New wheel for your bicycle: The Copenhagen wheel

New wheel for your bicycle: The Copenhagen wheel
senseable.mit.edu

I'm a 230 pound dude. I'm probably 20-30% body fat. Heck, maybe more. I've put 5,000 miles on a normal bicycle in one year, including a 130+ mile ride in one single day on a mountain bike. I bicycle commute year round in Kansas City. This time of year I ride to the bus stop (5-7 miles round trip depending on my schedule and which buses I take) but quite often, I do the whole round trip by bike alone, which is 29 miles per day. I've driven to work once in the last 2 years. Almost all of my riding is for basic transportation, so I'm not one of those spandex-clad weekend-mile superheroes. I'm not fast, either. It's just efficient, and it makes sense most of the time. If I can do it without electric assist, pretty much anyone can.

That said, there's this whole "I'm Going Green™!" thing going on. And it's not that that's a bad thing either. Efficiency, sustainability and stewardship are great things.

This new wheel, however, actually makes the bike+human machine less efficient. It may have enough gee-whiz factor to get people to ride, but the chances of those people throwing their new hybrid-wheeled-bike onto the roof rack of their Hummer H2 and driving 3 miles to the nearest multi-use-path trailhead are probably rather high. I have my doubts it'll get many people to drive less and ride more.

But on my bike, I only really brake in rare situations, for safety reasons (cars); unfortunately, friction automatically supplies adequate braking for me.

I also choose paths that minimize braking. I guess it's possible that that might change if I had a bike that efficiently stored/applied energy, so that it was as if the braking hadn't occurred. But I don't think so; for one thing, it would be no where near 100% efficient.

I like technology but my bike has nothing on that I can't understand at a glance. Keeping it that way is good.