Hasta La Gadget!

The Monowalker is a rather nifty idea, and certainly looks to be very well built, but it also seems to be a solution to a problem that might not exist. It is a three-way luggage lugger which converts between one-wheeled hand-trailer, two-wheeled bike trailer and a no-wheeled backpack.

The bit I don’t get is the hand-trailer, which is kind of like a big, reverse wheelbarrow that you pull along behind you. Designed for hikers, the wooden-framed trolley has a fat, inflatable tire, a disk brake and a measure of suspension. The thing is, we thought hiking was all about traveling light, not hauling a load along behind you.

If you think about this as a bike trailer which can be detached for short-hauls than it makes a lot more sense: dragging the load to a camping ground with difficult access, for example. Switching between setups takes about five minutes after practice, and the steam-bent ash and aluminum construction keeps things very light: the 6kg (13.2-pound) trailer (including both wheels) will carry 45 kg or 100-pounds of gear.

The design is live on the product site, and there is plenty of video of the Monowalker in action, but there is no price as yet. If you’re in the market for a bike trailer, this could be worth a look. If you’re thinking it might make a good hiking accessory, you should think about packing a little lighter.

Monowalker [Monowalker via Bicycle Design]

See Also:

• Folding Trailer for Folding Bikes: Compact Cargo Carrier
• Inflatable Bike-Bag for Air-Filled Air-Travel
• Home-Made Cargo Bike Is Cheap, Easy Rider

The City Concept bike manages to steer (ahem) away from the usual problems of concept bikes (no hubs, and odd-shaped, weak-looking frames), and towards a solid-looking design. But despite preferring the sensible over the fancy, it still misses a lot of commuter-bike essentials.

The City Concept is a project by Christian Vollmer, of the University of Applied Sciences in Darmstadt, Germany. Its main purpose is to act as city transport for non-cyclists, ie. those who just want their bike to get them around. It has a pedal-assisting electric motor in the bottom bracket, activated by pedaling like the Sanyo Eneloop bike.

Apparently this, and the clean-lined, integrated components are designed to make the bike suitable form the means streets and to deter vandals. But we know what makes the perfect commuter bike: A comfy beater, a bike that works, but looks terrible. The City Concept, on the other hand, looks expensive, has many non-standard (and therefore expensive to replace) parts and lacks the basic comforts like fenders or a carrying rack (it does have a belt drive instead of a chain, though, for grease-free pants).

It is nice to see people having a crack at making the perfect commuter bike, but it already exists: The internal hub-geared, coaster-braked city bike found all over Europe is cheap, indestructible and often ugly. If you want something faster, kit out an old road bike with some internal gears, riser handlebars and fatter tires, along with a basket and fenders, and you have the ultimate commuter. Better still, you can probably find most of the parts in your basement.

City Cycle concept bike [Bicycle Design]

Yesterday, a lot of commenters on the post about American “Dutch” city bikes thought that a $650 bicycle couldn’t be called cheap. This post is for you. Behold, the Men’s Mongoose Cachet Fixed-Speed Bike, a $150 “fixie” from Walmart. All you hipsters can cry into your PBR right now.

Let’s begin with the name. First, it is from Mongoose. Back in the BMX years of the 1980s, Mongoose was a quality brand. Now a quick Google shows that Mongoose equals cheap, department store tat. Better is the model name: Cachet. The irony is, of course, that naming anything Cachet immediately robs it of that same quality.

But the best part of the name is left to the end: fixed-speed. What could this mean? Does it run at just one speed? If so, what is that speed? Fast? More likely it is left-in-the-basement-zero-mph. We assume that it should read “fixed-gear”, but a look at the specs doesn’t help: the list says “single-speed”. This bike is more likely a freewheel, although it does have toe-clips and straps.

The specs themselves are neither shaming nor exciting. The frame is aluminum, which should make this bike lighter than many home-grown steel fixed-gears (although the shipping weight is a back-breaking 40-pounds. That must be a heavy cardboard box). It has two “calipur” brakes, and “high-profile colored rims” which “add urban style.”

We guess this bike could be okay. After all, the fixed-gear bike is so simple and so free of components that it should be cheap and good. Plus, as long as you put it together properly, there is almost nothing to go wrong. On the other hand, every cheap bike I have bought has fallen apart quickly. One thing is for sure: the days of the fixed-gear as hipster accessory are over. Thank God.

700C Men’s Mongoose Cachet Fixed-Speed Bike [Walmart via the Twitter]

See Also:

• Public Bikes: Fixed-Gear Style with Granny-Bike Ride
• The New SUV: Americans Heart Dutch Bikes
• Fixed-Gear Bikes an Urban Fixture
• Create Bikes v2.0: The Cheap Fixed-Gear Grows Up
• Coasties: Fixed-Gear Style, Only With Brakes
• Fixed-gear

There’s a guy in my neighborhood who rides two-wheeled, Segway-style wheelchair. It puts him at almost normal standing height, and takes up a lot less floorspace than a regular electric wheelchair. But while he looks pretty cool cruising the barrio, his chair doesn’t come close to this hot concept vehicle, the Taurus.

The Taurus, designed by Erik Lanuza, is pretty much a Segway with a seat (you even control it by leaning forward and back). This alone puts it way closer to a Tron light-cycle than the stand-on dork-mobile. Lanuza sees it as space-efficient, zero-emission vehicle for cities.

We applaud his ambition, but there are two obvious problems.

There is already a space-efficient, zero-emission vehicle for cities (or anywhere else). It’s a bike.

Second, as soon as Steve Wozniak gets his hands on one of these, it’ll be pressed into service for polo.

Sure, Taurus Polo sounds way cooler than Segway Polo, but the sight of Woz riding around in a skintight orange jumpsuit will scare many, many people away.

Taurus – Safe and zero emission urban transportation concept [At Crux via Oh Gizmo!]

See Also:

• Toyota Announces Segway Killer: The Winglet Personal Transporter
• Video Shadenfreude: Segway Face-Plant
• The Chinese Segway Division Seemed Unstoppable… Until Criminals Started Using Staircases
• Wozniak: My Way Is the Segway

Beick is a Dutch City Bike that is built to your very own specification. Or rather, you design it on the Beick site from modular parts and it is assembled to order. This combination of sub-assemblies keeps things cheap while giving you a custom ride.

All the bikes have aluminum frames, Shimano hub-gears and Vredstein tires. The seats, brakes, handlebars and even forks vary depending on your choices, and color schemes are achieved not by paint but by snap-on plastic components.

I had a play with the Flash design tool. Even though it’s in Dutch, you can follow along pretty easily. The super-simple bike above, lacking fenders, a chain guard and any other accessories (you can specify locks and baskets as well) comes to just €250, or around $340, and that includes a leather Brooks saddle. That’s pretty cheap.

You can go crazy too, with a horrible Union Jack design, for example, or an electric drive train, or pretty much anything you could put on a bike. The brains behind Beick is Angelo Jansen, and he teamed up with the head designer of Batavus bikes for the project, which has been two years in the making.

Cheap, custom bikes with good-quality components. That’s what the internet is all about.

Beick Configurator [Beick via Bicycle Design]