just curious how strong would the fork have to be to handle the forces…
Fork aside, a bike wheel’s structure is based on supporting the load on the hub by hanging from the spokes at the top of the wheel. In order for that machine’s wheels to not fold in half the rim would have to be incredibly heavy and slow.
Now that you mention it… This doesn’t look like it would actually work once a human being is actually on it. All the weight is gonna be on the tires and the part holding (and presumably spinning) the tires. Also: What the hell are the pedals connected to?
There could be an internal chain between the pedals and the rear wheel, but that’s going to be a single speed and suuuuuck to ride.
Idk, hahaha. I mean the torque applied to the axle would be huge so either that shit is Adamantium or it breaks
Never mind how strong the thing itself is, that joint is basically impossible to engineer so that the wheel can’t rotate side to side. That is, rotate on an axis it’s not supposed to. Sure, you can prevent an (essentially) round thing from rotating with a pipe clamp, but now try to do that while allowing freedom lengthwise.
That wheels are round and not pipes help a bit, there’s some lever purchase you get from the radius but in general, nope. You’re still sitting at the short end of the lever.
Diamond frames with spoked wheels are literally the optimal solution to the problem the rest is compromise (e.g. having no top bar for comfort) or overengineering.
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.
Fancy bearings.
You could also cover the spokes or use a spokeless single wall design. I do think a design like this would need to be cleaned a lot.
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 ?
I don’t know really
okay :-)
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?
The complexity of this design cannot be outspoken.
I wonder how many revolutions the wheels will do before they bend into pretzels.
No springs or shocks means however many it takes, it will be the most painful ass-blasting ride until they do.
I mean not necessarily. Road bikes pretty much never have any actual suspension, all the comfort comes from tire and frame flex. This bike has some fairly chunky tires on, and the way the seat post is just suspended off the back I’ll bet that frame flexes a ton.
That being said, you’d still have to fine tune the design, and get the right amount of flex in the right ways. I kinda doubt anyone choosing to make a bike like this would have the competency to do that
Bet the part that drives the backwheel will handle the suspension just fine…
Also the pedals driving the outside of the back wheel puts a pretty heavy limit on the gear ratio
Yeah no part of that looks fun to pedal
Not revolutions; potholes.
Id put my money on the wheel mount failing because the whole wheel turns into a lever trying to break it every time it hits a bump.
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
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’m picturing a car crash where some poor sod is perforated by a super strong magnet that went flying
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.
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 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
Yeah why do we need another bicycle?
Also how does peddling move the wheels…? Missing something.
Peddling never moves the wheels.
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).
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!
This guy does not engineer.
Nah, but that tube is a little lowered, enough to make a difference.
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
I’m picturing this being carbon fiber and the top tube snapping at the bend.
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.
doesn’t that prove their point? they all look overbuilt, as the original commenter said.
Carbon fiber, aerodynamics…
This one is use as suspension
Not that rare in old mountain bikes either, pretty sure my old 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.
That top one is kinda sexy ngl
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.
Needs blue or orange neon lights
*The coolest looking concept bike ever created.
Lemmings: hold my beer while I list every complaint I can think of about this design
My first complaint is that it looks like it was designed by someone with zero knowledge of how to make a bike.
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”.
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.
What happens when you ride through mud?
You ride into the mud. Not so much out of the mud.
😞
What is this bullshit? Bike in post makes more semse than this.
I’d only ride this bike if it formed a wall of coloured light behind me as I rode
