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Posted by hipstomp | 19 Feb 2010
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Comments (3)
For a class project, nine mechanical engineering students at Yale devised a working bicycle with a hubless wheel. It's suspension-free and they only had the time and resources to go hubless on one wheel, but it works:
Why do it? As one of the students explains,
First, it looks cool. Second, we only had a semester so we wanted to pick something that was both feasible and challenging. Also, you can do a lot of things with the space that opens up where the spokes use to be. You can stick an electric motor in there. You can install some sort of gyro balanced storage basket. Finally, the fact that we couldn't find pictures of a real spokeless bicycle online really sealed the deal.
via reddit
Comments
Its nice to see that this mans invention http://www.natuba.com/photo/FPtil8/ is being incorperated for other forms of transportation. It is a decent prototype and good idea for a school project but un practical for the public. The weight alone is a turn off and the cost of materials to make it light would be a turn off the. The fact that it needs 2 gear systems to generate enough rpms shows that their is alot to be done on the project.
Argh. ATTENTION DESIGNERS. Stop with the hubless wheels. They don't look that cool, once you realize the look equates to heavier, less durable, less reliable, etc etc etc.
Normal wheels are cool because they outperform hubless stuff in EVERY category.
Its not hard to say no one else has built it, if you dont bother looking.
The Monocycle
http://www.benwilsondesign.co.uk/