The world's first super light electric folding bike | Hacker News Reader

The world's first super light electric folding bike

yikebike.com

9 pointsUncle_Sam7 comments

Looks like an awkward riding position.

E.g. when you approach a pothole or curb on a regular bicycle or motorcycle you can easily stand on the pegs/pedals. But it looks like if you tried that with this thing you'd have to thrust your pelvis forward, lean back, and put your weight on the handle bars behind you.

Twice the weight of a Brompton bicycle, not enough battery range for an ordinary cycle commute across London, terrible handling, no luggage capacity, ludicrous price.

Also, under EU law this contraption is a light motorcycle, which means it needs to be type certified to be used on the roads, which this machine will never achieve. In their own FAQ, the designers admit that the machine is not road legal in any of their target markets - their solution is to ask prospective customers to lobby for a change in the law. Even if they completely redesign the machine to be road legal, you'll still need a driving license, road tax and a helmet to ride it; you might as well buy a motor scooter, which will be cheaper, faster, more comfortable and safer.

Other than that, it's a great idea.

Honestly, this sort of thing makes me genuinely angry. It's a blatant example of the cart leading the horse, a designer starting from a blank page and ending up with a solution that is novel, exciting and far worse than all the existing solutions. It's exactly the kind of humbug that will result in more design awards than units sold. The bicycle is for the most part a solved problem. The non-folding bicycle was perfected over a hundred years ago and the folding bicycle has scarcely improved since the Brompton was launched in 1989.

The market is polarised into bicycles and motorbikes for a reason. If you add motive power and fuel to a bicycle, you end up with a machine too heavy to comfortably carry. Once you're over that threshold, it makes no difference at all whether you go 1kg over or 100kg over. You might as well use the extra weight and build a proper motor vehicle. Trying to bridge the imaginary gap between a bicycle and a motorbike makes perfect engineering sense but no practical sense. It's what happens when you forget that you are solving a human problem, not a technological one.

$4,500 to have some one yell "Too lazy to walk, ya fuckin homo?" - http://paulgraham.com/segway.html

Much like the segway this product just make you look dorky and lazy.

Dupe (222 days apart): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=810787

Accomplished by appending "/site/" to this submission.

I'm ok with duplicates, especially when there's something else going on today that makes another look interesting. It can be helpful when submitting an old link to add a comment such as:

Interesting in light of recent discussions around the physics of gyroscopes and the brain's adaptation to balancing on a unicycle.

The video is still as unbearable as the last time I watched it.

I rather ride an electric skateboard than this.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com