8 ms·

$20 Cardboard Bicycle Could 'Change The World,' Inventor Says

107 points by rileycrane 14y ago

antonioevans 14y ago
Very cool use of materials. I could totally see this mass produced for children learning how to ride bikes and even cities testing out the "share-a-bike" program.
- quantumhobbit 14y ago
  I immediately thought of some sort of share a bike program or better yet disposable bikes. For $20 visitors to a city could buy a bike ride it for a week or so then recycle the cardboard, assuming the cardboard is recyclable after whatever treatments it goes through. Although I doubt the $20 estimate without a way to automate production. The video made it seem like a fairly labor intensive practice.
  - ramchip 14y ago
    But... why not just lend regular, cheap bikes and reuse them? Reuse is a lot less expensive than recycling. I visited a city last week (Matsumoto) that has this service, they lend cheap city bikes for free by the day. Not even an ID card needed, you just write your name and phone number and go. It's a fantastic service when visiting.
    - yozmsn 14y ago
      Seems like a great way to loose a lot of bikes.
      - ramchip 14y ago
        It's been working fine for years, though. I think part of it is being in Japan, and part of it is that the bikes just don't have much resale value. No point stealing creaky, cheap city bikes.
beering 14y ago
You can already find real bikes for $20 in parts of the world like China. Since the article doesn't say so, I guess that this bike has to be quite a bit cheaper to make than $20 for it to be worthwhile, but then it'll be the labor costs that outweigh the material costs by far.
- marknutter 14y ago
  I'd wager he point isn't really the cost, it's that recycled materials are being used.
  - reportingsjr 14y ago
    Metals are much easier to recycle than paper products. To recycle metals you might need to do a bit of pre-processing, grind up everything a bit, and throw it in a crucible to melt it down. 100% recyclable and the same as new when recast. To recycle paper you have to make sure everything is sorted (no plastic, metal, etc in with your paper) and do a good amount of chemical processing and the end result isn't as easily like "new" paper. I don't see how this gives cardboard the edge in recycled materials use for a bike.
    - morsch 14y ago
      While metal recycling might be simpler in terms of the process, paper recycling might still be more efficient in terms of energy/volume or money/volume.
      - morsch 14y ago
        Energy used for recycling paper: roughly 1000 kWh/short ton (Wikipedia). Savings of about 60%. Energy used for recycling aluminum: 700 kWh/short ton. (Various websites.) Savings of about 95%! I knew aluminum recycling was crazy efficient compared to refining it in the first place, but I'm surprised it's the same or even cheaper per ton as paper.
        14y ago
wtvanhest 14y ago
The cheapest brake pads available for bikes cost about $4.99 or roughly 25% of the cost of what he says this bike could cost. So how exactly can you build the remainder of a bike for $15.01? It doesn’t make any sense at all. At the end of the day, everyone would be better off if no one built cheap bikes, and they only built high quality bikes that people would resell in a used market as they got older. Riding a cheap bike is at best uncomfortable and at worst dangerous. [Added] Bicycle frames last for 20+ years, it doesn't seem like the environment is really a factor here whatsoever.
- dmm 14y ago
  Plus bike frames are made from steel or aluminum, both completely recyclable materials.
- recursive 14y ago
  When you talk about the cheapest brake pads available, are you talking about consumer price from a retailer?
- Anechoic 14y ago
  Bicycle frames last for 20+ years That's conservative - my mom has (steel) bike frames hanging in her garage that date back to the 1970's that are in great shape and they've barely been maintained in the interim. I'm guessing a well-maintained frame could last for 50 years.
  - reportingsjr 14y ago
    Over the summer my brother lent me his bike to use for a month or two. It is a 1974 Gitane racing/road bike, so nearly 40 years old, and it was still in fantastic shape. Practically zero visible rust, frame was still decently straight, etc. (I did have to replace a plastic gear in the derailleur)
  - dlhavema 14y ago
    My niece was given the little red bicycle my mom learned to ride a bike on after my dad refinished it, the frame was great, just the aesthetics needed touching up. This bike is in the running for 60 or 70+ years, which is probably not an uncommon occurrence..
DanBC 14y ago
A neat idea. I'm gently worried about how good it is to ride. Give people a bike that rides well and they're likely to continue to ride it. Give people a bike that they don't like and they're not going to ride that bike, and will be less likely to ride any bike in future. Still good luck to them. Some places have horrific road accident death rates so getting people out of cars, off mopeds, and onto bicycles could help.
- rileycrane 14y ago
  Check out the video. It actually seems like a nice ride https://vimeo.com/37584656 https://vimeo.com/37584656
debacle 14y ago
Really overstated headline from NPR - that seems to be a trend lately. Regardless, I don't think the cardboard bike is going to change the world. People have been experimenting with cardboard bikes for years, and they've never caught on.
- Vivtek 14y ago
  Yeah: "<amazing headline claim>, inventor says" is the first sentence, and my heart fell.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
krosaen 14y ago
more on this from the TQ: http://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21567200-transport-cardboard-bicycle-sounds-plausible-chocolate-teapot http://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21567200-...
utopkara 14y ago
Consider this as a demonstration of cardboard as a material, not that of a bike. Now, if we are to prefer cardboard bikes for their environmental friendliness, we would probably want to look at what else is used to make the material strong. If it only works in combination with a bunch of toxic glues and solvents, then one will need tons of marketing to create a hype with smoke and mirrors to cover up that part of the picture. I am excited about this project though. Because, in the end, even if we don't get a $20 bike, we might get the knowledge of converting cardboard into a cheap and easy to shape material we can play with at home for our own projects.
tjic 14y ago
There is a trend that cuts through the industrial design world (you can see a new instance of it pop online every few hours) - the idea that the regular market economy is missing the boat on some GENIUS idea that involves recycling / underlooked materials / sustainability, and that this genius idea can also drastically cut costs. I happen to love the Lego-block nature of cargo containers, and while doing research on them first stumbled into this pattern: it seems that every third design major comes up with the idea to use cargo containers as cheap pre-fab houses. Well, it turns out that while cargo containers are relatively cheap, they're really not all that good for housing - they're too small, they're uninsulated, they need as much (or more) build out on the inside as a regular house, they're harder to put windows into, etc. The same sort of pattern appears with all sorts of other materials: people get the idea that left over offcuts of wood at house construction sites can be laminated into tables or bathtubs, that asphalt shingles and be ground up and used as a flex fuel, that cardboard can be folded into bicycles, that what the third world really needs is a cheap laptop with a hand-crank on the side, etc. All of these schemes fail in similar ways: * they ignore the huge amounts of evolved-in wisdom that long-held solutions have * they ignore production costs * they ignore labor costs (the "Earthship" underground house plans are great...but they implicitly assume that a thousand hours of labor swinging a sledgehammer is free) * they ignore the costs of ancillary features (brakes on a bike, insulation on a house) * they pretend that some materials are "green" and others are "anti-green". * they often assume a superior attitude to people in the third world, assuming that first world design students have better ideas than millions of third world people who actually know what resources are available and what features are desirable. Steel bicycles have a TON of evolved cleverness in them. They are the end result of a fierce evolutionary winnowing. If you're ever tempted to announce to the world that everything that's gone before has been mistaken and you've got a solution for other people that's a ton better, take a moment and think through all the OTHER criteria that these people might consider relevant. You may have come up with a wonderful new idea (it happens!), but chances are that there are good reasons that the idea has not already been adopted.
- m_d 14y ago
  Thank you. You've just described one of the top three reasons I left my industrial design program for computer science.
brador 14y ago
Is the cardboard still viable in wet weather? Does it have a special coating?
- Bill_Dimm 14y ago
  "...the cardboard is treated with a secret concoction made of organic materials to give it its waterproof and fireproof qualities..."
  - jl6 14y ago
    "Organic" - is there a "green baloney detection kit" that outs stuff like this?
    - Bill_Dimm 14y ago
      That's the part that caught your eye? I'm still trying to figure out why a bicycle needs to be fireproof.
circa 14y ago
watch out for those puddles!!!
error54 14y ago
As an avid rider, I really like the concept and applaud his effort but I have a few detractions. -While it's a good idea to use recycled parts, no manufacturer is going to go through the trouble of creating a (conceivably multi-million dollar) factory to make these bikes and only sell them for twenty dollars. -Let's not forget that $20 is still a heck of a lot of money in third world countries. Half the world lives on less than $2.50 a day[1]. -Bikes aren't that expensive or hard to come by, even in impoverished nations. I think a real difference could be made if this guy set up a non-profit, sold these cardboard bikes to people who really like live "green", and donated the profits to the red cross or some other charity. 1-http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-sta...
colinshark 14y ago
This bike essentially requires the same skilled labor to build as a carbon fiber bike. Its only claim to fame is that it doesn't use the $8 (guess) of steel you need to build a standard bike frame. The rest of the components cost about $90. It's competing with Chinese bikes. The plan has not been thought through, but it's great news bait.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
lifeisstillgood 14y ago
But bicycles are already very cheap in India - a two second google gave me this: http://www.fitjog.com/bicycles-for-weight-loss/atlas-bicycles-for-fitness.php http://www.fitjog.com/bicycles-for-weight-loss/atlas-bicycle... At roughly 60USD that is a bike sold on the best SEO'd web site. What is sold out of local garages will be less. I am not a Indian native and I am not a developmental economist, but I cannot see a cardboard bicycle doing this http://www.flickr.com/photos/pingpongong/7855376404/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/pingpongong/7855376404/ or this http://www.flickr.com/photos/aidg/533780375/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/aidg/533780375/ The traditional Phillips style bike has a long pedigree - its brakes may be useless and its long in the tooth but everybody in SE Asia can fix one. When a cardboard bike folds, you throw it away and get a new one. I think the environment will still have a net win on steel.
- rwbt 14y ago
  Yea, Bicycles are very cheap in India due to the large scale of production. They also have specialized bikes for farmers, which help them carry around multiple bags with ease. Many, if not most of the young people in India own a Bicycle not for recreation, but as a serious mode of transportation. I will take a $60 steel Bicycle over a $20 cardboard bicycle anyday.
jdietrich 14y ago
I would like to coin an axiom: The practical impact of a new invention is inversely proportional to the attention it receives from the popular press. Weird bicycles, 3d printers, "breakthrough" cancer drugs, alternative energy sources, etc ad nauseum.
duiker101 14y ago
Letting aside the real possibilities of the project, this sentence said by the creator to me has no value whatsoever...I mean find me a founder that doesn't think his product can change the world...
jiggy2011 14y ago
People in congested cities don't not ride bikes because they are too expensive. You can get a second hand one on craigslist for not much more than $20. It's because: 1) They're lazy and don't like pedalling up hills 2) They're worried they'll get killed by a car 3) They're worried they'll get a puncture and be late or have their pants ripped on the chainring. 4) They have stuff to carry around and don't want to mess with a trailer.
- pavel_lishin 14y ago
  5) They don't want to arrive at their destination all sweaty. Maybe it's only a problem for me (and I do tend to sweat a lot) but biking a hundred blocks to work without being able to take a shower after is not a viable option.
patrickgzill 14y ago
My first question was: what happens if you bump a curb at speed? How does the cardboard handle the impact?
- sopooneo 14y ago
  Which relates to a question I had about this bike when I first read about it. The article admits it has a shorter lifespan than a traditional bike, but why? How do you know it's no good any longer? Does it just get hard to pedal after n days? Or does it fail catastrophically after an average of n days of use? If the latter, that's a show stopper.
afterburner 14y ago
No-one seems to have mentioned that cross-winds would be tough on this bike, with its wide flat panels.
piyush_soni 14y ago
This bicycle is designed in SolidWorks, the software I make :) ... Just saying ...
webjprgm 14y ago
I think this is awesome in and of itself. I don't care if it turns out to be super cheap and green. $20 just seems entirely unrealistic to me. Half of that cost (at least) would be the tires alone (at least it looks like he's got tires on the outside of the cardboard wheel). But a cardboard bike? Just plain awesome.
gavindouglas 14y ago
The problem: Get more people to start using bikes worldwide. The solution: Make cities more bike friendly. Its going to come down to urban planning, incentives, and community programs. Cheaper more affordable bikes are certainly a component of increasing adoption, but if you really want to move the needle we need the developed and developing world to look a bit more like the Netherlands, and not Texas.
mixmastamyk 14y ago
Awesome. Was walking next to a bike store this weekend with $5000 bikes in the windows and was just plain gobsmacked. Could only utter "WTF" a few times. Perhaps this one can restore some sanity.
- nl 14y ago
  $5000 bikes in the windows Clearly they were keeping the expensive bikes[1][2] away from the windows then? [1] http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/03/worlds-fastest-bike-mclaren-and-specialized-team-up-with-a-venge-ance/ http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/03/worlds-fastest-bike-m... [2] http://www.competitivecyclist.com/frame/2013-wilier-zero-7-record-eps-complete-bike--11147.html http://www.competitivecyclist.com/frame/2013-wilier-zero-7-r...

107 points by rileycrane 14y ago

Very cool use of materials. I could totally see this mass produced for children learning how to ride bikes and even cities testing out the "share-a-bike" program.

quantumhobbit 14y ago
I immediately thought of some sort of share a bike program or better yet disposable bikes. For $20 visitors to a city could buy a bike ride it for a week or so then recycle the cardboard, assuming the cardboard is recyclable after whatever treatments it goes through. Although I doubt the $20 estimate without a way to automate production. The video made it seem like a fairly labor intensive practice.
- ramchip 14y ago
  But... why not just lend regular, cheap bikes and reuse them? Reuse is a lot less expensive than recycling. I visited a city last week (Matsumoto) that has this service, they lend cheap city bikes for free by the day. Not even an ID card needed, you just write your name and phone number and go. It's a fantastic service when visiting.
  - yozmsn 14y ago
    Seems like a great way to loose a lot of bikes.
    - ramchip 14y ago
      It's been working fine for years, though. I think part of it is being in Japan, and part of it is that the bikes just don't have much resale value. No point stealing creaky, cheap city bikes.

beering 14y ago

You can already find real bikes for $20 in parts of the world like China. Since the article doesn't say so, I guess that this bike has to be quite a bit cheaper to make than $20 for it to be worthwhile, but then it'll be the labor costs that outweigh the material costs by far.

marknutter 14y ago
I'd wager he point isn't really the cost, it's that recycled materials are being used.
- reportingsjr 14y ago
  Metals are much easier to recycle than paper products. To recycle metals you might need to do a bit of pre-processing, grind up everything a bit, and throw it in a crucible to melt it down. 100% recyclable and the same as new when recast. To recycle paper you have to make sure everything is sorted (no plastic, metal, etc in with your paper) and do a good amount of chemical processing and the end result isn't as easily like "new" paper. I don't see how this gives cardboard the edge in recycled materials use for a bike.
  - morsch 14y ago
    While metal recycling might be simpler in terms of the process, paper recycling might still be more efficient in terms of energy/volume or money/volume.
    - morsch 14y ago
      Energy used for recycling paper: roughly 1000 kWh/short ton (Wikipedia). Savings of about 60%. Energy used for recycling aluminum: 700 kWh/short ton. (Various websites.) Savings of about 95%! I knew aluminum recycling was crazy efficient compared to refining it in the first place, but I'm surprised it's the same or even cheaper per ton as paper.
      - 14y ago

wtvanhest 14y ago

The cheapest brake pads available for bikes cost about $4.99 or roughly 25% of the cost of what he says this bike could cost. So how exactly can you build the remainder of a bike for $15.01? It doesn’t make any sense at all. At the end of the day, everyone would be better off if no one built cheap bikes, and they only built high quality bikes that people would resell in a used market as they got older. Riding a cheap bike is at best uncomfortable and at worst dangerous. [Added] Bicycle frames last for 20+ years, it doesn't seem like the environment is really a factor here whatsoever.

dmm 14y ago
Plus bike frames are made from steel or aluminum, both completely recyclable materials.
recursive 14y ago
When you talk about the cheapest brake pads available, are you talking about consumer price from a retailer?
Anechoic 14y ago
Bicycle frames last for 20+ years That's conservative - my mom has (steel) bike frames hanging in her garage that date back to the 1970's that are in great shape and they've barely been maintained in the interim. I'm guessing a well-maintained frame could last for 50 years.
- reportingsjr 14y ago
  Over the summer my brother lent me his bike to use for a month or two. It is a 1974 Gitane racing/road bike, so nearly 40 years old, and it was still in fantastic shape. Practically zero visible rust, frame was still decently straight, etc. (I did have to replace a plastic gear in the derailleur)
- dlhavema 14y ago
  My niece was given the little red bicycle my mom learned to ride a bike on after my dad refinished it, the frame was great, just the aesthetics needed touching up. This bike is in the running for 60 or 70+ years, which is probably not an uncommon occurrence..

DanBC 14y ago

A neat idea. I'm gently worried about how good it is to ride. Give people a bike that rides well and they're likely to continue to ride it. Give people a bike that they don't like and they're not going to ride that bike, and will be less likely to ride any bike in future. Still good luck to them. Some places have horrific road accident death rates so getting people out of cars, off mopeds, and onto bicycles could help.

rileycrane 14y ago
Check out the video. It actually seems like a nice ride https://vimeo.com/37584656 https://vimeo.com/37584656

debacle 14y ago

Really overstated headline from NPR - that seems to be a trend lately. Regardless, I don't think the cardboard bike is going to change the world. People have been experimenting with cardboard bikes for years, and they've never caught on.

Vivtek 14y ago
Yeah: "<amazing headline claim>, inventor says" is the first sentence, and my heart fell.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

krosaen 14y ago

more on this from the TQ: http://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21567200-transport-cardboard-bicycle-sounds-plausible-chocolate-teapot http://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21567200-...

utopkara 14y ago

Consider this as a demonstration of cardboard as a material, not that of a bike. Now, if we are to prefer cardboard bikes for their environmental friendliness, we would probably want to look at what else is used to make the material strong. If it only works in combination with a bunch of toxic glues and solvents, then one will need tons of marketing to create a hype with smoke and mirrors to cover up that part of the picture. I am excited about this project though. Because, in the end, even if we don't get a $20 bike, we might get the knowledge of converting cardboard into a cheap and easy to shape material we can play with at home for our own projects.

tjic 14y ago

There is a trend that cuts through the industrial design world (you can see a new instance of it pop online every few hours) - the idea that the regular market economy is missing the boat on some GENIUS idea that involves recycling / underlooked materials / sustainability, and that this genius idea can also drastically cut costs. I happen to love the Lego-block nature of cargo containers, and while doing research on them first stumbled into this pattern: it seems that every third design major comes up with the idea to use cargo containers as cheap pre-fab houses. Well, it turns out that while cargo containers are relatively cheap, they're really not all that good for housing - they're too small, they're uninsulated, they need as much (or more) build out on the inside as a regular house, they're harder to put windows into, etc. The same sort of pattern appears with all sorts of other materials: people get the idea that left over offcuts of wood at house construction sites can be laminated into tables or bathtubs, that asphalt shingles and be ground up and used as a flex fuel, that cardboard can be folded into bicycles, that what the third world really needs is a cheap laptop with a hand-crank on the side, etc. All of these schemes fail in similar ways: * they ignore the huge amounts of evolved-in wisdom that long-held solutions have * they ignore production costs * they ignore labor costs (the "Earthship" underground house plans are great...but they implicitly assume that a thousand hours of labor swinging a sledgehammer is free) * they ignore the costs of ancillary features (brakes on a bike, insulation on a house) * they pretend that some materials are "green" and others are "anti-green". * they often assume a superior attitude to people in the third world, assuming that first world design students have better ideas than millions of third world people who actually know what resources are available and what features are desirable. Steel bicycles have a TON of evolved cleverness in them. They are the end result of a fierce evolutionary winnowing. If you're ever tempted to announce to the world that everything that's gone before has been mistaken and you've got a solution for other people that's a ton better, take a moment and think through all the OTHER criteria that these people might consider relevant. You may have come up with a wonderful new idea (it happens!), but chances are that there are good reasons that the idea has not already been adopted.

m_d 14y ago
Thank you. You've just described one of the top three reasons I left my industrial design program for computer science.

brador 14y ago

Is the cardboard still viable in wet weather? Does it have a special coating?

Bill_Dimm 14y ago
"...the cardboard is treated with a secret concoction made of organic materials to give it its waterproof and fireproof qualities..."
- jl6 14y ago
  "Organic" - is there a "green baloney detection kit" that outs stuff like this?
  - Bill_Dimm 14y ago
    That's the part that caught your eye? I'm still trying to figure out why a bicycle needs to be fireproof.

circa 14y ago

watch out for those puddles!!!

error54 14y ago

As an avid rider, I really like the concept and applaud his effort but I have a few detractions. -While it's a good idea to use recycled parts, no manufacturer is going to go through the trouble of creating a (conceivably multi-million dollar) factory to make these bikes and only sell them for twenty dollars. -Let's not forget that $20 is still a heck of a lot of money in third world countries. Half the world lives on less than $2.50 a day[1]. -Bikes aren't that expensive or hard to come by, even in impoverished nations. I think a real difference could be made if this guy set up a non-profit, sold these cardboard bikes to people who really like live "green", and donated the profits to the red cross or some other charity. 1-http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-sta...

colinshark 14y ago

This bike essentially requires the same skilled labor to build as a carbon fiber bike. Its only claim to fame is that it doesn't use the $8 (guess) of steel you need to build a standard bike frame. The rest of the components cost about $90. It's competing with Chinese bikes. The plan has not been thought through, but it's great news bait.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

lifeisstillgood 14y ago

But bicycles are already very cheap in India - a two second google gave me this: http://www.fitjog.com/bicycles-for-weight-loss/atlas-bicycles-for-fitness.php http://www.fitjog.com/bicycles-for-weight-loss/atlas-bicycle... At roughly 60USD that is a bike sold on the best SEO'd web site. What is sold out of local garages will be less. I am not a Indian native and I am not a developmental economist, but I cannot see a cardboard bicycle doing this http://www.flickr.com/photos/pingpongong/7855376404/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/pingpongong/7855376404/ or this http://www.flickr.com/photos/aidg/533780375/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/aidg/533780375/ The traditional Phillips style bike has a long pedigree - its brakes may be useless and its long in the tooth but everybody in SE Asia can fix one. When a cardboard bike folds, you throw it away and get a new one. I think the environment will still have a net win on steel.

rwbt 14y ago
Yea, Bicycles are very cheap in India due to the large scale of production. They also have specialized bikes for farmers, which help them carry around multiple bags with ease. Many, if not most of the young people in India own a Bicycle not for recreation, but as a serious mode of transportation. I will take a $60 steel Bicycle over a $20 cardboard bicycle anyday.

jdietrich 14y ago

I would like to coin an axiom: The practical impact of a new invention is inversely proportional to the attention it receives from the popular press. Weird bicycles, 3d printers, "breakthrough" cancer drugs, alternative energy sources, etc ad nauseum.

duiker101 14y ago

Letting aside the real possibilities of the project, this sentence said by the creator to me has no value whatsoever...I mean find me a founder that doesn't think his product can change the world...

jiggy2011 14y ago

People in congested cities don't not ride bikes because they are too expensive. You can get a second hand one on craigslist for not much more than $20. It's because: 1) They're lazy and don't like pedalling up hills 2) They're worried they'll get killed by a car 3) They're worried they'll get a puncture and be late or have their pants ripped on the chainring. 4) They have stuff to carry around and don't want to mess with a trailer.

pavel_lishin 14y ago
5) They don't want to arrive at their destination all sweaty. Maybe it's only a problem for me (and I do tend to sweat a lot) but biking a hundred blocks to work without being able to take a shower after is not a viable option.

patrickgzill 14y ago

My first question was: what happens if you bump a curb at speed? How does the cardboard handle the impact?

sopooneo 14y ago
Which relates to a question I had about this bike when I first read about it. The article admits it has a shorter lifespan than a traditional bike, but why? How do you know it's no good any longer? Does it just get hard to pedal after n days? Or does it fail catastrophically after an average of n days of use? If the latter, that's a show stopper.

afterburner 14y ago

No-one seems to have mentioned that cross-winds would be tough on this bike, with its wide flat panels.

piyush_soni 14y ago

This bicycle is designed in SolidWorks, the software I make :) ... Just saying ...

webjprgm 14y ago

I think this is awesome in and of itself. I don't care if it turns out to be super cheap and green. $20 just seems entirely unrealistic to me. Half of that cost (at least) would be the tires alone (at least it looks like he's got tires on the outside of the cardboard wheel). But a cardboard bike? Just plain awesome.

gavindouglas 14y ago

The problem: Get more people to start using bikes worldwide. The solution: Make cities more bike friendly. Its going to come down to urban planning, incentives, and community programs. Cheaper more affordable bikes are certainly a component of increasing adoption, but if you really want to move the needle we need the developed and developing world to look a bit more like the Netherlands, and not Texas.

mixmastamyk 14y ago

Awesome. Was walking next to a bike store this weekend with $5000 bikes in the windows and was just plain gobsmacked. Could only utter "WTF" a few times. Perhaps this one can restore some sanity.

nl 14y ago
$5000 bikes in the windows Clearly they were keeping the expensive bikes[1][2] away from the windows then? [1] http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/03/worlds-fastest-bike-mclaren-and-specialized-team-up-with-a-venge-ance/ http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/03/worlds-fastest-bike-m... [2] http://www.competitivecyclist.com/frame/2013-wilier-zero-7-record-eps-complete-bike--11147.html http://www.competitivecyclist.com/frame/2013-wilier-zero-7-r...