Folding Bike News
London's folding bike race
Building on the success of last year's inaugural Smithfield Nocturne folding bike race, it will held again on June 7, 2008. In true London commuter spirit, the competitors, dressed in business attire, will run to their bikes, carry them for a distance, unfold them and race for 5 laps. More info and entry details can be found here.
Folds Up! Folding bike ride and festival - New York
Times Up!, a New York City based environmental non-profit, will hold its annual folding bike ride and festival on May 10, 2008. A leisurely 10 mile ride through Manhattan and Brooklyn will be followed by a festival where you can learn about folding bicycles and see and try out different models. Click here for details.
Metal matters
We get emails frequently from people who are in the process of buying a folding bike asking a common question. "Should I buy a steel bike or an aluminum bike?" We asked our good friend and bike frame expert Peter Whitford to answer. His response can be found here.
Slovenian Folder
I came across this new folding bike from a Slovenian company called Bigfish. The front end is reminiscent of a Birdy but the back end folds in a different way. You can check out a video of the bike here. I'm waiting to hear back from Bigfish regarding pricing and distribution, I'll update as more information comes available.
Strida musings
A few readers have alerted me to the rather disparaging article about the Strida on the Wired Magazine blog with its fairly humorous video. As I have written before, I've never been a big fan of the Strida. I rode one of the early models and have briefly ridden the new Strida 5.0. I think its a reasonable bike for multi-modal transportation where you need a compact, lightweight folder for a shortish ride to and from the bus or train. Other than that, in my opinion, the bike is too limited in terms of gearing and ride quality to be used in a more general fashion. Its also a bit on the pricey side at $800. As for styling, its really not my cup of tea and I have always taken exception to it being called revolutionary or as the marketing pitch puts it "the first completely new bicycle geometry in 95 years". Well, here is a bit of a history lesson. In 1919, Charles Haskell Clark filed a patent (granted in 1921) for a portable bicycle that was easy to carry on to trains or street cars. Below left is a photo of Mr. Clark from the December 1919 issue of Scientific American with his "city bicycle" and below right is his patent drawing. There are very few advances that are truly revolutionary in the bicycle world, most are evolutionary.
Taipei International Cycle Show Roundup
While the Taipai International Cycle Show is for all types of bicycles, here are some highlights from this year's show in regard to folding bikes.
The International Bicycle Design Competition (IBDC) winners were announced at the show and one of this year's winners was a folding bike, albeit an electric folding bike. The winner of the Giant Bicycles sponsored prize was Larry Chen for his "Sunny Day" folding electric bike pictured below. The solar panel sits on the front of the bike and is streamlined to lower wind resistance. When the bicycle is parked, the solar panel tilts upwards toward the sky to capture more solar energy. While most bicycles designs entered in the competition were basically paper CAD rendered concept bikes, the Sunny Day was an exception in that a full scale prototype was built.
Third prize in the IBDC went to Frag Woodall from Australia for his Everglide folding bike (below). The Everglide is an innovative design that integrates a bicycle with a backpack.
An Excellence prize was awarded to Ramon Luis Rodriguez Ruiz from Puerto Rico for his Omega folding bike design (below).
Winner of the show's Best Innovation Award went to the GoCycle (below) designed by Richard Thorpe of Karbon Kinetics Ltd. who is working with Ideal Bicycle Corporation of Taiwan to manufacture the bike. The magnesium frame is made using a process known as “thixomolding", a type of injection molding for metal. The front hub can be fitted with a high-powered electric motor that is is designed to deliver fast and instant power that can quickly reach legal speed limits. The GoCycle will launch in Europe first and then target the U.S. market about a year later. Pricing is expected to be about $1000 for the non-electric version and $1500 for the electric version.
Runner-up to the GoCycle, Giant Bicycles showed its new "Clip" folding bike, a design inspired by the paperclip.
Pacific Cycles launched three new folding bikes based on the patented Integrated Folding (IF) system, a technology formerly known as Swivel-Head invented by Mark Sanders. The 3 models, shown in order below, are the IF Mode, a city bike, the IF Cross, a touring/city bike, and and the IF REACH, a compact foldable.
Hasa Bike was showing its previously introduced lightweight (19lbs) carbon fiber Minimax folding bike (below) along with a new Minimax model made of tubular titanium (sorry, no photo).
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In summary, folding bikes made a strong showing at this year's Taipei International Cycle Show and points to an exciting year ahead!
New folder from Spain
Josep Mora, a Spanish industrial designer created this 11kg stainless steel folding bike called the Mora Bike. It's being manufactured in Barcelona by Mora Wheeldesign. Pricing is €700 for a bike equipped with a 3-speed Sturmey-Archer hub and €850 for a 8-speed Shimano Nexus hub. Videos of the bike can be found here.
Dahon sold 348,000 bikes in 2007
Dahon announced record sales in 2007, representing a 20 percent increase in unit volumes and a 36 percent increase in revenues year on year.
Sales growth was strong in all global markets and there was also a significant move to higher priced, higher quality offerings, said a statement from Dahon.
Dahon sold 348,000 folding bicycles in 2007 compared with 290,000 in 2006. The privately held company did not release revenue figures.
The Cannondale ON concept folding bike is a go!
As an update to the posting on this site about the Cannondale ON concept folding bike introduced at Eurobike last year, according to the Cannondale community site, the company has committed to bring the bike to market in the near future. The ON project had its genesis as a student (Philippe Holthuizen and Rodrigo Clavel) designed bike called the Jackknife in 2006.
