9 ms·
Spring-powered wheel claims to be ‘E-bike alternative at lower cost’
- Quequau 6y agoSomeone should call Paolo Bacigalupi
- mcint 6y agoLooks like a great deal! ...for the seller
- ThePadawan 6y ago> entrepreneur says X (that they're selling) will revolutionise Y Ah, so advertisment.
- keredson 6y agoWTFITS...
- fergie 6y agoWould love to hear the opinions of some actual mechanical engineers. Can these springs really passively get you +30% efficiency? What about weight? Cyclists are obsessive about reducing rotating mass, and these wheels seem to be seriously chunky. Is this actually a thing that could work?
- nxpnsv 6y agoYeah, not many cyclists would add 10kg to their bike, typically resulting in doubling the bike weight.
- Freak_NL 6y agoI mean, TANSTAAFL, right? Does this store some energy when you slow down to release it when you start up again? That would somewhat flatten the energy expenditure curve, which may be a bit more efficient. It would imply that lifting the wheel after you've stopped releases that amount of energy (it seems to do so).
- pitaa 6y ago> It would imply that lifting the wheel after you've stopped releases that amount of energy (it seems to do so). Notice, however, that the springs are actually missing when they show this in the video! Couple that with the fact that he rotates the wheel by hand to a certain position before setting it down, and its evident that the rotation we see is just due to a very imbalanced wheel.
- orwin 6y agoif this is seen in bike competition, its legit. If it is forbidden, nothing can be deduced about it and if this is allowed but not used, this is useless.
- wiredfool 6y agoThere's a lot of stuff in competition that's not legit.
- wiredfool 6y agoNo. There’s no 30% gain to be had. Losses in a properly maintained bicycle are already far lower than this.
- londons_explore 6y ago
- oh_sigh 6y agoThis doesn't work. It is a scam. On a normal bike, imagine hooking springs up to each spoke. How far does each spoke move from its position relative to the hub during travel? Basically not at all. The recoverable energy it is almost nothing at all. Certainly not worth the extra rotating weight.
- xupybd 6y agoIn a closed system how can you increase efficiency without decreasing any of the energy losses. I don't get it?
- vianneychevalie 6y agoYou don't, you'll just end up riding on a spring-y bike and put energy into the system by pushing on the pedals a bit further than usual relative to the ground.
- Uhrheber 6y agoFinally, spring powered Trains and rockets like in Syberia.
- ivalm 6y ago> The action/reaction force caused by weight compresses the springs in the upper section of the wheel and decompresses in the lower section. Using the centre as the pivot, this converts energy and reduces the frictional force in the opposite direction and facilitates the rotation. Using 10kg active weight, the mechanism is shown to generate a moment ranging from 7.3Nm to 7.8Nm.” So perpetual motion machine?
- lokedhs 6y agoProbably not. It seems the energy comes from you lifting yourself up whenever you push down on the pedals. With this thing it'll just be a bit harder to do that.
- duskwuff 6y agoIt's certainly got the sound of one. Describing the technology as "weight to energy conversion" is particularly suspect.
- lokedhs 6y agoSo if I understand this correctly, it uses the downwards force on the wheel when pushing down on the pedals and converts that into rotational force on the wheel. Now, because of that annoying thing called conservation of energy, this means that you'll have to put this energy into the system by pushing down harder. I guess this translates to a feeling of sitting on a spring. That doesn't sound like very efficient pedalling.
- radu_floricica 6y agoI don't claim to understand the mechanics involved, but I think it's the equivalent of regenerative braking for suspensions. Instead of wasting the energy when you cross a bump, it stores it and converts it into forward motion. Pretty smart if it's so, and depending on road conditions I actually see it as having noticeable effect. Especially considering how crazy people are about upgrading their bikes.
- dclowd9901 6y agoNo. Not when pushing down on the pedals. Your natural weight would be all that would be needed to load the spring. At least that’s my understanding.
- lokedhs 6y agoSure, but when would the spring unload? You need to lift your body up do be able to load it again.
- raverbashing 6y agoI'm not buying it. This sounds like sonic charging, or worse. It claims to be "weight assisted". Yeah, that's not how it works.
- _Microft 6y agoI have trouble making sense of this. What is the mechanism at work here[0]? Is it maybe storing energy that otherwise would be lost (e.g. from shocks, jerks, up and down motion of bike and biker while pedalling?) in the springs to convert it into useful motion, like the Achilles tendon helps humans to walk more efficiently [1]? Being a physicist, the name of the tech ("Weight (Mass) to energy Conversion Technology" [2]) triggered my BS detector pretty hard but I would like to give them the benefit of doubt. They have a Twitter page with lots of close-up images of the wheel [3]. There is one with a sketch of forces at [4] which might give insight into their reasoning (which does not necessarily mean that it is correct). [0] https://www.superwheelsystem.com/how-super-wheel-works/ https://www.superwheelsystem.com/how-super-wheel-works/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achilles_tendon#Other_animals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achilles_tendon#Other_animals [2] https://www.superwheelsystem.com/ https://www.superwheelsystem.com/ [3] https://twitter.com/thesuperwheel/ https://twitter.com/thesuperwheel/ [4] https://twitter.com/thesuperwheel/status/1275715365570588672/photo/1 https://twitter.com/thesuperwheel/status/1275715365570588672...
- dclowd9901 6y agoThe idea seems to be you have a loaded spring at the top of the wheel as it’s rotating forward. The spring is loaded through some mechanism in the axle, which seems to be some sort of fixed axle that loads the spring through weight. As it rotates, the mechanism which forces the spring closed through downward gravitational force ceases to apply, allowing the fixed axle to unload that spring into the unfixed axle, which propels the wheel. It’s no more than a rotational gas spring. The same principle that lets you open and close the hood or trunk of your car with ease. At least that’s how I’m understanding it...
- jeremysalwen 6y agoThere's something fundamentally missing from that explanation, because it doesn't explain where the energy is coming from. You can't load a spring without providing energy, and gravity cannot provide energy in a steady state system.
- itronitron 6y ago>> "We have requested a SuperWheel to test and will report back." I look forward to reading that. Cycling magazines usually do a fairly rigorous evaluation of new tech in their articles.
- C19is20 6y ago...*used to be "obsessive about rotating mass". GCN: https://youtu.be/0QDnUkUaQfk https://youtu.be/0QDnUkUaQfk See also YouTubers Hambini, Peak Torque and Durianrider (on a tech day) for more cycling debunkness. Also, amongst others, it'll be a real pain if YT's ad policy drives these guys away. Well, not for the cycling industry, and associated lapdog journo's.
- Evidlo 6y agoInitially I thought this was some kind of mechanical regenerative braking. I wonder if that's been attempted before. Applying the brakes would wind a spring and bring the bike to a stop. Then applying force to the pedals or manually pulling a lever would release the spring for an assisted start. Edit: Here's some mechanical regenerative braking projects: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yK7fyugbe6o https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yK7fyugbe6o https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DoaJK39Tl60 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DoaJK39Tl60 Electrical regen is probably cheaper and lighter.
- itronitron 6y agoThat was my expectation from the title as well. I thought it would look like an over-sized mainspring from a watch (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainspring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainspring). There was a small company back in the 90's or 00's that was developing very high rpm flywheels to store energy but they weren't able to work out a licensing deal with the car manufacturers.
- londons_explore 6y agoSpring regen is hard because you need a very big Spring to store the energy of 80kg of bike at 30mph.
- mleonhard 6y agoMaybe air compression would work better?
- ACAVJW4H 6y agoTom stanton a great youtuber builds and tests prototypes like these. Here he tried electrical regen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-suxSqrP_X4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-suxSqrP_X4
- zero_deg_kevin 6y agoI always thought the F1 kinetic energy recovery systems (KERS) were a pretty neat mechanical solution. Probably way too heavy for bikes & low-torque humans, though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_energy_recovery_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_energy_recovery_system
- mitefinedailes 6y agoHow can such unscientific stuff end up on first page of HN? Or did I miss the part where the inventor published a breakthrough technique that allows his system to break known laws of physics?
- lolc 6y agoIt's entertainment! I don't laugh often. But this made my day!
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mahdavi 6y agoApparently the designer of this bike has no knowledge of physics.
- franciscop 6y agoThis article has all the makings of a perpetual motion machine. Those are normally found by using either "springs", "magnets" or a combination of both. There is theoretically a way to use the roughness of the terrain (so the bike going up and down as it rides) to store that energy and then use that for propulsion. When finding a rough spot, the bike trades forward momentum for a vertical impulse, so it might be possible to transform a part of this back to horizontal. I don't have a basis to calculate this, but my intuition tells me accounting for loses this energy must be very small and very difficult to capture, to the point of almost worthless. Think of a wave energy generator, but on a calm day with waves almost flat. The article doesn't claim that though ("10kg active weight [...] generate a moment ranging from 7.3Nm to 7.8Nm"), so this is either bad reporting or a perpetual motion scam. My money is on the latter specially seeing the "infinite power assistance" label on the video, would be happy to be proven wrong though! Fun fact: In 1775 the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris stopped accepting proposals concerning perpetual motion.
- pitaa 6y agoI concur, and this smells of bullshit. Unfortunately they don't show inside their magic box, so I can't see whats happening on the inside. I did notice that the springs were completely missing on one of their demos in the video though!
- wiredfool 6y agoThere is some research into how much energy is lost to suspension style losses, and it's on the order of 100W (was 300) when riding at 20mph/30kph over rumble strips. (https://www.renehersecycles.com/myth-17-bigger-wheels-roll-faster-amended/ https://www.renehersecycles.com/myth-17-bigger-wheels-roll-f...). This can be changed pretty dramatically with good tires and proper inflation. On more reasonable road surfaces, it's less than 1/10th of that number. (but good tires make ooooh so much of a difference. I don't notice bad chipseal. My clubmates -- not so much) (edit sorry -- rereading the article, I misread the graph. 300W on the rumble strips ~200 on the smooth pavement beside them)
- franciscop 6y ago
- dave333 6y agoIf this worked, once you start the wheels rotating, you could take your feet off the pedals and just let the superwheel force accelerate the bike until air resistance balances the superwheel force. They don't seem to have a video of that.
- huhtenberg 6y agoI take it also quacks when it rides. It's the only way this would work.
- ZoomZoomZoom 6y agoIt looks like the ad for those meter-cheating gizmos from 25 years ago. "No one thought of using springs to save energy, but we did! Buy now and get our pro spring with extra winds for the price of a regular one!"
- TeMPOraL 6y agoWhile this particular instance looks a bit unbelievable (where does the stored energy come from?), I wonder if there's more unrealized potential for spring-based energy storage. I'm reminiscent of a sci-fi book someone on HN recommended to me the other day[0], "The Windup Girl". In the post-climate-catastrophe world depicted there, there's scarcity of energy sources; no energy-dense fuels to power modern technological civilization. The society described in the book instead learned to rely on gravity and mechanical energy, stored in springs big and small[1]. Small springs were used as portable batteries, and everyday technology was ruthlessly optimized to be as energy-efficient as possible. I wonder how much space for this kind of innovation is there to be have? And with modern electrical batteries, is there even a point to storing mechanical energy and avoiding the mechanical -> electrical -> mechanical conversion flow? -- [0] - As another biopunk novel to read after Change Agent. [1] - Small springs are wound manually, but one biopunk part here is the use of beasts of burden, genetically engineered for maximum efficiency of converting food to mechanical energy, to wind up large springs and power other machinery.
- eesmith 6y ago> "use of beasts of burden ... to wind up large springs and power other machinery" Needn't be just beasts of burden. People used dogs to turn roasting spits - https://gizmodo.com/medieval-kitchens-used-a-specially-bred-dog-to-turn-roa-1575976436 https://gizmodo.com/medieval-kitchens-used-a-specially-bred-... . IANA genetic engineer, but plants -> alcohol/biodiesel -> power seems likely more efficient than plants/feed -> animals -> mechanical energy storage -> power.
- ezoe 6y agoI expected mainspring based energy storage device but it looks like a typical perpetual motion machine fraud.
- jfcorbett 6y agoMeta: How did this obvious pile of pseudoscience even make its way to HN top 10?
- ahamdy88 6y agoI was immediately triggered by "Weight (Mass) to energy conversion technology". I guess a better name to call it is "Nuclear Powered BS wheel"! Too bad such BS end up on top stories of HN
- jl2718 6y agoDeceptive marketing, but it’s actually a brilliant suspension. Just looking casually, it appears that the ratchet mechanism is used to convert an oscillatory energy into a mechanical energy. Most suspensions just turn it into heat. It may make more sense by analogy to an electronic rectifier. The ratchet is like a diode and the spring is like the capacitor. The energy still comes from the legs, but it helps capture losses. I can think of a lot of ways to improve it, and make it simpler, but it’s the first time I’ve seen something like this actually built.
- RegnisGnaw 6y ago"An Ireland-based entrepreneur is claiming to have invented a power-assisted bicycle wheel that doesn’t use batteries, doesn’t need charging, is not speed restricted and has an infinite range." AKA Perpetual Motion
- elliottkember 6y agoWell, a spring is a battery. You charge it by compressing or stretching it. I think this battery stores vertical motion - from when you first get on, and maybe if you go over bumps. But the "infinite range" thing is nonsense.
- Talanes 6y agoIronically, about the only vehicle that actually does meet all those criteria is a standard bicycle.
- FerdSlav 6y agoIf this really worked and made such a drastic improvement why not get one of the plethora of bike power meters available on the market and show the needed effort to maintain a set speed with this wheel and without? Also, if this really worked as described it shouldn't matter if it's on the front, back, or both wheels. So why not show that?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Gys 6y agoIt is patented according to the article. Lot if guessing here how it could/should work, but maybe someone can track a link to the patent first?
- kfichter 6y agoI tried tracking down the patent, the creator seems to have terminated their application in 2018: https://patents.google.com/patent/GB201703765D0/en https://patents.google.com/patent/GB201703765D0/en
- Gys 6y agoGood one! So if there is no patent then it might not even work theoretically, according to their own findings? Meaning this might be a hoax.
- mcndjxlefnd 6y agoThere are these things called "bumps in the road" that redirect horizontal momentum into vertical force. It's why cars and bikes have suspension. What do you think pushes against a gas shock? Vertical force. This wheel captures that force in a spring and dissipates it through torque instead of just compressing gas in a cylinder. I don't see why it wouldn't work. This dude just reinvented the wheel. My only question is how effective it actually is. 30% is a lot.
- mcndjxlefnd 6y agoI'm quite disappointed in the comments I see about this spring wheel. Only a couple commenters seem to be actually thinking... Tsk tsk.
- scotty79 6y agoThe only way I can make sense of this is imagining designing a bike that is propelled forward not with pedals but by rocking it up and down. I would mount wheel axis on a small crank and use rotation of the crank to rotate the wheel. Something like this https://youtu.be/48TdMKCOrmo https://youtu.be/48TdMKCOrmo Not sure where the springs should come in...