

The world's first super light electric folding bike - Uncle_Sam
http://www.yikebike.com/site/

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edj
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.

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jdietrich
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.

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csmeder
$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.

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

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

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raganwald
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._

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Kilimanjaro
I rather ride an electric skateboard than this.

