Hasta La Gadget!

One of the attractions of the fixed-gear bike is that they are cheap. Find an old beat-up road bike, buy a new hub and throw away all extraneous hardware. You now have a fixie.

Of course, as they got more popular, this didn’t last, and you can now pick up custom-made fixies for prices that seem closer to the track-bikes which inspired them. Specialized is attempting to redress this with the Rolls 1 and 2, bikes made under the company’s new Globe brand.

Most striking is the color-scheme: all white and chrome. Look beyond the pretty appearance and you’ll see some nice, normally high-end touches, from the integrated handlebar and stem to the built-in chain tensioners on the back dropouts/fork ends.

The Roll 2 will cost $800 and the slightly lower-end Roll 1 will go for $600, which isn’t bad. Both will go official as part of the full Globe brand rollout on June 28th, when you’ll also see the more pedestrian city bikes in the range.

Product page [Globe via Urban Velo]

Recently, I have been considering the ironies of combining a fixed-gear bike with a Dutch city bike, two machines from opposite ends of the cycling spectrum. It looks, though, like the king of the ready-made fixie, Bianchi, has beaten me to it. Unless I bust one out before the end of the year, that is.

You’re looking at the Pista Via Brera, a fixie that will be added to the Pista lineup in 2010. It’s a regular steel-framed Pista, with track-ends, toe clips and skinny, skinny wheels, but instead of the drop handlebars designed for racing, you’ll get a much more comfortable straight bar, complete with winter-warmer cork grips. The Via Brera will come with a SRAM Torpedo rear hub, which can be converted from fixed to freewheel at the turn of a screw. Presumably you’d want to add a brake if you choose the freewheel option.

It’s gorgeous, and clearly influenced by Dutch bike design. All it needs is a Brooks saddle and some fenders. The price is to be decided, but we’d expect it to be somewhere around the $750 asked for a regular Pista.  Available in the fall. I want one.

Product page [Bianchi USA via Prolly]

Schwinn’s Tailwind electric bike — which has been available for just a few months — has been sitting in our apartment since post CES, waiting for the New York weather to shape up enough for us to give it a fair spin. Well, it’s been beautiful recently, so the pedal-assist bike has been taken for several spins on our backyard BMX trail to see what kind of dust we could raise together. The bike is a retro, hulking, 58 pound package, with a Toshiba SCiB Quick Charge Plug n’ Drive (SCiB) battery saddled onto the back for about 30 miles of assistance. It’s an expensive (about $3,200) piece of eco-friendly transportation, to be sure. So the questions are thus: what do we think about Schwinn’s latest foray into commuter cycles? Just who is this bike for? Will we ever get used to carrying it up and down our apartment stairs? Join us on the road after the break.

Continue reading Schwinn Tailwind electric bike review

Filed under: Transportation

Schwinn Tailwind electric bike review originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 22 May 2009 17:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Looking from behind, one might assume that the METROBuddy is an electric car with style. Unfortunately, those hopes are dashed when peeking the whole whip from the side, as you suddenly become overwhelmed with hints of USPS mail van, garbage truck and a rather large protractor. Design gripes aside, our good pals over at AutoblogGreen were able to sneak a peek at the bantam automobile, which supposedly packs a range of around 50 to 75 miles on a full charge. There’s been no mention yet of a price or global release (don’t get your hopes up on the latter), but feel free to have a better look around in the vid just past the break.

[Via AutoblogGreen]

Continue reading METROBuddy electric car debuts, kind of resembles a mail van

Filed under: Transportation

METROBuddy electric car debuts, kind of resembles a mail van originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 May 2009 20:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I used to laugh at “off-road” pushchairs and strollers, putting these disk-brake-equipped baby-carriers somewhere alongside the SUV on the map of urban overkill. Then a friend told me he uses his high-tech stroller to go jogging with the kids. I didn’t think he should be jogging (nobody should be jogging), but I relented on the disk-brake issue.

Here, though, is a far more civilized device, a trike with seats up front for the rugrats. If I ever enter the horrors of parenthood, I might opt for one — if only so I can poke the kids out in front to check out the more dangerous blind junctions. The aluminum Taga comes equipped with a pair of disk brakes (of course) on the front wheels and a roller brake on the back, plus a parking brake, and three speed Shimano Nexus gears.

But what about when the kids grow up? Well, the Taga will also convert into a standalone (roll-alone?) bike, as well as transforming into a more normal, bike-less stroller. These are rather pointless, we guess, and it might be better to just add a kiddie-carrying trailer to the back of a regular bike, but the folding does come in handy in other ways — it folds up so you can carry it in the car. Or more likely, the SUV. £1,700 ($2,600), Europe only (like you’d take this on US roads anyway).

Product page [Taga via Geekologie and Treehugger]