Last week we looked at The Bike Design Project, a competition between five design teams and bike builders to create the perfect urban bike. And today we have a winner, which will now be put into production by Fuji — so you’ll be able to buy it, if Blade Runner-looking velocipedes are your thing.
The winning design, as chosen by online voters, hails from Seattle; a collaboration between the industrial designers at Teague and local bike builder Sizemore Bicycle. All of the entries were packed with electricity-powered features, but Seattle’s contribution, “Denny, goes the furthest down that road — starting with electric pedal assist.
Now, plenty of luddites (grouches? purists?) will question whether you truly need anything more than a dependable piece of steel and some wheels. Yet, based on the popularity of Denny, plenty of cyclists are interested in what might amount to the street-borne equivalent of a Nest thermostat.
So what will they be getting when Denny hits the show floor? The most obvious physical feature is the bizarre square-shaped handlebar, which is designed to slide open and serve as a lock:
Then there’s the embedded backlight and a set of turn signals you activate by nudging your brake on either side:
Still, it’s not all powered by a battery. Some details are analogue and simply clever, like Denny’s front-facing cargo platform and what looks to be a super-minimal fender:
Even luddites can get behind a better butt-saver, right? [Bike Design Project]