When the weather is nice out, nothing is a better activity than getting your bike out of the garage and going for a beautiful ride. That is, unless you’re constantly interrupted with your pedaling when the bike chain falls out and you have to stop to fix and get your hands all oiled up. Bleh. Yes, I could get it fixed at a shop, but screw that noise. Peeves like those are why I’m particularly drawn to the Bicymple, a design that strips the chain component to make the entire vehicle more flexible.
“By removing the chain, the number of moving parts and overall complexity is significantly reduced. A direct-drive, freewheeling hub joins the crank arm axis with the rear-wheel axis, shortening the wheelbase and minimizing the design,” describes Bicymple designer Josh Bechtel. “More than just a stylish concept bike, the bicymple is comfortable, easy to ride, and brilliantly simple to maintain … The optional rear-steer mode is reminiscent of custom ‘swing bikes’ and allows tighter turns and ‘crab-riding.’”
Basically, it’s two unicycles attached with a bar. Who knew such a concept could turn into an interesting, minimalist bike?
From the looks of the demo video, the Bicymple sure looks like a fun ride, and maybe slightly more difficult than your average bike. We could only wonder about the physics and how much weight you have to put into the front and rear wheels to properly control the bike. Questions aside, the stylish and minimalist design is something that’s always trendy and appreciated in our eyes, and we hope you think it’s cool, too.
Update:
Editor’s Note: Apparently, our dear leader Micah Abrams seems to severely disagree and think this design is absolutely preposterous. Here’s how he thought we should have run the piece. Enjoy his counterpoint.
Compared to most forms of transportation, the bicycle is a marvel of elegant simplicity. It’s inexpensive to build, cheap to maintain, goes just about anywhere and you never have to pay to park it. Throw in the health benefits, and it’s easy to see why the common bike has remained fundamentally unchanged for decades. But a few incredibly bored designers in Bellingham, Washington apparently see all that as a problem, because they’ve claimed to revolutionize the whole kit and caboodle with their “Bicymple.”
Stay with us here. Apparently, the problem with the bicycle lies in the chain. Granted, chains have a lot of joints and are greasy and can occasionally slip off their gears, which results in very black fingers and sometimes a ruined shirt. But, seriously, that’s like one percent of the time. The rest of the time, the bicycle chain is a neat little microcosm of everything that makes a bike great: it’s cheap, easy to maintain, and is arguably the most efficient drive train in the history of mechanical engineering. So, of course, Bicymple designer Josh Bechtel decided to remove it.
The reasoning, according to his website, is that, “By removing the chain, the number of moving parts and overall complexity is significantly reduced. A direct-drive, freewheeling hub joins the crank arm axis with the rear-wheel axis, shortening the wheelbase and minimizing the design.” He’s leaving out something sort of important though — it makes the bike look impossible to ride! Seriously, watch that video again.
With no frame beyond the forks and crossbar, there’s nothing to keep the front and back wheels in alignment. This, apparently, is a good thing. Bechtel again: “The optional rear-steer mode is reminiscent of custom ‘swing bikes’ and allows tighter turns and ‘crab riding.’”
Crab riding is apparently just like normal bike riding, except it’s 75 percent more hazardous to your ACLs. And, to be fair, if I had a nickel for every time I wished I had a custom swing bike on my morning commute through Manhattan, I’d be in free Starbucks for life.
So, there you have it. The Bicymple — a device you never knew you needed, because … well, you don’t.
An avid gadgets and Internet culture enthusiast, Natt Garun spends her days bringing you the funniest, coolest, and strangest news in tech to make the information overload a bit more digestible. She joined Digital Trends as staff writer after spending five months in Hong Kong and formerly working as an assistant travel writer. Her published works can also be found on Business Insider and Gizmodo. Natt hails from S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University with a degree in magazine journalism. E-mail her at ngarun@digitaltrends.com or tweet her @nattgarun.
This bike is more suited for a circus rather than around town commuting.. Why you need gears and chain and means of converting power to get up hills,( unless you live in west Texas where everything is flat). Most of the USA is not flat.Also it has a feature that allows the rear wheel to track in parallel but not necessarily straight behind the front wheel, fine for circus tricks but a disaster in tight city traffic! No Thank you, If you want to really develope something bike riders could use why not invent a continuous flexible steel belt drive v transmission which would transfer torgue like a chain but eliminate the need for gears, use 2 v pulleys and flexible steel belt that changes diameter and “gears” by how close v pulleys are squezzed together, they have done for cars already , why not bikes?
The video was dark, like an online car showroom, where you can’t see detail well. The fading to black every couple of seconds didn’t help, nor did the all the attention to unimportant and irrelevant stuff. In place of the mood music, which was used to try to somehow associate “cool” with product, the rider should have been explaining the bike’s concept and features, and demonstrating all that the bike can do. It’s a novel bike, okay?–not Cocoa Cola.
More like good luck getting to speeds over 5mph – since there’s no gear ratio between the crank shaft and wheel, you’ll have to peddle harder than ever to get anywhere. Great for exercise though.
Where the hell is my comment? I submit my comment and describe my feedback and now the stupid website has deleted my comment now that it has logged me in and ready to accept my input? Where the hell is my paragraph of comments?
My mother the English teacher is rolling over in her grave. That kid behind me in homeroom who flunked English three times would have penned, “how…we should have ran the piece.” Honestly.
“By removing the chain, the number of moving parts and overall complexity is significantly reduced. A direct-drive, freewheeling hub joins the crank arm axis with the rear-wheel axis, shortening the wheelbase and minimizing the design,” describes Bicymple designer Josh Bechtel. “More than just a stylish concept bike, the bicymple is comfortable, easy to ride, and brilliantly simple to maintain … The optional rear-steer mode is reminiscent of custom ‘swing bikes’ and allows tighter turns and ‘crab-riding.’”
This bike is more suited for a circus rather than around town commuting.. Why you need gears and chain and means of converting power to get up hills,( unless you live in west Texas where everything is flat). Most of the USA is not flat.Also it has a feature that allows the rear wheel to track in parallel but not necessarily straight behind the front wheel, fine for circus tricks but a disaster in tight city traffic! No Thank you, If you want to really develope something bike riders could use why not invent a continuous flexible steel belt drive v transmission which would transfer torgue like a chain but eliminate the need for gears, use 2 v pulleys and flexible steel belt that changes diameter and “gears” by how close v pulleys are squezzed together, they have done for cars already , why not bikes?
The video was dark, like an online car showroom, where you can’t see detail well. The fading to black every couple of seconds didn’t help, nor did the all the attention to unimportant and irrelevant stuff. In place of the mood music, which was used to try to somehow associate “cool” with product, the rider should have been explaining the bike’s concept and features, and demonstrating all that the bike can do. It’s a novel bike, okay?–not Cocoa Cola.
It looks like all the power goes to the rear wheel? This might be fun for doing some tricks but doesn’t seem very practical at all…
He gonna bust his balls for sure!
Looks like the lazy mans unicycle. Without any rigged rear support good luck with taking corners and turns at speeds over 5 MPH.
More like good luck getting to speeds over 5mph – since there’s no gear ratio between the crank shaft and wheel, you’ll have to peddle harder than ever to get anywhere. Great for exercise though.
when kids, we used to chuck sticks into the front spokes of folk who looked like this…
today’s kids will be getting a better laugh still …
Chain = Mechanical Advantage. “nuff said about this stupid device.
Where the hell is my comment? I submit my comment and describe my feedback and now the stupid website has deleted my comment now that it has logged me in and ready to accept my input? Where the hell is my paragraph of comments?
It’s still here to me, Edmund.
Good luck using the front brake if you’re a normal sized American trying to get some much needed exercise
My mother the English teacher is rolling over in her grave. That kid behind me in homeroom who flunked English three times would have penned, “how…we should have ran the piece.” Honestly.