Thursday, January 16, 2014

Flat-Pack Plywood Bike?

     Yes, it's a bicycle after the general Ikea concept.  The maker claims you can ride away 45 minutes after the deliveryman drops off the box but I believe I'd go slower first time 'round.

     It's not cheap -- over a grand, American -- but it's a pretty thing and an interesting notion.

7 comments:

Old NFO said...

Why??? And $1000? Oh HELL no...

markm said...

I don't see wheels in that picture of the opened box. You don't have to make a bike frame out of (very expensive!) wood to take down the frame and pack it without wheels in a flat box.

Roberta X said...

They're in there, markm. It's multi-layer.

Johnny - Oh said...

Other than the price, (which is "cray cray") the biggest thing I see about this nifty contraption is the bare wood. (Looks bare to me. No?) Hey! Let me go for a ride on my cool bike that I left out in the carport! 1st peddle rotation = Movement! 2nd peddle rotation = traction!

But, still yet. A cool thing.

batchainpuller said...

This must be what industrial designers do instead of playing video games or watching football. I think it's tres cool.

Roberta X said...

Johnny-Oh, supposedly, it's all treated and coated. I wonder if they plan to sell replacement wooden parts?

bcp: Yeah! ...As an artifact, it's certainly pretty and one does have to wonder what would happen to the price either as a mass-produced item, or as the metal/plastic parts plus a set of plans. (There are CNC woodworking machines out there, too: add in a flash drive or a CD-ROM with the cutting data?.)

AndyN said...

At first glance I thought the rear triangle and main triangle were separate pieces which would reduce the length of the box, but they're not. With each side of the frame being one long piece, they're not saving any packaging length or width over a steel tube mountain bike frame with the fork removed, and the difference in thickness would be minimal. So for the same price you could have multiple gears, better brakes, and known rigidity and durability without it being much more difficult to ship.

It looks to me like a bicycle for the kind of person who'd drive a Prius so everyone else will know they're the right kind of person.