor of a direct drive, looks similar to a differential on a car. The wheels are basically spinning around a slightly smaller inner wheel that acts like a huge hub - probably with a layer of ball bearings in between. Something like that, I didn’t zoom in but thats generally how these things work (if at all).
I don’t think this will work on the long run.
First, the hold on the rim must be very tight and precise or the wheel will wobble like mad.
Second, such a tight hold will be very sensitive to any kind of dirt, so it has to be sealed.
Any seal tight enough to keep extremely small dirt out will cause loads of friction.
Tight seals in general is not an option, they exist en masse with e.g. hydraulic cylinders. But for them, the friction is basically a non-issue in comparison to the overall power budget. But I cannot imagine an even halfway free wheeling wheel that will not break down after getting in contact with a bit of sand.
Ok, maybe with a magnetic linear drive?
May as well be. Gotta dumb down all the other facets of society as it is
Not exactly dumbing down, I guess removing components which are redundant after redesigns
Highly depends on the use case. I doubt this type of construction would work with mountain bikes (or at all, honestly, since the design for this is very old by now and it clearly never went anywhere).
Well yeah, different bikes require different designs
Unless they’re two different bikes with the same design
The complexity of this design cannot be outspoken.
This is the first step to having magnetic wheels become a thing. We know canonically Jim Kirk’s motorcycle uses these, so it’s definitely mainstream by ~2250.
Honorable mention: the Bell Riots happen September this year, and it seems we’re on track for those too
Would it be hard to translate brushless motors into bikes/vehicles? Don’t those things use magnetism?
Oh I’m sure it’d be quite hard. But that’s a future engineer’s problem lol
The technology is getting there. I forget which company did it, but one has developed an insane magnetic suspension system for automobiles.
Right now the limiting factor is the energy required, so battery tech is the bottleneck.
It’s a real shame shipstones haven’t been figured out yet.
It was Bose. Yes, the premium sound system producers. It never went anywhere, despite being practical magic, because it added around 2,000lbs and cost six figures.
They also developed a semi-tractor seat using the same sort of voodoo, which is on the aftermarket for around $5k installed.
I’ve started seeing magnetic suspension offered as a luxury option in nicer cars, wonder if it’s derived from that Bose system. I remember watching the demo from the 90s, mind-blowing.
Not the same sort of thing. Bose’s “magic carpet” suspension used linear electromagnetic drivers and sensors to move the suspension to compensate for the road conditions detected. They took speaker drivers on steroids and did noise cancellation on bumps and dips in the road.
Magneride and similar use an electromagnetic coil to adjust dampening by acting on a ferrofluid, which changes how hard or soft the suspension is. You want a stiff “sport” suspension, fluid is high viscosity and harder to move. You want a soft “comfort” suspension, the fluid is lower viscosity and moves easily.
For a heavily constrained system like a car’s shock absorbers, couldn’t permanent magnets be used instead of electromagnets?
I think the main advantage to fixed stiffness springs was that it was controllable. So if it was a fixed strength magnet the advantages over springs is likely limited compared to the cost. Magnetic suspension is cool because it’s an active suspension system.
I’m picturing a car crash where some poor sod is perforated by a super strong magnet that went flying
Imagine designing a bicycle without triangles. Every joint needs to be overbuilt, because there’s no structure from the geometry. But you make sure it still has a top tube, so its just as hard to mount and dismount as a normal bike. Incredible!
Yeah why not keep the seat tube and delete the top tube?
Compliance but this is a very very extreme example - you’d hit a bump and the top tube would flex, kinda like a diving board, and smooth out the harshness. I’m not even sure this bike exists but that would be the practical purpose of such a design, but most manufacturers tend to go after the seat stays (Salsa Warbird, Bianchi with Counterveil, Moots Routt YBB) or decouple the seat tube from the top tube and allow it to flex due to seat tube angle (Trek Isospeed). Carbon’s kinda fickle and engineers are constantly trying to figure out how to finesse it into feeling less jarring and rigid
This bike does not exist. This is part of a series of theoretical renders from what must be 15 to 20 years ago. When carbon fiber was kind of a new material to the general consumer. The premise was they could not only reduce the weight of the material but because carbon fiber was this space age super material that could melt your tits off if you looked at it sideways, that they could also reduce the need for structural materials like spokes and triangles. Making a featherweight racing bike. Most of the designs had absolutely no way to steer them.
I was gonna say, the frame just looks a little too outlandish, totally ignoring the wheels and headset.
Once in a while a bike comes along trying to reinvent the triangle but none are particularly good, often worse than tried and true. Superstrata Classic is a perfect example. Making a 2 triangle frame and adding just a hair of compliance around less-critical spots seems to be the winning formula
Tube is not a line.
Right? Who would be crazy enough to do that?
Next you’re going to tell me someone will make one without a top tube?
Hey, look here buddy. You can’t be your own comment thread and post all the plausible responses yourself like that. You’re putting all the trolls out of work.
That top one is kinda sexy ngl
doesn’t that prove their point? they all look overbuilt, as the original commenter said.
Carbon fiber, aerodynamics…
For this one it’s used as suspension (not carbon fiber)
Not that rare in old mountain bikes either, pretty sure my old steel Raleigh was similar
Carbon fiber has very limited lifetimes when used for something with a lot of hard impacts, so if you’re not sticking to smooth surfaces the bike can literally split apart with little warning
Eh…
Modern mountain bikes? Hell, they make car and motorcycle wheels out of it…
I Googled “motorcycle carbon fiber wheel” and autocomplete immediately suggested adding “failure” and doing that search has endless relevant results
And if I do a research for “Toyota Tercel engine failure” I find tons of results as well even though it’s one of the most reliable car ever built.
Crazy how search engines show you results for what you’re looking for, right?
The meme shows only bikes with flat handlebars, like commuter bikes intended for transportation.
Every bike you posted are high performance racing bikes with specialized aerodynamic handlebars.
Different priorities. Triangless bikes with a top bar is not a good idea for commuter bicicles like the ones in the meme.
I still showed that it’s perfectly possible to build a bike without a seat tube, hell I’m sure we can find 90s examples that weren’t high performance bikes.
Nah, but that tube is a little lowered, enough to make a difference.
This guy does not engineer.
I’m picturing this being carbon fiber and the top tube snapping at the bend.
At compressing part of bend. If I remember correctly, carbon fibers are good at handling tensile loads and terrible at compression loads.
i never realized until this moment that the meme showed them putting a stick in the wheels. i always thought they just happened to fall off.
Pretty brave to admit that.
There’s power in anonymity.
You know there’s a relavent XKCD.
Then send it
I haven’t clicked it. One of the 10 thousand?
Yep
then what did you think the point of the meme was ?
One of today’s 10000?
I wonder how many times someone has learned something new and then the first reply they read was a link to that comic and they discovered that, too?
that would have to be a 1 in 10000 chance…
I don’t know really
okay :-)
As far as I can tell, this product never panned out. It was backed by 132 people to cover 150k GBP in 2017. It was called the “Cyclotron Bike”.
What is this bullshit? Bike in post makes more semse than this.
Wait, I’m confused. Does it have tires or is that just a big ring of plastic?
From the video it looks like the plastic rings are casings and the wheels are inside them, and the wheels poke out at the bottom. Seems dumb to me.
You can kind of see it here but it looks like they’re intentionally hiding a good view of it with angles/lighting:
What happens when you ride through mud?
You ride into the mud. Not so much out of the mud.
😞
I’d only ride this bike if it formed a wall of coloured light behind me as I rode
The wheels are apparently really really loud when they are mounted like this. You just can make good enough ball bearings of this size at any reasonable cost and weight
That looks like it would be extremely unreliable and needlessly expensive to maintain. Maybe even impossible for the average person to maintain it
But it looks cool and that’s totally worth buying into a proprietary ecosystem and getting something incompatible with 99% of bike parts.
Yup, that went well for Van Moof owners in the Netherlands. Also hipster bikes, the latest model turned out to be of dubious quality and was built using all custom parts. They had fun times getting their ridiculously overpriced bikes repaired after the company went belly up.
I hope Netherlands will litigate good Right to Repair into existance. Netherlands is part of EU, so I belive in you.
The whole van moof thing was absolutely hilarious tbh (if you didn’t buy one, I mean).
It’s so shit. There is a kickstarter of an ebike like that and it’s worse than you van ever imagine. It’s LOUD as fuck and worse in every way than a normal bike.
That’s because it’s not a bike. It’s a sales pitch to silicon valley. Like most tech startups, they want some rich VC dipshit or big tech company to throw millions of dollars at them.
Is it high-bitched electric buzz? If so, then it’s probably BLDC controller. Normal people use PMSM - more efficient and quieter.
Yeah but looks cool! /s
I mean it does look cool.
Next time I have a bunch of extra cash to throw at a decorative art piece I’ll consider it
Is this an AI bicycle or a Dyson bicycle?
I suppose either way it sucks.
Dyson also makes hand dryers.
They blow.
And very very expensive.
The designer said the bike really “spoke” to them.
I prefer bespoke bikes.
Eventually you’ll have to go custom for that
