I Want To Ride My Bicycle: A Workable Hub-less Bike Redesign

The more I think of it, the more I find it strange that there hasn’t been any noticeable re-designs to bikes in the past sixty or seventy years. Initially, bikes looked ridiculous.

They were unproportioned with one humongous wheel in the front and an itty bitty one in the back which made them not only impractical, but also seemingly counter-intuitive. It’s like the designers didn’t even try making a bike with two wheels of the same size. The tandem bike was cool, except you wouldn’t want to be caught dead riding one of them with anybody who wasn’t of the opposite gender – especially if you’re already wearing bike shorts.

Anyway, Luke Douglas, a student of Loughborough Design School in England, has taken on the task of bringing to this world a new bike design, one with a hub-less wheel.

This is a common feature in a lot of CG concept designs for bikes and this is maybe one of the first times that we’ve seen this hub-less wheel concept come to fruitation. Whether this design is more practical than the traditional bike remains to be seen, but in the mean time, I think we can all agree that aesthetically, it looks incredible. I’d be curious to know what motivated the smaller wheel in the front or why he decided against putting in another hub-less wheel. I get the sense that the guy in the video isn’t entirely comfortable, like it isn’t stable or he doesn’t have control, like how it feels to ride a foldable bike. The difference is subtle, but it’s still there.

If you like bikes check out these 20 electric bike and scooter designs and this NEOS futuristic bike.

Via: Wired