Retractable sail could give bikes a boost of wind power
newatlas.com
Although there's nothing like cycling with a good tailwind, your bike and your body are only capable of catching a limited amount of that wind. The CycleWing was designed to help, acting as – you guessed it – a sail for your bike.
  • Vic@howcyborgs.chat
    22·
    1 year ago

    @walnutwalrus

    Perfect if you ride your bike along a 100% straight salt flat speed-record-attempt course with a predictable steady breeze from the right direction. Dreadful for real people riding real bikes on real roads in real weather, with real distractions.

    The power-up I wish to see for bicycles is the one that makes them affordable enough to cost less than a used car, again. Wish I was kidding.

    • Bloody Harry@feddit.deEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      I bought my last bike used for 10 €. That’s less than a pizza.

      Sure, I needed to tighten the brakes, buy new batteries for the light, and the gearshifting only works on 7 of 21 gears. But come on, what do you expect from a pizza?

    • insomniac@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      21·
      1 year ago

      Where are bikes more expensive than a used car? I literally just bought a pretty sweet used touring bike for 200 bucks. I guess you could find a cheaper used car but it isn’t going to run.

      Decent commuter bikes from the major brands have gotten in to the 600-700 dollar range which sucks but is still pretty far away from used car prices.

      You can still get bikes for less than half that from the direct to consumer companies.

      So you either really need a carbon fiber bike with all the latest and greatest technology or you have incredibly low standards in used cars.

      • HubertManne@kbin.social
        2·
        1 year ago

        I took it he meant new bike vs used car. Of course new bike will be cheaper than used care and used bike will be cheaper than used car.

        • _haha_oh_wow_@kbin.social
          1·
          1 year ago

          IDK, there are bikes out there that definitely cost more than a new entry level car, definitely outliers but they exist.

          • HubertManne@kbin.social
            1·
            1 year ago

            well similarly there are cars are out there that cost more than yachts. They are outliers to. Im not OP Im just saying I took it to mean he would like to be able to get a nice new bike and not have it cost as much as a used car. I mean yeah I can get a used bike or a walmart bike or worse yet a used walmart bike. Honestly im not sure if bikes nowadays is any worse expense wise than anything else in the last few years

    • HubertManne@kbin.social
      1·
      1 year ago

      I had high hopes for the carboard bike but the guy seemed to be to restrictive in his ideals to get it to production. I was hoping for a bike so cheap I could lock it up with a luggage lock and light wire. something like what an av projector might have in a classroom.

  • Jeena@jemmy.jeena.netEnglish
    201·
    1 year ago

    This is practically how my older cousin died, but he was on a motorcycle and comming out from behind a truck and then the wind hit him from the side, he lost control, went off the motorway crashed and died.

    This is a terrible idea and totally unsafe.

  • AA5B@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    1 year ago

    So they expect to get the weight down to 15 lbs, and think it would interest long distance cyclers? I can’t imagine that going well - “hey, I understand you plan to ride 50 miles today. Do you want to carry an extra 15 lbs?”

    • snooggums@kbin.social
      4·
      1 year ago

      “It will totally help as long as all of your roads are the optimal direction to catch the wind!”

    • bob_lemon@feddit.deEnglish
      12·
      1 year ago

      You know what else is 15lb. and helps you ride long distances on a bike? An E-Bike Motor.

  • Grass@geddit.socialEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    Lol I’ll stick with the motor and battery. For an extra pound and a half of weight over this I can get home from work uphill, even if I happen to get injured enough to not be able to pedal.

  • xapr@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    21·
    1 year ago

    Cool idea, but only a small minority of people will adopt something like this given that electric bikes seem to be all the rage right now. I can maybe imagine touring cyclists getting into this, but that’s it. This would make cycling even more complicated*(!) for most people.

    *Probably three quarters of the people I see riding bikes don’t even know how to set the proper height for their saddles. They also don’t know which roads are appropriate to ride their bikes on, or to follow the direction of traffic, or to not ride on sidewalks. Oh, and no lights at night either. It’s no wonder that the US has a high rate of cycling fatalities.