3 ms·
> One of the more enjoyable aspects of riding a bike is the direct connection you have between your legs and your motion. Also, one of the least enjoyable aspe
by oriolid 5y ago
> One of the more enjoyable aspects of riding a bike is the direct connection you have between your legs and your motion.
Also, one of the least enjoyable aspects of cheap stationary exercise bikes is the need to push the pedals over the dead spots. On real bikes most of the power comes from pushing down and inertia helps with the rest of the pedal rotation. Spinning bikes have heavy flywheels to work around the problem but I wouldn't expect them to work on an actual bike.
- Dave_Rosenthal 5y agoThis is a great point about a potential downside of the 'Free Drive' decoupled crank concept. By decoupling you also get rid of the coupled inertia of the bike/rider and petaling becomes weirdly inertia free which most people really dislike. Though I guess with very sophisticated sensing and control algorithms you can in theory emulate inertia. I wonder if they try to do that? Would be a cool project.
- oriolid 5y agoI guess they could adjust the generator somehow, but the response would have to be really immediate. I think I could adjust to something that feels like rubber band instead of chain, but varying speed over pedal stroke sounds bad. Yes, I know that some people swear by elliptic chainrings. I had Biopace rings back in the day and didn't really like them even though the effect was quite small.