I think that this is the eighth organism you unlock on ~Fl0W~.

OMG! Ponies!

Aren't the spokes necessary to provide strength to the wheel? I don't think anyone (especially me) could pop a curb without trashing that.

But I still think it looks cool.

cayton

Other than the crazy spokeless design, I must say that the extending arm with the oddly shaped little seat is saying weird uninviting things to me.

Kaiser-Machead's WALL-E fetish

I cant rememeber who it was, but there was a motorcycle custom that was using a similar design rim... I will have to go digging.

sqeakytoy of the apocalypse

no brakes?

similar design (except for the wheels) to a softride, titanflex, or Bike Friday's "Air Friday" (bikefriday.com).

chicagojohn

What about when you drive through a puddle, or some mud. One pebble in the grooves of the tire, and it won't mesh with the gears on the bike. The forces on that back wheel would be tremendous. While the front wheel is on the top and in two places, the one on the back wheel is on the side, and only one point. You come off a curb, and I don't care what the metal is, it would distort the tire a little, which would throw everything off. Sorry to be so critical.

Git Em SteveDave displays attention-grabbing vanity

Call it a "Nullo" and I'll ride it.

albtms

I can't imagine this being very stable. A bike doesn't just move forward and backward. You'd need some kind of lateral stability for the wheel. Without the spokes, the wheel would lose all of it's side-to-side stability and you'd have a potential recipe for face-planting into the pavement.

msisaac

This is really starting to piss me off.

rabiddachshund

@kadaj_sama:
Click the links above to see how wrong you are. Spokes schmokes.

TerryinSt.Paul

@sqeakytoy of the apocalypse:
Consider it dug.
[www.gizmag.com]
[www.gizmag.com]

TerryinSt.Paul

yeah those wheels aren't really doable now because you need spokes to keep the rims in shape. also from the looks of it that bike has no shocks on it whatsoever so you'd feel every pebble in the road.

@chicagojohn: Its a fixed gear bike, which means brakes are basically useless.

kadaj_sama

So many issues with the structural integrity of this bike...

J. Nadeau

Got No Clutch...: Designer intentions be damned. People will still try to use it off-road.

Screwdriver manufacturers don't "intend" their screwdrivers to be used to pry off paint can lids or to dislodge door hinges and yet that is how people use them.

OMG! Ponies!

Really nice design ..! I wonder if the front wheel is a bit hazardous though. It seems as if it could bend sideways since there's nothing supporting it vertically. Really nice concept nevertheless!

KVirtanen

I don't think the designer is even an engineer. Cause its going to take some giant leaps in materials technology to get a wheel that thin to support any kind of weight, let alone the stresses that it would be subjected to in that arrangement.

PridgNYC

@Git Em SteveDave displays attention-grabbing vanity: I really don't the designer intended it to be an offroad bike.

got no clutch? You ain't much.

I've seen this before. Maybe not this exactly, as the one I saw had the wheels coupled magnetically, but the concept was almost identical. I'm going to have to dig it up.

@rabiddachshund:
Get a better browser.

DisposableInterloper

Folks, he's a "designer", not an engineer. You know, form over function. Rims will warp, potato-chip, waffle, distort...and even if they came up with a material that was light enough and didn't distort the rims, I'm sure none could afford it. Pretty, though.

SigmundTheSeaMonster

@No Clutch: I understand that, but unless you plan on only riding this on a pristine indoor arena, there is/are puddles in almost every city, and even in areas with paved roads and sidewalks, there is debris like small rocks and twigs. Twigs and trash like cigarette butts will float in puddles, and this thing would seem like a paddlewheel when going through a puddle, which would possibly pick up those small items and could jam the gear and sprocket set up. So this is a great bike if you only plan to use it indoors on a smooth even track, but will fail anywhere else.

Git Em SteveDave displays attention-grabbing vanity

@TerryinSt.Paul:

A thin, 23mm wide bicycle tire and a rear motorcycle tire are two totally different things.

shocker

I just want to say on word to you,
just one word.

Yes, sir.

Are you listening?
Yes I am.

N a n o t u b e s.

ANoel

Ahh, love the vaporware.

Lizard_King

@craighyatt: There's got to be a little hidden wheel/bearing we're not seeing inside the black casing at both the front and rear that takes the weight of the load while the little red wheels and gear we're seeing just hold the bike wheels in place against the hidden wheel/bearings.

But yeah, I don't think it's going to coast well at all.

GeekyNerdGuy

... just looked at the picture again... maybe if the drive were relocated over the top center of the back wheel.. also might work for electric bikes... interesting if the pedals generated energy and transferred to a motor to drive the bike to eliminate mechanical linkage. i have a bionx conversion kit on order for my bike that's similar in concept.. you have to pedal but a hub motor provides partial assist.

craighyatt

@rabiddachshund: AdBlock Plus is your friend.

AJ_Syrinx

I think it's pretty cool, and it looks beautiful. First two thoughts that popped into my head were: (a) in a center-spoke wheel, the downward force is supported by the spokes, but in an edge-supported wheel i think there will be a long moment arm with all the force concentrated at the point where the wheel hooks to the body which leads to (b) not sure how it will coast because of all the friction due to the concentration of forces. But.. dang! it's a beautiful and minimalist design! Maybe there's a way to make it work with an added support to each wheel.

craighyatt

@Git Em SteveDave displays attention-grabbing vanity: The gears are on the inside of the back wheel, so unless you went through really deep, sticky mud, I think the gearing would stay relatively clean and be ok. You would end up with ever-increasing friction on the little wheels that hold the big wheels on the bike if you went through mud though.

GeekyNerdGuy

@kadaj_sama: :hsugh: My bike doesn't have any shocks whatsoever either...

Ike_Skelton

@TerryinSt.Paul: Notice in those pictures that the spokeless tire has a inner support in the form of a turned up center "rail". This gives the hub additional strength. Also, the inside is smooth up until that point, which gives the tire additional support do to it's shape. The bike above does not have this, and the inside of the wheel is not smooth. It's geared. To give you a brief example of how the two shapes have different strengths, consider a belt from a car used to turn your alternator. Some are smooth, v shaped, and some a "geared/notched" v shaped. The smooth can't bend around a tight pulley as easily as a "geared" one can. The missing sections of the belt allow the material to navigate the tight bend w/o compressing the belt. This is a great bike in theory. In theory, Communism works. In theory.

Git Em SteveDave displays attention-grabbing vanity

@OMG! Ponies! Amazing Bacon Drinks: Slightly flawed analogy there though. The manufacturers didn't intend them to be used that way, but they can and are simply because it works. I can also use a screwdriver to cut tomatoes but not well so I don't.

CubFan81

Seriously. I agree with most people, that this thing has some serious stability and structural integrity issues. Not to mention that Gizmodo should be scolded for posting something that is over 2 and a half years old.

[www.kancept.com]

elpetay

I'm not exactly pining for a bike that uses no standard parts for the drivetrain.

hooked-on-tronics

@TerryinSt.Paul: The Sbarro is the one that I was thinking of...

[www.burningart.com]

Pretty slick concept

sqeakytoy of the apocalypse

@DisposableInterloper: FF3?
@AJ_Syrinx: Just because ABP is available doesn't mean designers can let ads ruin their layout. Besides, the absence of ads makes me more aware of them.

rabiddachshund

This sort of spokeless design has been tossed around for years in concept sketches coming from design studios at a lot of colleges mostly. I think I saw this design for the first time in 1991. If it could have been don't structurally it would have been done by now.

It's nothing more than eye candy. Sweet, but empty calories.

soulfinger

It's just another one of those things that looks really cool but no one will ever build. Like that space station in 2001.

reddingofish

@craighyatt: I think by putting the gears where they are instead of at the top of the wheel, it puts most of the passenger's weight on the upper red wheel, so that it would be theoretically easier to pedal. I think if had the gear wheel bearing an equal load, it would take a lot more pedal power to get it moving.

But then again, maybe it's just designed that way because it was the easiest place to run the chain.

GeekyNerdGuy

@CubFan81: And you can ride this bike outside. Probably about as well as cutting a tomato with a screwdriver.

OMG! Ponies!

where do you put the lock when you go to the shop ?! :P

waza

@Tony Bullard: No.

rabiddachshund

The gearing does not make sense to me. Typically you are spinning a small sprocket mounted to a large wheel. 1 revolution of the sprocket = 1 revolution of the wheel.

Here whatever they use for the drive gear would have to spin a hundred times or so for 1 revolution of the back wheel it would appear.

Y2KGTP

@J. Nadeau: Its a good thing that we here at Gizmodo have brought up those questions, as I am assuming that they have not yet been thought of by the fine folks at Nulla.

zenpoet

That frame design is very similar to the softride bikes. As far as I know they went right out of business in the late 90s.

Next.

DestroyerMTL

@rabiddachshund: Fix it yourself.
[addons.mozilla.org]

Tony Bullard

@rabiddachshund: Or you could just install the flashblock extension.

Ben Zvan

@DoPeY5007:
as soon as somebody tries to sit on it, there will be plenty of breaks.
Or did you mean 'brakes'?

Slartibartfast

Brilliant! Let's take 150 years of engineering and design evolution and toss it all out in favor of aesthetics!

Bicycles are the way they are for a reason: because they work. Every few years, another company puts big money into some "revolutionary" "new" design that proponents swear will reinvent the way people ride. 99% of those designs are neither revolutionary nor new, but rehashes of something that was around 100 years ago. 99% of them fail within five years because they're not as good as what already exists.

Everyone's wary about the lack of spokes, and rightly so. I'm concerned about the lack of a fork. How the hell would this thing handle?

And really, am I the only one here who thinks traditional bikes look just fine and that this thing is butt ugly?

zyzzyva

I don't see any breaks

DoPeY5007

@kadaj_sama: No, brakes on a fixed-gear are *not* useless. You see, chances are, most of your weight is still distributed nearer the front wheel than the back. Even more so for this particular bike because of the saddle height. So, a front brake will be much more effective than *anything* on the rear wheel---no matter how strong your feet are.

dsevil

@Y2KGTP: it would be nanogearing, of course

Gann

And one more thing: how the hell do those cranks work? Having them off of a center axle would be really hard to pedal cause your legs would be moving a hell of a lot.

rrrrrrright

WOULDN'T WORK. Why? Cause the UCI, the governing body of cycling, doesn't allow road bikes that don't have a traditional double diamond frame. They made this rule sometime in the mid-90's because evidently the bikes were getting too cool and useful. I think their official reason was because it was unfair to the smaller teams that couldn't afford to spend millions on new bike technology. But the bikes they use now are super advanced and really fucking expensive.

Anyway, so goes the UCI, so goes everything else. Maybe this would work as a mountain bike since they don't have the frame regulations, but road bikes wouldn't work. Even in triathlons, where odd frame designs are allowed, you don't see anyone riding a Softride or a Trek Y-Foil anymore. Even the seat tube-less Kestrels aren't that popular anymore.

Thems my views at least.

rrrrrrright

Interesting piece of sculpture. As @Y2KGTP: noted, the only thing mechanically lacking is an apparently very low gear ratio. It may be possible some day we'll have materials to build this, but it seems it'll only go veeery sloooooow.

dbc

Materials science can make this a reality sometime. Never say never. There will also be people who buy it. "No buttons on a phone... never, who would want that?"

brutek

Imagine riding that thing over a rock. Jikes!!

Somadis

Yes, yes, very nice. Now how about a seat/bicycle design that doesn't involve me leaning forward so I'm sitting on my testicles?

sansovino

Riding in 20 years time? Isn't this the same concept design that we've been seeing for the past 20 years?

someToast

cool design, but those rims are going to flex a lot in turns, and the tension needed to keep those hub wheels inline is going to cause a lot of resistance.

toyotaboy

@sqeakytoy of the apocalypse:
There are several (though I wouldn't be surprised if the idea was inspired by the TRON lightcycles). The problem is that running bearings on the outer rim rather than a central hub will cause them to wear out very quickly. If you think about it, bearings rolling on a 2' diameter rim vs. bearings that are rolling on a little 2" hub will be spinning 12x as fast at the same travelling speed. Granted, it's more of a concern with a motorcycle than a bicycle, but you'd need to make sure you've got some seriously high-precision bearings in there.

@cayton:
Depends on the rim. On a normal bicycle, yes, because they might make the rim out of a flimsy sheet metal that's stamped into shape. On mag wheels, it might be less of a concern because you have to make the rim in the gap between "spokes" rigid enough that it won't flex when you put pressure on it. But there are other reasons you wouldn't want to be smacking into curbs with this bike, and the amount of leverage that could be brought to bear on that tiny little front bearing clamp tops my list.

@OMG! Ponies! Amazing Bacon Drinks:
As a theatrical TD I used to work for liked to say, "Every tool is a hammer except a chisel, because that's a screwdriver."

@soulfinger:
Franco Sbarro has made at least two one-off custom hubless-wheel motorcycles, which he and his wife actually ride. It _CAN_ be done because it _has_ been done. It's just not a design that's very user-friendly because there are too many ways for it to go horribly wrong if you don't upkeep it properly, and people are dumb.

Purple Dave

as much as i like beautiful-looking concepts (and at first glance, this definitely is one) i can't seem to take myself away from the fact that there are so many faults in practicality in this design. i feel like a concept design should address real-life issues to a certain degree.

mongchacha

This came out like two years ago. Core77.com had it featured. Pretty funny, though, no matter where it is it always brings mixed reviews.

thedesigner

@shocker: exactly. Those other hub-less motorcycle wheels only work because (a) they have giant, heavy, strong rims to support the rest of the wheel without spokes, and (b) they contact the wheel down low, near to where the wheel meets the road, so that all the braking and lateral forces don't have to be transmitted all the way around the rim.

Just another demonstration of why "concepts" designed by oh-so-cool "designers" who don't know any engineering are nothing more than fever dreams. Enough of the completely clue-less concepts (except of course so we can mock them).

Although oddly, I seem to have had several laptops whose thermal design was done by these same "designers"...

AreWeThereYeti

I just love how the forces on the rear wheel connection will be pushing the wheel the other way, so not only do you have to fight gravity uphill, but you also have to fight it to even pedal. Oh, and that wheel is way, waaaay to thin for this use, you sit, it distorts. for this to work, you need pretty thick wheel rims. Or unobtainium.

Con Seannery

@soulfinger: Spot on, I remember seeing a sketch of something almost exactly like this when I visited Art Center in '95 or '96.

james-42

"but who knows, it looks exactly sort of thing we're riding in twenty years time."

Ok whoa there, what do you mean by "we're riding" do you have a working Delorean time machine that your not telling us about?!?!?!

Gino Camaro

Japan and China are standing in awe! :D

DaSmith

@AreWeThereYeti: As I recall, Billy Lane's (and probably many others) use giant helicopter bearings for the wheels:
[www.rideontv.com]
That way, the load is spread out over the entire surface, instead of @ smaller spots.

AmishJohn

@DisposableInterloper:
i've had this happen in safari and firefox on my mac, ie and firefox on xp, and ie on vista.

it's not the browser, it's the site

sharkilepsy