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Comment by philwise | Hacker News Reader

This appears to be a bike designed by someone who has never ridden a bike, and who never got a handful of bits of wood and mocked the thing up. For example:

1) The handle bars have two hand positions, yet no brakes. Dual brakes are possible, but expensive, fiddly and don't work with hydro disk brakes.

2) No mud guards.

3) Why solid spoke carbon fiber wheels when stressed steel spokes work so well?

4) Riding a bike with a 8 inch wide cross bar: a 10 minute mockup of this by sellotaping a lunchbox to to crossbar of a normal bike would reveal why this doesn't work

5) The saddlebag briefcase will interfere with your heel while pedaling: panniers need to much further back.

6) No lights

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As for (3), the carbon fiber wheels are there, according to the video, to make it easier to build them yourself. The designer wants people to be able to rebuild wheels to fit current trends and/or changing riding conditions. According to the designer, standard wheels are too difficult to maintain and require specialized knowledge.

As an avid cyclist, though, I rarely do much to change out or even maintain my steel-spoked wheels. Once they are well-trued, I usually leave them alone for the season. I certainly never worry about my wheels not looking cool enough.

I couldn't agree more. This thing is a disaster.

A reasonable cyclocross bike with fenders, lights, a rack, some panniers or a trunk box/bag would be cheaper, more functional, 1/8 the weight and made of inexpensive and easily-sourced components. I don't get it.

My Trek 1200 is my main vehicle. It's a 4 year old entry-level road bike with a few hundred dollars of accessories added to it. I ride it 5,000 miles per year and never have any problems finding a place to put my jacket. It has twenty seven speeds, which might be far too many, but you could easily retrofit it with a Nexus 3 speed, Alfine 7/8 speed or some other high end gearbox like the NuVinci or Rohloff.

Many steel and aluminum bikes these days are also made (at least partly) from recycled materials. I really don't see much of a point.

I had the same thoughts, especially point 4 - the rest you can tweak to get it right, but you just can't ride a bike with a "crossbar" that wide, it's impossible - your knees already knock against the bar on a standard bike.

Also, that thing would be impossible to mount if you're wearing a skirt...

My guess regarding the wheels is that the designer was looking at old school BMX mag wheels as a model rather than the current crop of Aerospokes.

Your other criticisms are valid, too, though if you look at what most manufacturers offer as "commuter bikes," they are missing the same key features.

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