The penny-farthing solved this problem by having a very large wheel.
It was not direct drive.
I bet it also feels alien to turn a steering wheel with your feet on bike pedals.
I’ve ended up with some electronic road SRAM which is seriously quick in comparison (except for the slow rider), but do miss the smooth internal hub and the stationary gear changes.
There's a lot of friction in hub gears (at least the one I rode a decade ago), and fixing them is generally impractical.
This idea is absurdly underbaked…other commenters mentioned that it’s going to flip, and it is. Not to mention that no bike shop in the world will know how to work on these things.
There’s lots of reasons that this design died in the 1930’s after a short run.
But…so you know I’m a reasonable guy despite my blithering criticism…I love weird alternative vehicles and I hope that version two of this is a massive success because this world needs more tiny vehicles and fewer 8’ tall Ford F-150’s.
Best of luck!
You should definitely put a repairable Gouach e-bike battery on it haha https://gouach.com
Here's the original: http://youtube.com/watch?v=RuPwRQOUhl4
Here's the reimagined modern version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA7qGYNFuY0
In both cases, the rider effectively sits atop of where the handlebars would be on a traditional trike. You can see in the first video the lads have a hard time keeping all wheels on the ground.
One notable difference between the new model and the old is that they seem to have changed the geometry of the frame so that the driver doesn't lean into the turn (the turning wheel stays upright). They don't demonstrate it in motion very well, but that kind of turn action will tend to throw the rider "out" of the turn, making the trike fall over opposite of the direction of the turn. The old version tends to fall "into" the turn.
I can't think of many advantages to this design, other than the driving unit and cargo are modular. Even then, the rider would not be able to travel without the cargo portion.
Trikes are tricky, they don't go very fast, they don't turn well, and they're wider than most other pedal-powered vehicles, making them hard to use on existing cycle infrastructure.
Basically when you turn your trike turns into a bike.
The fun bit is that on three wheels it steers like a car, but on two wheels it steers like a bicycle.
Do you (or anyone I guess) happen to know why? Low speed differential non-drive axles are not that complex, and would sermingly help a lot.
Perhaps in the US and western Europe, but tricycle tuk-tuks and cycle rickshaws are extremely common in other parts of the world.
I can easily get mine on two wheels if I take a sharp, fast, turn - but after you do it once you learn the limits and it's a very stable bike.
Two very common models are:
Durch cargo trikes are generally assumed safer than their two-wheeled alternatives here.
I had a conventional tricycle too, don't recall ever falling over on it, though it could get tippy. You learned to lean to offset that.
They really don't make sense in motorcycles, A large part of the point of a motorcycle is that you are willing to give up a lot of comfort and safety in exchange for having a very small nimble personal transport. Nothing wrong with this tradeoff, but why would want a vehicle that takes up the same amount of space as a car that gives you the safety and comfort value of a motorcycle?
There’s a tricked out one in my ‘hood (Vienna) that has electric assist. I guess that’d be practical for a daily ride …
> places the rider directly above the front wheel. They pedal this wheel directly; there's no chain, reducing maintenance needs. A three-speed gearbox in the hub makes starting easier.
> An additional benefit to the two-piece frame is that the bike can be broken down for transport, allowing the user "to load it into a trunk for easy transport from point A to point B."
> Lastly, the company says the shorter wheelbase of their arrangement provides a tighter turning radius, making the bike easier to maneuver in urban environments.
I've pedaled around on a couple variations of this design. Like everyone who had never ridden one but saw it on the internet, I also confidently imagined it would violently hurl me to the ground at the slightest provocation. I was wrong, which strangely seems to be a pattern for confident opinions I've formed based on things I've only seen on the internet. Having not been for a ride on this particular iteration, I will not post confident opinions about it on the internet.
The best (granted, of two...) version I've tried was semi-recumbent, with a standard geartrain and flevobike-style steering. The steering was a little weird at first, but I quickly figured out how to fully steer it hands free. Fully unloaded it was possible to tip it with hard front braking while turning, if you pitched your body weight into the effort. Loaded, it was absolutely nailed to the ground. You're just a mule winching a load down the road at that point. Sometimes it's fun to be a mule, piloting a weird bike-cart.
It turns out everyone flamewarring about stability on the internet forgot to get mad about drive wheel traction limits when pulling a load uphill. Which for me was a loading consideration rather than a problem. The underseat steering was brilliant for reasons I'd never thought about. But don't take my word for it, ride one and decide for yourself.
https://web.archive.org/web/20130309080557/http://hpm.catore...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAaVXKBamd0
You can even hook up a trailer to it for even more cargo.
This thing is not for Le Tour and you don't go fast on it and you don't go up giant hills on it. That makes a lot of the concerns here go out the window.
These types of bikes shaped objects often have all kinds of issues with trying to use bike parts designed for standard bikes on something that is very different. Issues with needing enormous chains, huge cable runs, etc.. when designers try things like this they are worrying about issues like that more than whether you can climb a mountain on it or stuff it into a corner at high speed without going out of control.
The thing with these is the cost to design & manufacture components that need to be different than normal bikes can be astronomical, so anything they can do to design the frame to use normal components in a normal/non-compromised way pays off in a huge way.
The ideas behind this aren't that different than the Cruzbike being front wheel drive to get rid of a lot of the component/drivetrain issues that recumbent bikes are famous for.
analog31•5h ago
DocTomoe•5h ago
Obligatory Top Gear link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQh56geU0X8
CalRobert•5h ago
We now ride a two wheeled urban arrow. Three wheelers seem incredibly unstable except perhaps for ones with independently pivoting wheels like the babboe carve
tokai•5h ago
econ•4h ago
Steltek•3h ago
tokai•2h ago
lostlogin•1h ago
I really can’t tell, are you referring to an F-350 or a cargo bike?
olau•35m ago
Perhaps I should add to this that they're actually super stable at slow speeds, compared to two-wheelers, especially when loaded. My wife prefers a cargo bike to her usual non-cargo bike, I think for this very reason.