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Reviving a modular cargo bike design from the 1930s

233 points by surprisetalk 2y ago

RajT88 2y ago
I was under the impression these had been out for a while. Last May, when my wife and I went to France, these cargo bikes all over the place, especially in Paris.
- lostlogin 2y ago
  With a front wheel design like this one?
  - RajT88 2y ago
    Exactly like the first two photos in the article, yes.
    - sk7 2y ago
      Scroll down to the third photo. The article is about this design.
analog31 2y ago
Three wheeled cars and trikes mostly moved to having the two wheels in front for stability when cornering. Same reason why 3 wheeled all terrain vehicles were taken off the market. Otherwise, cool idea.
- DocTomoe 2y ago
  See also: Reliant Robin. Obligatory Top Gear link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQh56geU0X8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQh56geU0X8
  - bcraven 2y ago
    On January 10th 2016, Clarkson came clean in his article in the Mail on Sunday and admitted that the whole thing was rigged. Clarkson wrote, “You may remember: I drove it (the Reliant Robin) around Sheffield and it kept falling over. Well now’s the time to come clean. A normal Reliant Robin will not roll unless a drunken rugby team is on hand. Or its windy. But in a headlong drive to amuse and entertain, I’d asked the backroom boys to play around with the differential so that the poor thing rolled over every time I turned the steering wheel” https://www.reliant.website/topgear.shtml https://www.reliant.website/topgear.shtml
    - DocTomoe 2y ago
      And yet, several of my friends located the general Sheffield area agree that while the video was a bit over the top, generally, Robins tended to do that. That Sheffield is a surprisingly hilly city with sometimes hard turns meaning you have auto-acceleration on hills down, and often are a bit faster than you'd like, probably doesn't help either.
    - voidUpdate 2y ago
      IIRC they also put a big metal plate in the roof to make it even more top-heavy
- CalRobert 2y ago
  I was so excited to try a cargo bike I made sure to rent a Cristiana bike on a holiday to Copenhagen with my pregnant wife. Then I crashed while turning with her as a passenger. She was displeased. We now ride a two wheeled urban arrow. Three wheelers seem incredibly unstable except perhaps for ones with independently pivoting wheels like the babboe carve
  - tokai 2y ago
    While super unstable three wheelers are good for very heavy or large loads. Like moving a refrigerator. Start stop city traffic with +100kg load is easier on three than two wheels. Must say I never liked riding the Christiania bikes myself.
    - econ 2y ago
      The old ones in NL easily take 300kg. You just have to learn not to attempt sharp corners. A normal bike also allows you to jerk the steering wheel 90 degrees at high speed.
    - Steltek 2y ago
      It begs the question, are you carrying extreme loads, like refrigerators, on a daily basis? If not, then this is like buying an F-350 when you're mostly taking your kids to school. If so, then maybe none of these are the right design and you might want to look into something like a cargo trailer.
      - tokai 2y ago
        Well yes a ton of people are ferrying multiple kids plus their school bags everyday. They are far from common enough to get compared to F-350s. Nobody would commute on them daily if they didn't have a recurring need to haul something. They are far too expensive to buy as a beater.
        lostlogin 2y ago
        > Nobody would commute on them daily if they didn't have a recurring need to haul something. They are far too expensive to buy as a beater. I really can’t tell, are you referring to an F-350 or a cargo bike?
DocTomoe 2y ago
Pedals directly on the front wheel means no shifting the chain, which means you better have not skipped leg day if there is even the slightest hill on your route while you are fully loaded.
- smlacy 2y ago
  Electric motor though?
- zellyn 2y ago
  It apparently has a gearbox in the hub.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- dmurray 2y ago
  Isn't it the other way around? One revolution of your pedals gets one revolution of the wheel. Normally you'd get several revolutions out of it. So you need to pedal faster than you're used to, but each push is easier. It's like being in a very low gear suitable for climbing hills. The penny-farthing solved this problem by having a very large wheel.
  - spinarrets 2y ago
    When I am in hill climbing gear, I turn more revolutions on my pedals than the tires turn. The higher that ration (pedal turns:wheel turns) the 'easier' it is to pedal, but the more turns you need to go forwards. A bike that is a 1:1 'fixie' would indeed struggle with hills like the OP suggests. However, this bike has a secret hub within the wheel that does gearing, so you have (iirc) 3 ratios you can use to get up to speed or climb hills.
- doctoboggan 2y ago
  The chain is the transmission, and the shifting mechanism works with it. But you can easily have more compact gearboxes directly on the wheel without the need for a chain.
- 2y ago
hombre_fatal 2y ago
That front bike section looks so cool. I guess it's so alien looking because the whole section turns instead of just the wheel which affords it more creative license than a traditional handlebar attached to a fork. I bet it also feels alien to turn a steering wheel with your feet on bike pedals.
- 0xEF 2y ago
  I'm not sure where you grew up, but in the US we had a kid's toy called a Big Wheel which your feet had to turn with when you turned the handlebars. It was wildly awkward, terribly designed, but we got really good at it, anyway. The pedals would even scrape concrete on turns often enough to wear them down.
  - Groxx 2y ago
    There are also adult versions: https://youtu.be/moRE8IlNiMU https://youtu.be/moRE8IlNiMU
    - 0xEF 2y ago
      Those look dangerously fun. Looks like there's electric and gas powered versions, as well. Much respect to the mad lad slowing his descent in flipflops, by the way.
- hackingonempty 2y ago
  A USA company has/had a patent on a pivoting bottom bracket bike transmission like this and has been making bikes for a while. https://cruzbike.com/ https://cruzbike.com/
jmercouris 2y ago
This design is unstable and expensive to produce with a complicated in wheel transmission. It is novel, but almost certainly more expensive and less reliable than existing designs.
- camtarn 2y ago
  You've not come across hub gears on bikes before, have you? They were pretty much the standard before derailleur gears became popular, and modern ones can have up to 7 speeds.
  - mrob 2y ago
    Modern ones can have more than 7 speeds. The Rohloff Speedhub has 14 speeds, and the Shimano Alfine is available with either 8 or 11 speeds.
    - lostlogin 2y ago
      They are so so nice to ride. I’ve ended up with some electronic road SRAM which is seriously quick in comparison (except for the slow rider), but do miss the smooth internal hub and the stationary gear changes.
    - camtarn 2y ago
      Oh, nice, the state of the art has advanced since I last read about hub gears, which was ... oh dear, about twenty years ago? No wonder things have improved :)
  - jmercouris 2y ago
    I meant the whole design. The hub gear is no different than on any other bicycle and can be reliable.
- ninalanyon 2y ago
  In wheel gears have been in use for over a century very successfully. I had a Raleigh bicycle with Sturmey Archer gears as a child. It never gave me any trouble, unlike the derailleur gears I had on later bicycles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hub_gear https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hub_gear
iambateman 2y ago
Please excuse my hacker-newsyness… This idea is absurdly underbaked…other commenters mentioned that it’s going to flip, and it is. Not to mention that no bike shop in the world will know how to work on these things. There’s lots of reasons that this design died in the 1930’s after a short run. But…so you know I’m a reasonable guy despite my blithering criticism…I love weird alternative vehicles and I hope that version two of this is a massive success because this world needs more tiny vehicles and fewer 8’ tall Ford F-150’s. Best of luck!
- spinarrets 2y ago
  > This idea is absurdly underbaked…other commenters mentioned that it’s going to flip, and it is. Assuming the rear is loaded with cargo, you'd have a low center of gravity over two wheels. To tip over, one of the rear wheels would need to come up, but that's where most of the weight is. And I suspect the engineers who built this probably didn't just completely miss "oh wait, what if it tips over!?" Unless you've a) got some experience with this domain and b) got some experience with this bike, I don't know how you could know this bike is going to flip over.
  - iambateman 2y ago
    My concern was mostly if the back isn’t heavily loaded. But you’re probably right overall…if the attachments are expected to be substantially heavier than I was initially thinking, and if the bike were designed to go pretty slow, it’d be ok.
oulipo 2y ago
Really good looking :) You should definitely put a repairable Gouach e-bike battery on it haha https://gouach.com https://gouach.com
- Groxx 2y ago
  One of those "obvious in retrospect" designs, neat. Makes me wonder if there are complications to doing it this way, or if everyone else just likes selling more complete packs than necessary.
btbuildem 2y ago
Tricycles are inherently unstable in turns, especially when not loaded down, because they cannot lean. And when carrying a load, the same rules of physics apply, resulting in a lot of torsional forces on the frame. There's a reason we see so few of those on the roads, amidst an explosion of various human-powered modes of transport. Here's the original: http://youtube.com/watch?v=RuPwRQOUhl4 http://youtube.com/watch?v=RuPwRQOUhl4 Here's the reimagined modern version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA7qGYNFuY0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA7qGYNFuY0 In both cases, the rider effectively sits atop of where the handlebars would be on a traditional trike. You can see in the first video the lads have a hard time keeping all wheels on the ground. One notable difference between the new model and the old is that they seem to have changed the geometry of the frame so that the driver doesn't lean into the turn (the turning wheel stays upright). They don't demonstrate it in motion very well, but that kind of turn action will tend to throw the rider "out" of the turn, making the trike fall over opposite of the direction of the turn. The old version tends to fall "into" the turn. I can't think of many advantages to this design, other than the driving unit and cargo are modular. Even then, the rider would not be able to travel without the cargo portion. Trikes are tricky, they don't go very fast, they don't turn well, and they're wider than most other pedal-powered vehicles, making them hard to use on existing cycle infrastructure.
- djmips 2y ago
  Using a video of duffers trying the bike for the first time is not very convincing. I expect that with experience you'd get the handle on the trike design and control it quite well.
- econ 2y ago
  If you have a large preferably rusty box in front of you the cars treat you like royalty.
- jandrese 2y ago
  If you're trying to keep all of the wheels on the ground you're not using it efficiently. With trikes when you go around a curve the inner wheel lifts off the ground, especially as many trikes have solid rear axles. It feels scary to have it pitch outward in the turns, but it is how the machine works.
matt-p 2y ago
It's totally mad and impractical; I love it!
gazarubbleparty 2y ago
[flagged]
dpedu 2y ago
While interesting, I feel like this would be difficult or at least feel extremely weird to ride. When you steer on a 2-wheeled bicycle, you countersteer, which is pushing the wheel left in order to go right, or vice-versa. But this has a steering wheel that I assume works like a car, you turn the wheel left to go left. It would feel weird riding a bicycle while having to remember to steer like a car.
- thesuitonym 2y ago
  Probably less weird than you think. For one thing, it uses a steering wheel like a car, so that steering motion would feel more natural, and most people don't know they need to countersteer on a bike, they just do it without thinking. Even if it used handlebars, people ride trikes all the time without any real problems.
gomox 2y ago
Lol @ what appears to be paddle shifters or paddle brakes [0] under a steering wheel on a bike?? [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA7qGYNFuY0&t=77s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA7qGYNFuY0&t=77s
MomsAVoxell 2y ago
Revive? These things are still in active use all over Europe .. backfiet .. and while they’re fun, they can be exhausting if you overfill them with groceries, kids, roadkill, oilyballs, etc. There’s a tricked out one in my ‘hood (Vienna) that has electric assist. I guess that’d be practical for a daily ride …
- IneffablePigeon 2y ago
  Did your read the article? It’s talking about a totally different design to a standard bakfiet.
- uxp100 2y ago
  When I look up backfiet I see a typical cargo bike, what the article is discussing is a design where you directly drive the front wheel (with a 3 speed hub in this case). Seems worse, but nifty.
- micromacrofoot 2y ago
  You can see how it's different from a backfiet though, right? the article describes: > places the rider directly above the front wheel. They pedal this wheel directly; there's no chain, reducing maintenance needs. A three-speed gearbox in the hub makes starting easier. > An additional benefit to the two-piece frame is that the bike can be broken down for transport, allowing the user "to load it into a trunk for easy transport from point A to point B." > Lastly, the company says the shorter wheelbase of their arrangement provides a tighter turning radius, making the bike easier to maneuver in urban environments.
- century19 2y ago
  Bakfiets no? That’s what the Dutch call it and they use them widely. Especially the electric versions you can get nowadays.
ploum 2y ago
Am I the only one unable to open that website ?
- dsr_ 2y ago
  It half-opened for me, bogged down, and on re-load crashed the Firefox tab.
  - ploum 2y ago
    had the same experience, even in private windows without any plugin. People really goes to great length to make sure their text is unreadable for some of their users.
    - ploum 2y ago
      Funnily enough, it works "great" on Librewolf (with quote around "great" because that design is awful, eating most of the screen estate with a fixed menu)
      - dendrite9 2y ago
        Yeah unfortunately it breaks Firefox for me.
onlypassingthru 2y ago
There's probably a good reason nobody has touched this design in 90+ years. As the last photo demonstrates, banging the back of your leg against a trailer hitch every time you turn would get annoying real quick.
- Calwestjobs 2y ago
  Please do not mention spray from cars in front of you! XD
- torlok 2y ago
  Looks like something that can easily be solved by tweaking the curve. I also don't think you'll be doing such sharp turns often, and at that angle and speed you may as well get off.
  - onlypassingthru 2y ago
    On the contrary, it's a fundamental flaw in the design. The second to last photo shows the trailer directly over the pedal which will inevitably either push the rider's leg off or limit the turn radius.
    - rtkwe 2y ago
      It's pictured at the furthest back position for the pedals though which means your leg will mostly go forward of the pedals and not much back. I would trust people having actually ridden this to not have their legs slammed into the trailer vs how it looks on one render or photo.
ljf 2y ago
Off topic - the the colour scheme choices for the Cookie selection pop-up on that site are awful. I'll admit I'm colour blind, but I assume those are hard for others to see when the switches are on or off? Unless that was their plan?
nabilhat 2y ago
It's always exciting to see this idea get revived for the first time in ninety years every ten years! I've pedaled around on a couple variations of this design. Like everyone who had never ridden one but saw it on the internet, I also confidently imagined it would violently hurl me to the ground at the slightest provocation. I was wrong, which strangely seems to be a pattern for confident opinions I've formed based on things I've only seen on the internet. Having not been for a ride on this particular iteration, I will not post confident opinions about it on the internet. The best (granted, of two...) version I've tried was semi-recumbent, with a standard geartrain and flevobike-style steering. The steering was a little weird at first, but I quickly figured out how to fully steer it hands free. Fully unloaded it was possible to tip it with hard front braking while turning, if you pitched your body weight into the effort. Loaded, it was absolutely nailed to the ground. You're just a mule winching a load down the road at that point. Sometimes it's fun to be a mule, piloting a weird bike-cart. It turns out everyone flamewarring about stability on the internet forgot to get mad about drive wheel traction limits when pulling a load uphill. Which for me was a loading consideration rather than a problem. The underseat steering was brilliant for reasons I'd never thought about. But don't take my word for it, ride one and decide for yourself. https://web.archive.org/web/20130309080557/http://hpm.catoregon.org/?page_id=73 https://web.archive.org/web/20130309080557/http://hpm.catore...
- BrtByte 2y ago
  The bit about confidently expecting to get yeeted off the bike based purely on internet logic is hilariously relatable
jabl 2y ago
For everyone complaining about tricycles, one thing I've seen here and there in Europe being used for inner city deliveries is what I learned is called "Velove Armadillo", a 4-wheeled cargo bike https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAaVXKBamd0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAaVXKBamd0 You can even hook up a trailer to it for even more cargo.
- _kb 2y ago
  There’s lots more too, in various forms depending on what you’re hauling: https://cargobike.guide/ https://cargobike.guide/
antfarm 2y ago
Cube has a model called "Trike Hybrid" that has a similar, more practical design: https://www.cube.eu/de-de/e-bikes/transport/trike-hybrid https://www.cube.eu/de-de/e-bikes/transport/trike-hybrid
sn0n 2y ago
Kids these days would take the unicycle front and just roll around doing their free wheelie thing.
skeeter2020 2y ago
feels like these types of human-powered cargo vehicles work better when they're pushing the load vs towing a trailer, either the 2 wheeler cargo that's got the payload way out front, or the reverse trikes. The closest I've tried to this type of geo is a regular bike towing a 2-wheeled trailer, and that has both logistic & performance issues. This setup has you really tall/forward, and the trailer interfering with the pedaling & leg movement.
HumblyTossed 2y ago
Berm Peak reviewed a cargo bike some months ago: https://youtu.be/H7w57U3ijHY?si=EWXoYPNVpkwxh-oT https://youtu.be/H7w57U3ijHY?si=EWXoYPNVpkwxh-oT
ben7799 2y ago
These comments just read like a whole bunch of people who never rode a bike and yet are somehow experts on everything about bikes. This thing is not for Le Tour and you don't go fast on it and you don't go up giant hills on it. That makes a lot of the concerns here go out the window. These types of bikes shaped objects often have all kinds of issues with trying to use bike parts designed for standard bikes on something that is very different. Issues with needing enormous chains, huge cable runs, etc.. when designers try things like this they are worrying about issues like that more than whether you can climb a mountain on it or stuff it into a corner at high speed without going out of control. The thing with these is the cost to design & manufacture components that need to be different than normal bikes can be astronomical, so anything they can do to design the frame to use normal components in a normal/non-compromised way pays off in a huge way. The ideas behind this aren't that different than the Cruzbike being front wheel drive to get rid of a lot of the component/drivetrain issues that recumbent bikes are famous for.
- bgnn 2y ago
  People comparing these with racing bikes is so unbelievable.
- elliottkember 2y ago
  The comment asking about riding positions drop bars was hilarious. Lots of Americans in the comments is probably why, plus the Hacker News tendency toward armchair expertise. The American grid system tends to produce hills that are unmanageable on a town or cargo bike, so bicycles are a fitness/enthusiast thing. And US cities are much more spread out, too. In more walkable European cities, these bikes make a lot of sense.
  - StopDisinfo910 2y ago
    The discussion is very much a case of people from the USA having the far too rare realisation than most places in Europe have nothing in common with their country.
  - Freak_NL 2y ago
    These would work beautifully in Dutch cities, although you can easily see from the design that its native biotope is Paris, where cars are increasingly being pushed out of the narrow streets.
globular-toast 2y ago
Bike is short for bicycle. That means exactly two wheels.
bgnn 2y ago
This is neat but I'm not sure sbout sitting on top of the wheel. An electric version would be great For people questioning the viability of trikes, here is what the Dutch postal service uses: https://www.bikeshift.com/nl/assets/components/phpthumbof/cache/Fietskoerier%20PostNL.7d2a72c19e4a34525961dbb13f56c6c8.png https://www.bikeshift.com/nl/assets/components/phpthumbof/ca... And this is ehat they are testing for future: https://fulpra.com/ https://fulpra.com/
- jabl 2y ago
  > And this is ehat they are testing for future: https://fulpra.com/ https://fulpra.com/ That front part looks more like a moped or light motorcycle than a bike. But with that kind of load on the back I suppose it makes sense.
fitsumbelay 2y ago
There are a couple of long time bike messengers here in DC who've been using this same rig for 15+ years. One has a rear seat for one of his kids.
ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
This looks cool. I'd have to try it, myself, to see if it works. However, it also looks like these are all renderings. It would be interesting to see a live demo. The one actual photo looks quite different from the renderings.
thuanao 2y ago
What's the advantage to a trike? Heavier load? Two wheels is less parts, less maintenance, and most importantly better maneuverability.
- bcraven 2y ago
  When you stop it doesn't fall over. Big plus.
  - WJW 2y ago
    Especially when you have so much cargo that it's impractical to hold the bike upright manually.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
gcanyon 2y ago
I can't stop thinking about riding this without the trailer, as a unicycle with gears.
- an1sotropy 2y ago
  The bummer is that the transmission is only unidirectional, but a unicycle needs bidirectional control, with very little backlash. Every economical planetary gear hub involves over-running pawls, alas.
  - gcanyon 2y ago
    Guys (I'm sure women do too, but I haven't seen it) riding wheelies seem to manage. But I take your point -- I've ridden a unicycle extensively, but never a wheelie.
- _kb 2y ago
  Alternatively, a mini wheel attachment for instant penny farthing, similar to https://bicymple.com/ https://bicymple.com/.
asix66 2y ago
In Copenhagen, Denmark, these are used all over the city to, well, deliver cargo. Then, annually they have a fun cargo-bike race called "Svajerløb" [0] The event is based on traditional races that took place between the 1930s and 1960s. In the race, riders typically complete four laps - the first lap ridden with an empty cargo bike, then stopping to load up their bikes with cargo before completing three more laps with the full load. [1] It's super fun. [0] https://www.facebook.com/Svajerloeb/ https://www.facebook.com/Svajerloeb/ [1] https://copenhagenize.com/2017/10/arrange-svajerlb-cargo-bike-race.html https://copenhagenize.com/2017/10/arrange-svajerlb-cargo-bik...
- spinarrets 2y ago
  Are there many of this configuration? (Load in the back as a tricycle). I see lots of good cargo bikes (and I LOVE cargo bikes), just not many of this design. But facebook doesn't let me browse much without an account.
  - INTPenis 2y ago
    I'm across the strait in Malmö and it's very rare to find the cargo in the back. Mostly senior citizens ride a variant of this bike with two wheels in the back, a small pannier. Maybe because it suits their balance better. But recently a coffee bike has been turning up here in Malmö with a classic 50s design just like the Cycleauto one, but the wheel is not mounted under the rider. https://gastro-bike.com/en/coffee-bike/ https://gastro-bike.com/en/coffee-bike/ This is not it but it's close. The one we have here is more of a rounded 50s design on the carriage. I don't have any pics.
91Jacob 2y ago
Sounds like a great way to get robbed
- spinarrets 2y ago
  I ride a cargo bike through the city, probably 100 miles of commuting through a downtown corridor every week. Pedestrians are basically zero worry relative to cars and people on those rental scooters. I have an e-assist on mine, so I can absolutely outrun anyone menacing, and biking so much gets you in healthy enough shape that most folks think, "Nah, I'll wait for an easier target." And if that didn't do the trick, pepper spray is a reasonable option. People on foot are really, really not the worry. Mindless drivers who think they are invincible so they don't pay attention to their environment are FAR more dangerous.
Corey_ 2y ago
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dartharva 2y ago
Cycle rickshaws/pedicabs have been in use for several decades in India and other poorer parts of the world. And they are miles better in usability than whatever this is.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
BrtByte 2y ago
Yet, the unconventional steering mechanism and rider position might pose challenges in terms of ergonomics and maneuverability, especially when compared to traditional cargo bikes
kristel100 2y ago
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CelestialMystic 2y ago
The issue with this design is the front 3 geared hub. It says it would reduce maintenance needs. The derailleur and chain are often cheaper and require very little maintenance other than oiling and maybe cleaning. They last literally last 1000s of miles. There isn't a maintenance concern typically. In fact I think it is harder to maintenance hubs from what I've read. These sorts of issues plague a lot of bike designs where they try to do something radically different. The reason why the derailleur and chains are used so often is because they are relatively cheap, work well and require maybe a few cheap tools to remove/refit parts (I have done this myself many times). Also as for the modular design. Why would I care about a modular design if I wanted something like this. You aren't going to be a courier one day and then suddenly running Gelato stand the next.
- spacerzasp 2y ago
  >Why would I care about a modular design if I wanted something like this. You aren't going to be a courier one day and then suddenly running Gelato stand the next. I have a thought like this regarding my compute needs in my house all the time, and then another need pops up, and I'm so glad I can wrangle an existing expensive piece of kit to also cover the new need. Just between the Gelato stand and personal item transport could be one such need
  - CelestialMystic 2y ago
    The need to switch between the examples given is niche (I deliberately chose something I thought was ridiculous to illustrate the point), in a niche market. This is probably why this design didn't last long.
    - spacerzasp 2y ago
      Only because the need to haul anything heavy or large by muscle power is niche. That segment has just been taken by larger combustion or electric engine'd vehicles. Where large loads are commonly hauled with tractors, it's a very common theme to have detachable tools, not tractor per tool.
willemlaurentz 2y ago
One thing that most non-cyclists may not realise, is that (because of your lower speed) it is actually an advantage to keep your cargo sight when riding through an urban area. (You don't want people steal your cargo while waiting for the traffic lights.) Or, when transporting kids, you want to be able to see them, talk with them, keep an eye on them. I have cycled over 30,000 Kilometers in and around Amsterdam on various bikes - and written many different posts on it: https://willem.com/blog/bike/ https://willem.com/blog/bike/ (including on cargo bikes like Babboe)
- AyyEye 2y ago
  > You don't want people steal your cargo while waiting for the traffic lights. I'm glad I live somewhere I can't even fathom this happening.
Brajeshwar 2y ago
This is a much fancier Rickshaw[1] on Steroid. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickshaw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickshaw
curtisszmania 2y ago
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AndrewSwift 2y ago
The seat is too low.
Caelus9 1y ago
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233 points by surprisetalk 2y ago

I was under the impression these had been out for a while. Last May, when my wife and I went to France, these cargo bikes all over the place, especially in Paris.

lostlogin 2y ago
With a front wheel design like this one?
- RajT88 2y ago
  Exactly like the first two photos in the article, yes.
  - sk7 2y ago
    Scroll down to the third photo. The article is about this design.

analog31 2y ago

Three wheeled cars and trikes mostly moved to having the two wheels in front for stability when cornering. Same reason why 3 wheeled all terrain vehicles were taken off the market. Otherwise, cool idea.

DocTomoe 2y ago
See also: Reliant Robin. Obligatory Top Gear link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQh56geU0X8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQh56geU0X8
- bcraven 2y ago
  On January 10th 2016, Clarkson came clean in his article in the Mail on Sunday and admitted that the whole thing was rigged. Clarkson wrote, “You may remember: I drove it (the Reliant Robin) around Sheffield and it kept falling over. Well now’s the time to come clean. A normal Reliant Robin will not roll unless a drunken rugby team is on hand. Or its windy. But in a headlong drive to amuse and entertain, I’d asked the backroom boys to play around with the differential so that the poor thing rolled over every time I turned the steering wheel” https://www.reliant.website/topgear.shtml https://www.reliant.website/topgear.shtml
  - DocTomoe 2y ago
    And yet, several of my friends located the general Sheffield area agree that while the video was a bit over the top, generally, Robins tended to do that. That Sheffield is a surprisingly hilly city with sometimes hard turns meaning you have auto-acceleration on hills down, and often are a bit faster than you'd like, probably doesn't help either.
  - voidUpdate 2y ago
    IIRC they also put a big metal plate in the roof to make it even more top-heavy
CalRobert 2y ago
I was so excited to try a cargo bike I made sure to rent a Cristiana bike on a holiday to Copenhagen with my pregnant wife. Then I crashed while turning with her as a passenger. She was displeased. We now ride a two wheeled urban arrow. Three wheelers seem incredibly unstable except perhaps for ones with independently pivoting wheels like the babboe carve
- tokai 2y ago
  While super unstable three wheelers are good for very heavy or large loads. Like moving a refrigerator. Start stop city traffic with +100kg load is easier on three than two wheels. Must say I never liked riding the Christiania bikes myself.
  - econ 2y ago
    The old ones in NL easily take 300kg. You just have to learn not to attempt sharp corners. A normal bike also allows you to jerk the steering wheel 90 degrees at high speed.
  - Steltek 2y ago
    It begs the question, are you carrying extreme loads, like refrigerators, on a daily basis? If not, then this is like buying an F-350 when you're mostly taking your kids to school. If so, then maybe none of these are the right design and you might want to look into something like a cargo trailer.
    - tokai 2y ago
      Well yes a ton of people are ferrying multiple kids plus their school bags everyday. They are far from common enough to get compared to F-350s. Nobody would commute on them daily if they didn't have a recurring need to haul something. They are far too expensive to buy as a beater.
      - lostlogin 2y ago
        > Nobody would commute on them daily if they didn't have a recurring need to haul something. They are far too expensive to buy as a beater. I really can’t tell, are you referring to an F-350 or a cargo bike?

DocTomoe 2y ago

Pedals directly on the front wheel means no shifting the chain, which means you better have not skipped leg day if there is even the slightest hill on your route while you are fully loaded.

smlacy 2y ago
Electric motor though?
zellyn 2y ago
It apparently has a gearbox in the hub.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
dmurray 2y ago
Isn't it the other way around? One revolution of your pedals gets one revolution of the wheel. Normally you'd get several revolutions out of it. So you need to pedal faster than you're used to, but each push is easier. It's like being in a very low gear suitable for climbing hills. The penny-farthing solved this problem by having a very large wheel.
- spinarrets 2y ago
  When I am in hill climbing gear, I turn more revolutions on my pedals than the tires turn. The higher that ration (pedal turns:wheel turns) the 'easier' it is to pedal, but the more turns you need to go forwards. A bike that is a 1:1 'fixie' would indeed struggle with hills like the OP suggests. However, this bike has a secret hub within the wheel that does gearing, so you have (iirc) 3 ratios you can use to get up to speed or climb hills.
doctoboggan 2y ago
The chain is the transmission, and the shifting mechanism works with it. But you can easily have more compact gearboxes directly on the wheel without the need for a chain.
2y ago

hombre_fatal 2y ago

That front bike section looks so cool. I guess it's so alien looking because the whole section turns instead of just the wheel which affords it more creative license than a traditional handlebar attached to a fork. I bet it also feels alien to turn a steering wheel with your feet on bike pedals.

0xEF 2y ago
I'm not sure where you grew up, but in the US we had a kid's toy called a Big Wheel which your feet had to turn with when you turned the handlebars. It was wildly awkward, terribly designed, but we got really good at it, anyway. The pedals would even scrape concrete on turns often enough to wear them down.
- Groxx 2y ago
  There are also adult versions: https://youtu.be/moRE8IlNiMU https://youtu.be/moRE8IlNiMU
  - 0xEF 2y ago
    Those look dangerously fun. Looks like there's electric and gas powered versions, as well. Much respect to the mad lad slowing his descent in flipflops, by the way.
hackingonempty 2y ago
A USA company has/had a patent on a pivoting bottom bracket bike transmission like this and has been making bikes for a while. https://cruzbike.com/ https://cruzbike.com/

jmercouris 2y ago

This design is unstable and expensive to produce with a complicated in wheel transmission. It is novel, but almost certainly more expensive and less reliable than existing designs.

camtarn 2y ago
You've not come across hub gears on bikes before, have you? They were pretty much the standard before derailleur gears became popular, and modern ones can have up to 7 speeds.
- mrob 2y ago
  Modern ones can have more than 7 speeds. The Rohloff Speedhub has 14 speeds, and the Shimano Alfine is available with either 8 or 11 speeds.
  - lostlogin 2y ago
    They are so so nice to ride. I’ve ended up with some electronic road SRAM which is seriously quick in comparison (except for the slow rider), but do miss the smooth internal hub and the stationary gear changes.
  - camtarn 2y ago
    Oh, nice, the state of the art has advanced since I last read about hub gears, which was ... oh dear, about twenty years ago? No wonder things have improved :)
- jmercouris 2y ago
  I meant the whole design. The hub gear is no different than on any other bicycle and can be reliable.
ninalanyon 2y ago
In wheel gears have been in use for over a century very successfully. I had a Raleigh bicycle with Sturmey Archer gears as a child. It never gave me any trouble, unlike the derailleur gears I had on later bicycles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hub_gear https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hub_gear

iambateman 2y ago

Please excuse my hacker-newsyness… This idea is absurdly underbaked…other commenters mentioned that it’s going to flip, and it is. Not to mention that no bike shop in the world will know how to work on these things. There’s lots of reasons that this design died in the 1930’s after a short run. But…so you know I’m a reasonable guy despite my blithering criticism…I love weird alternative vehicles and I hope that version two of this is a massive success because this world needs more tiny vehicles and fewer 8’ tall Ford F-150’s. Best of luck!

spinarrets 2y ago
> This idea is absurdly underbaked…other commenters mentioned that it’s going to flip, and it is. Assuming the rear is loaded with cargo, you'd have a low center of gravity over two wheels. To tip over, one of the rear wheels would need to come up, but that's where most of the weight is. And I suspect the engineers who built this probably didn't just completely miss "oh wait, what if it tips over!?" Unless you've a) got some experience with this domain and b) got some experience with this bike, I don't know how you could know this bike is going to flip over.
- iambateman 2y ago
  My concern was mostly if the back isn’t heavily loaded. But you’re probably right overall…if the attachments are expected to be substantially heavier than I was initially thinking, and if the bike were designed to go pretty slow, it’d be ok.

oulipo 2y ago

Really good looking :) You should definitely put a repairable Gouach e-bike battery on it haha https://gouach.com https://gouach.com

Groxx 2y ago
One of those "obvious in retrospect" designs, neat. Makes me wonder if there are complications to doing it this way, or if everyone else just likes selling more complete packs than necessary.

btbuildem 2y ago

Tricycles are inherently unstable in turns, especially when not loaded down, because they cannot lean. And when carrying a load, the same rules of physics apply, resulting in a lot of torsional forces on the frame. There's a reason we see so few of those on the roads, amidst an explosion of various human-powered modes of transport. Here's the original: http://youtube.com/watch?v=RuPwRQOUhl4 http://youtube.com/watch?v=RuPwRQOUhl4 Here's the reimagined modern version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA7qGYNFuY0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA7qGYNFuY0 In both cases, the rider effectively sits atop of where the handlebars would be on a traditional trike. You can see in the first video the lads have a hard time keeping all wheels on the ground. One notable difference between the new model and the old is that they seem to have changed the geometry of the frame so that the driver doesn't lean into the turn (the turning wheel stays upright). They don't demonstrate it in motion very well, but that kind of turn action will tend to throw the rider "out" of the turn, making the trike fall over opposite of the direction of the turn. The old version tends to fall "into" the turn. I can't think of many advantages to this design, other than the driving unit and cargo are modular. Even then, the rider would not be able to travel without the cargo portion. Trikes are tricky, they don't go very fast, they don't turn well, and they're wider than most other pedal-powered vehicles, making them hard to use on existing cycle infrastructure.

djmips 2y ago
Using a video of duffers trying the bike for the first time is not very convincing. I expect that with experience you'd get the handle on the trike design and control it quite well.
econ 2y ago
If you have a large preferably rusty box in front of you the cars treat you like royalty.
jandrese 2y ago
If you're trying to keep all of the wheels on the ground you're not using it efficiently. With trikes when you go around a curve the inner wheel lifts off the ground, especially as many trikes have solid rear axles. It feels scary to have it pitch outward in the turns, but it is how the machine works.

matt-p 2y ago

It's totally mad and impractical; I love it!

gazarubbleparty 2y ago

[flagged]

dpedu 2y ago

While interesting, I feel like this would be difficult or at least feel extremely weird to ride. When you steer on a 2-wheeled bicycle, you countersteer, which is pushing the wheel left in order to go right, or vice-versa. But this has a steering wheel that I assume works like a car, you turn the wheel left to go left. It would feel weird riding a bicycle while having to remember to steer like a car.

thesuitonym 2y ago
Probably less weird than you think. For one thing, it uses a steering wheel like a car, so that steering motion would feel more natural, and most people don't know they need to countersteer on a bike, they just do it without thinking. Even if it used handlebars, people ride trikes all the time without any real problems.

gomox 2y ago

Lol @ what appears to be paddle shifters or paddle brakes [0] under a steering wheel on a bike?? [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA7qGYNFuY0&t=77s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA7qGYNFuY0&t=77s

MomsAVoxell 2y ago

Revive? These things are still in active use all over Europe .. backfiet .. and while they’re fun, they can be exhausting if you overfill them with groceries, kids, roadkill, oilyballs, etc. There’s a tricked out one in my ‘hood (Vienna) that has electric assist. I guess that’d be practical for a daily ride …

IneffablePigeon 2y ago
Did your read the article? It’s talking about a totally different design to a standard bakfiet.
uxp100 2y ago
When I look up backfiet I see a typical cargo bike, what the article is discussing is a design where you directly drive the front wheel (with a 3 speed hub in this case). Seems worse, but nifty.
micromacrofoot 2y ago
You can see how it's different from a backfiet though, right? the article describes: > places the rider directly above the front wheel. They pedal this wheel directly; there's no chain, reducing maintenance needs. A three-speed gearbox in the hub makes starting easier. > An additional benefit to the two-piece frame is that the bike can be broken down for transport, allowing the user "to load it into a trunk for easy transport from point A to point B." > Lastly, the company says the shorter wheelbase of their arrangement provides a tighter turning radius, making the bike easier to maneuver in urban environments.
century19 2y ago
Bakfiets no? That’s what the Dutch call it and they use them widely. Especially the electric versions you can get nowadays.

ploum 2y ago

Am I the only one unable to open that website ?

dsr_ 2y ago
It half-opened for me, bogged down, and on re-load crashed the Firefox tab.
- ploum 2y ago
  had the same experience, even in private windows without any plugin. People really goes to great length to make sure their text is unreadable for some of their users.
  - ploum 2y ago
    Funnily enough, it works "great" on Librewolf (with quote around "great" because that design is awful, eating most of the screen estate with a fixed menu)
    - dendrite9 2y ago
      Yeah unfortunately it breaks Firefox for me.

onlypassingthru 2y ago

There's probably a good reason nobody has touched this design in 90+ years. As the last photo demonstrates, banging the back of your leg against a trailer hitch every time you turn would get annoying real quick.

Calwestjobs 2y ago
Please do not mention spray from cars in front of you! XD
torlok 2y ago
Looks like something that can easily be solved by tweaking the curve. I also don't think you'll be doing such sharp turns often, and at that angle and speed you may as well get off.
- onlypassingthru 2y ago
  On the contrary, it's a fundamental flaw in the design. The second to last photo shows the trailer directly over the pedal which will inevitably either push the rider's leg off or limit the turn radius.
  - rtkwe 2y ago
    It's pictured at the furthest back position for the pedals though which means your leg will mostly go forward of the pedals and not much back. I would trust people having actually ridden this to not have their legs slammed into the trailer vs how it looks on one render or photo.

ljf 2y ago

Off topic - the the colour scheme choices for the Cookie selection pop-up on that site are awful. I'll admit I'm colour blind, but I assume those are hard for others to see when the switches are on or off? Unless that was their plan?

nabilhat 2y ago

It's always exciting to see this idea get revived for the first time in ninety years every ten years! I've pedaled around on a couple variations of this design. Like everyone who had never ridden one but saw it on the internet, I also confidently imagined it would violently hurl me to the ground at the slightest provocation. I was wrong, which strangely seems to be a pattern for confident opinions I've formed based on things I've only seen on the internet. Having not been for a ride on this particular iteration, I will not post confident opinions about it on the internet. The best (granted, of two...) version I've tried was semi-recumbent, with a standard geartrain and flevobike-style steering. The steering was a little weird at first, but I quickly figured out how to fully steer it hands free. Fully unloaded it was possible to tip it with hard front braking while turning, if you pitched your body weight into the effort. Loaded, it was absolutely nailed to the ground. You're just a mule winching a load down the road at that point. Sometimes it's fun to be a mule, piloting a weird bike-cart. It turns out everyone flamewarring about stability on the internet forgot to get mad about drive wheel traction limits when pulling a load uphill. Which for me was a loading consideration rather than a problem. The underseat steering was brilliant for reasons I'd never thought about. But don't take my word for it, ride one and decide for yourself. https://web.archive.org/web/20130309080557/http://hpm.catoregon.org/?page_id=73 https://web.archive.org/web/20130309080557/http://hpm.catore...

BrtByte 2y ago
The bit about confidently expecting to get yeeted off the bike based purely on internet logic is hilariously relatable

jabl 2y ago

For everyone complaining about tricycles, one thing I've seen here and there in Europe being used for inner city deliveries is what I learned is called "Velove Armadillo", a 4-wheeled cargo bike https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAaVXKBamd0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAaVXKBamd0 You can even hook up a trailer to it for even more cargo.

_kb 2y ago
There’s lots more too, in various forms depending on what you’re hauling: https://cargobike.guide/ https://cargobike.guide/

antfarm 2y ago

Cube has a model called "Trike Hybrid" that has a similar, more practical design: https://www.cube.eu/de-de/e-bikes/transport/trike-hybrid https://www.cube.eu/de-de/e-bikes/transport/trike-hybrid

sn0n 2y ago

Kids these days would take the unicycle front and just roll around doing their free wheelie thing.

skeeter2020 2y ago

feels like these types of human-powered cargo vehicles work better when they're pushing the load vs towing a trailer, either the 2 wheeler cargo that's got the payload way out front, or the reverse trikes. The closest I've tried to this type of geo is a regular bike towing a 2-wheeled trailer, and that has both logistic & performance issues. This setup has you really tall/forward, and the trailer interfering with the pedaling & leg movement.

HumblyTossed 2y ago

Berm Peak reviewed a cargo bike some months ago: https://youtu.be/H7w57U3ijHY?si=EWXoYPNVpkwxh-oT https://youtu.be/H7w57U3ijHY?si=EWXoYPNVpkwxh-oT

ben7799 2y ago

These comments just read like a whole bunch of people who never rode a bike and yet are somehow experts on everything about bikes. This thing is not for Le Tour and you don't go fast on it and you don't go up giant hills on it. That makes a lot of the concerns here go out the window. These types of bikes shaped objects often have all kinds of issues with trying to use bike parts designed for standard bikes on something that is very different. Issues with needing enormous chains, huge cable runs, etc.. when designers try things like this they are worrying about issues like that more than whether you can climb a mountain on it or stuff it into a corner at high speed without going out of control. The thing with these is the cost to design & manufacture components that need to be different than normal bikes can be astronomical, so anything they can do to design the frame to use normal components in a normal/non-compromised way pays off in a huge way. The ideas behind this aren't that different than the Cruzbike being front wheel drive to get rid of a lot of the component/drivetrain issues that recumbent bikes are famous for.

bgnn 2y ago
People comparing these with racing bikes is so unbelievable.
elliottkember 2y ago
The comment asking about riding positions drop bars was hilarious. Lots of Americans in the comments is probably why, plus the Hacker News tendency toward armchair expertise. The American grid system tends to produce hills that are unmanageable on a town or cargo bike, so bicycles are a fitness/enthusiast thing. And US cities are much more spread out, too. In more walkable European cities, these bikes make a lot of sense.
- StopDisinfo910 2y ago
  The discussion is very much a case of people from the USA having the far too rare realisation than most places in Europe have nothing in common with their country.
- Freak_NL 2y ago
  These would work beautifully in Dutch cities, although you can easily see from the design that its native biotope is Paris, where cars are increasingly being pushed out of the narrow streets.

globular-toast 2y ago

Bike is short for bicycle. That means exactly two wheels.

bgnn 2y ago

This is neat but I'm not sure sbout sitting on top of the wheel. An electric version would be great For people questioning the viability of trikes, here is what the Dutch postal service uses: https://www.bikeshift.com/nl/assets/components/phpthumbof/cache/Fietskoerier%20PostNL.7d2a72c19e4a34525961dbb13f56c6c8.png https://www.bikeshift.com/nl/assets/components/phpthumbof/ca... And this is ehat they are testing for future: https://fulpra.com/ https://fulpra.com/

jabl 2y ago
> And this is ehat they are testing for future: https://fulpra.com/ https://fulpra.com/ That front part looks more like a moped or light motorcycle than a bike. But with that kind of load on the back I suppose it makes sense.

fitsumbelay 2y ago

There are a couple of long time bike messengers here in DC who've been using this same rig for 15+ years. One has a rear seat for one of his kids.

ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago

This looks cool. I'd have to try it, myself, to see if it works. However, it also looks like these are all renderings. It would be interesting to see a live demo. The one actual photo looks quite different from the renderings.

thuanao 2y ago

What's the advantage to a trike? Heavier load? Two wheels is less parts, less maintenance, and most importantly better maneuverability.

bcraven 2y ago
When you stop it doesn't fall over. Big plus.
- WJW 2y ago
  Especially when you have so much cargo that it's impractical to hold the bike upright manually.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]

gcanyon 2y ago

I can't stop thinking about riding this without the trailer, as a unicycle with gears.

an1sotropy 2y ago
The bummer is that the transmission is only unidirectional, but a unicycle needs bidirectional control, with very little backlash. Every economical planetary gear hub involves over-running pawls, alas.
- gcanyon 2y ago
  Guys (I'm sure women do too, but I haven't seen it) riding wheelies seem to manage. But I take your point -- I've ridden a unicycle extensively, but never a wheelie.
_kb 2y ago
Alternatively, a mini wheel attachment for instant penny farthing, similar to https://bicymple.com/ https://bicymple.com/.

asix66 2y ago

In Copenhagen, Denmark, these are used all over the city to, well, deliver cargo. Then, annually they have a fun cargo-bike race called "Svajerløb" [0] The event is based on traditional races that took place between the 1930s and 1960s. In the race, riders typically complete four laps - the first lap ridden with an empty cargo bike, then stopping to load up their bikes with cargo before completing three more laps with the full load. [1] It's super fun. [0] https://www.facebook.com/Svajerloeb/ https://www.facebook.com/Svajerloeb/ [1] https://copenhagenize.com/2017/10/arrange-svajerlb-cargo-bike-race.html https://copenhagenize.com/2017/10/arrange-svajerlb-cargo-bik...

spinarrets 2y ago
Are there many of this configuration? (Load in the back as a tricycle). I see lots of good cargo bikes (and I LOVE cargo bikes), just not many of this design. But facebook doesn't let me browse much without an account.
- INTPenis 2y ago
  I'm across the strait in Malmö and it's very rare to find the cargo in the back. Mostly senior citizens ride a variant of this bike with two wheels in the back, a small pannier. Maybe because it suits their balance better. But recently a coffee bike has been turning up here in Malmö with a classic 50s design just like the Cycleauto one, but the wheel is not mounted under the rider. https://gastro-bike.com/en/coffee-bike/ https://gastro-bike.com/en/coffee-bike/ This is not it but it's close. The one we have here is more of a rounded 50s design on the carriage. I don't have any pics.

91Jacob 2y ago

Sounds like a great way to get robbed

spinarrets 2y ago
I ride a cargo bike through the city, probably 100 miles of commuting through a downtown corridor every week. Pedestrians are basically zero worry relative to cars and people on those rental scooters. I have an e-assist on mine, so I can absolutely outrun anyone menacing, and biking so much gets you in healthy enough shape that most folks think, "Nah, I'll wait for an easier target." And if that didn't do the trick, pepper spray is a reasonable option. People on foot are really, really not the worry. Mindless drivers who think they are invincible so they don't pay attention to their environment are FAR more dangerous.

Corey_ 2y ago

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dartharva 2y ago

Cycle rickshaws/pedicabs have been in use for several decades in India and other poorer parts of the world. And they are miles better in usability than whatever this is.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

BrtByte 2y ago

Yet, the unconventional steering mechanism and rider position might pose challenges in terms of ergonomics and maneuverability, especially when compared to traditional cargo bikes

kristel100 2y ago

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CelestialMystic 2y ago

The issue with this design is the front 3 geared hub. It says it would reduce maintenance needs. The derailleur and chain are often cheaper and require very little maintenance other than oiling and maybe cleaning. They last literally last 1000s of miles. There isn't a maintenance concern typically. In fact I think it is harder to maintenance hubs from what I've read. These sorts of issues plague a lot of bike designs where they try to do something radically different. The reason why the derailleur and chains are used so often is because they are relatively cheap, work well and require maybe a few cheap tools to remove/refit parts (I have done this myself many times). Also as for the modular design. Why would I care about a modular design if I wanted something like this. You aren't going to be a courier one day and then suddenly running Gelato stand the next.

spacerzasp 2y ago
>Why would I care about a modular design if I wanted something like this. You aren't going to be a courier one day and then suddenly running Gelato stand the next. I have a thought like this regarding my compute needs in my house all the time, and then another need pops up, and I'm so glad I can wrangle an existing expensive piece of kit to also cover the new need. Just between the Gelato stand and personal item transport could be one such need
- CelestialMystic 2y ago
  The need to switch between the examples given is niche (I deliberately chose something I thought was ridiculous to illustrate the point), in a niche market. This is probably why this design didn't last long.
  - spacerzasp 2y ago
    Only because the need to haul anything heavy or large by muscle power is niche. That segment has just been taken by larger combustion or electric engine'd vehicles. Where large loads are commonly hauled with tractors, it's a very common theme to have detachable tools, not tractor per tool.

willemlaurentz 2y ago

One thing that most non-cyclists may not realise, is that (because of your lower speed) it is actually an advantage to keep your cargo sight when riding through an urban area. (You don't want people steal your cargo while waiting for the traffic lights.) Or, when transporting kids, you want to be able to see them, talk with them, keep an eye on them. I have cycled over 30,000 Kilometers in and around Amsterdam on various bikes - and written many different posts on it: https://willem.com/blog/bike/ https://willem.com/blog/bike/ (including on cargo bikes like Babboe)

AyyEye 2y ago
> You don't want people steal your cargo while waiting for the traffic lights. I'm glad I live somewhere I can't even fathom this happening.

Brajeshwar 2y ago

This is a much fancier Rickshaw[1] on Steroid. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickshaw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickshaw

curtisszmania 2y ago

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AndrewSwift 2y ago

The seat is too low.

Caelus9 1y ago

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