The Official Hubless Wheel hater thread.

I can’t tell if this is hubless or not (from Catching up | Bicycle Design):

http://www.cyclelicio.us/2012/april-1-2012/




Yanko My Chain bike design


•Modular concept gives this bike infinite expandability from a single rider bike. After removing the front wheel, the downtube of each module folds down to connect to another bike in front at the rear hub to create an instant tandem, as shown in this illustration. Multiple bikes can be added. I’ve connected up to eight modules with no loss of stiffness or control!

•Space-age unobtanium composite material in the frame and wheels results in a built up weight of only 15 lbs, yet the bike offers superior lateral stiffness with amazing vertical compliance.

•Infinitely adjustable seat and handlebar placement make this bike a perfect fit for adults between 4’8″ to 7’4″.

•“Step Through” Frame ™ allows men and women in skirts and those with joint problems to easily mount and dismount this bike.

•Of course it has fenders. You don’t want mud in your stoker’s face, do you?

•Shaft drive internal to the “chain stay” keeps out chain grease and the risk of torn pants and skirts. Moving parts are all sealed for long term lubrication and durability.

•High efficiency thin film photovoltaics embedded into the tire sidewalls provide power for the 3000 watt front hub motor, headlight, tail light, brake light, turn signals, emergency flashers, 400 watt surround sound audio. Three USB plugins at each seat provide power for mobile devices such as the iPad, phones, camera. These photo cells made from the superior Made-In-USA workmanship are so sensitive they provide usable power from starshine and urban street lighting.

•Beam design licensed from SoftRide guarantee absorbs the biggest pot holes and curbs to guarantee a plush ride.

•Patented honeycomb airless tires never go flat, yet provide shock absorption superior to many pneumatic tires.

•A specially licensed modified upgrade of Fallbrook Technology’s NuVinci N360 Continuously Variable Planetary IGH provides 621% gear range, beating out the gear range of triple derailleur gearing on mountain bikes.

•Bike can operate in no-assist mode (no electric power to the hub motor), partial assist (the harder you pedal, the more assist you get), and full assist (no pedaling needed; just twist the throttle and let ‘er rip).

•To encourage fitness, gold coins, woodland creatures, fairies and baby unicorns spontaneously erupt in the wake of the bike when you exceed 18 MPH / 30 km/h unassisted.

•Inspection Detection feature: Through GPS, Internet crowd sourcing technology, and special BikeBrain AI software developed at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign by Doctor Sivasubramanian Chandrasegarampillai, the bike can determine local law regarding limits to ebike power and speed. When law enforcement authorities are detected nearby, the bike automatically downgrades motor power output and governs bike speed accordingly. When in unlimited, ungoverned mode, the hub motor is capable of pushing a single bike and rider weighing up to 300 lbs to 45 MPH.

•Finally, this bike folds for easy use on public transportation and storage in your small flat. Multiple hinge points allow you to fold this bike into 4 x 10^27 different configurations, like a Transformers robot or a paper origami construct. Some folding configurations discovered by I and my team include a metallic ficus tree, disco ball (the built in lights make this come alive!), pet cage, book shelf, and a baby crib. Create an original sculpture by folding your Yanko My Chain bike into a new, unique shape, hang it on your wall as art and post it to our Facebook page!

Optional accessories plug into the module rear hub interconnect, and all can plug compatibly into the rear hub and into each other, so you can chain as many of these options together as tandem trailers. These accessories include:

•Wheeled Cargo Trailer with e-hub Boost motor. Compact size means you can easily share the road and the bike path with other users, yet clever design results in immense capacity while still giving plenty of room even at low clearance underpasses typical of creekside bike trails. I’ve hauled a full set of roof trusses from the Home Depot with the cargo trailer accessory!

•Kid Trailer with room for four children. For those over 4’8″ tall, use the standard Yanko My Chain bike module in tandem mode.

•The Probiotic Compost Bin enhances your green image while encouraging bacterial decomposition through improved air flow.

•Rolling Beehive — a beehive in a box with wheels, for the urban apiculturalist. Includes smoke machine, beekeeper suit and a starter queen bee.

Other options connect to the universal accessory mount at the top of the headtube. This interconnect includes power from the photo cells for accessories that require electricity.

•Yanko My Chain Front Rack, with power steering assist to help you steer in spite of heavy loads.

•Yank My Chain Portable Espresso, to steam and pull a perfect shot of espresso.

•Pair the Espresso machine with the Yanko My Chain Coffee Grinder.

•Yanko My Chain Landing Lights — ultra bright 50,000 lumen headlight for any imaginable biking condition you can think of.

•Yanko My Chain Cooling Fan — for extra hot days, air drawn across cooling fins is blasted directly into your face.

can’t tell if this is hubless or not

Close enough for gubament work… when in doubt, call it. Looks hubless, must be hubless! :wink:

AAAAARrrrghhhhhhhhhh !!!

I can’t believe “we” are nurturing this cruel hoax by re-publishing this article … don’t the folks in the C77 front office read the forums?

Yale MechEng students build bike with hubless wheel

Does this count?

Mancurians are so weird.

I kind of like this hubless (28 seconds in). Looks like fun. If someone knows how to embed the video, please do so.

http://www.rehkemper.com/index.php/backroom

Haters!! How are we going to move forward as a species if we keep riding around on spokes and rims? I think the hubless wheel needs something like Clark Griswalds super slick spray bond - as eloquently sampled on the metal snow dish.

But, don’t forget that Franco Sbarro made the hubless wheel cool in the 70’s!

She looks HAPPY!

and here I’m not sure if she’s been run over by it and is STILL happy or is riding with her face IN the wheel or is just posing, but any way you slice it, she’s happy.

AND, his pizza rocks in malls and airports all around the world. :slight_smile:

That counter-shaft sprocket must be huge… . . .

…bringing back this thread too…cause this is so awesome!..

Levitation is an art installation for a prototype bicycle. The concept of the Levitation project is that cycling on the community scale can produce clean, healthy, sustainable energy. This is achieved by an on-board generator and high capacity batteries that store the energy you create during the act of cycling. When you get to where you are going, Levitation has a “drain plug” system that allows you to plug your energy back into the grid. Individually, Levitation is great for powering your mobile devices with free energy on the go. On the community scale, the benefits of Levitation are exponential, from less carbon emissions during commutes, to healthy living, to producing free zero-carbon energy. The HIMACS material is an essential component to the mix, as bicycles of the future become rapid prototyped. The idea of Levitation suggests that anyone can make their own custom ride from color inherent, renewable materials. Why drive when you can Levitate. Live the earth Touchless.

dezien - Just another WordPress site

What the hell is going on here? Obviously this person has never been on a race geometry bike for a few hours. No one would want to sit (?) in that position for 2 minutes. But I guess it’s alright, its got USB 3.0. Who needs a seat anyway?

I’ll decide to stop there…Too many things to comment on

Ermm… Hi-Macs is a thermoformable sheet material, nothing to do with rapid prototyping. But bonus points for trying to maximise the use of buzz words.

To everyone who is considering more innovative, novel, never-been-thought-about-much-less-entered-in-a-design-competition, IDEAS - read this first.

"You can’t generate a meaningful amount of electricity with a bicycle, and it won’t save any money, either, because bike power generates such a tiny amount of electricity versus the cost of the setup. And it might not even be green energy, once you consider the energy that’s used to produce your fuel (food).

If you cycle with a power meter, you know that a fairly strenuous ride yields an average of about 140 watts for an hour. Mount your bike to a generator, slice off 30 percent for mechanical and electrical losses, and you’ve put out a measly 100-watt average during your sweaty hour. It amounts to around a penny’s worth of electricity, one three-hundredth of a typical home’s daily use—not enough juice to run the PlayStation for 15 minutes.

If you pedal for an hour a day, 30 days a month, that’s (30 x 100=) 3000 watt-hours, or 3 kWh. That’s less than 1% of what a typical family uses in a month (920 kWH). You generated 0.3% of your energy, and continue to get 99.7% from the grid. Good job.

But how much money did you save? Well, since the average cost of U.S. electricity is 12¢/kWh, that one month of pedaling saved you $0.36. Congratulations. If the system cost $400, it would take only 93 years to pay for itself."

:unamused:

You might be better off just saying “magic”, instead.

If only Physics was a mandatory part of ID curriculum. :wink:

Nothing a perpetual motion machine can’t fix!

I believe this was a competition entry for products using Hi-Macs…sounds like they won’t get very far by not using it in the way it was intended.

Who am I kidding, it will probably win.

And a materials course and they also need to start at Victor Papanek’s “Design for the Real World.” I ride a bike that was assembled in December of 1980. It’s an inch or so too tall for me to get on it comfortably. And the tires are too fat for efficient rolling friction. And it’s scratched. It’s heavy. And it ain’t pretty.

But compared to what these hubless beauties would do for a ride… it’s perfect.

Level Up

What the &^@$ is that?

You win the award. What award, I’m not sure. Its hubless.

Guessing it uses those props to turn the wheels…? Anyone?

Incredible.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2017062404/b-go-beyond

Just an RC quadrocopter/car hybrid. I know this is the hubless hater thread but I think it’s a cool way of accomplishing both :wink:

kudos to making a working model (the video on the kickstarter), but I couldn’t shake the suspicion that strings are involved