I am sorry, that is dumb.
I am all for less cars in cities, but this is a terrible design.
Why does the control system have to be a bike?
Why is the driver so exposed both to the elements and other drivers?
Why give the driver shit rear and side visibillity?
No, just do something like an old milk float design, don't reinvent the wheel all the time.
A milk float is already designed for local deliveries at a low cost, with a normal driving interface.
The main question for me is what kinds of paths this is expected to use.
If you can take this on bike paths and into pedestrianized areas, it clearly already has a small niche. If it can only fit on a regular car lane, it's terrible.
No, that is a terrible way to think about it.
It is clearly much wider than any normal bike, meaning it would allways use up most of the space on the bike path, it is heavy and dangerous to other bikes in a collision, and since it has to stop for deliveries it will clog up the bike paths.
No, just use a milk float on normal roads, way better than a normal van, and it can use existing infrastructure that it was actually designed for.
There are already cargo bikes that are way bigger and heavier than a normal bike.
This particularly seems not too dissimilar to the bike food carts you already see in some places.
More shit to clog up the bike lane. No rear view mirrors, so no awareness of anyone behind you. Riders can't see around you. They will park in bike lanes to make deliveries. I'm not against the idea of replacing delivery trucks with bikes , I'm just realistic about how these will be used.
Definitely not practical and not designed for the person that uses it. Great way for companies like Amazon to save a buck while making life harder for the people that get paid the least.
Maybe it would work for a college campus or something, but small electric box trucks would be far better for the person doing the work.
Okay neat I am just curious how they get from the warehouse to the urban center. I assume a top speed of say 20 to 30 mph which is plenty fast for most urban centers. But large warehouses are generally placed outside the city. Does anyone know if this is being considered? It seems that the last mile would have to become two last half miles.
I imagining driving around a giant AI server, like hedonism-bot, and it just yells at the driver to pedal harder because he's using too much electricity.
8 inch rear, and 20 inch front wheels - it'll be a slow and bumpy ride, when they finally work out all the bumps in development. https://civilizedcycles.com/pages/commercial
Civilized Cycles has a starting price of $4999 for the CC Model 1, 60 mile range, released in 2020.
In the mean time , the cool thing is that truck bikes already exist, e.g. the oldest US bike manufacturer, Worksman Cycles, and they've worked out the electrification part, too.
I'm currently working on rebuilding a Worksman Front Loader, which has a 500lb load limit, and 3 speed sturmey-archer hub.
Man, you need to deliver a bunch of packages to a bunch of people quickly? Have I got the invention for you - it’s called a truck!
Trucks have their uses, but you run into problems with them in cities. Think of the stories you hear about trucks double parking in NYC, and the crackdowns on that there.
The advantage of this seems to be that it's narrow. You'll probably be able to take them onto bike paths and into pedestrianized areas easier, and have fewer problems parking them.
Yes, they're not a great solution for deliveries to a suburban stroad. But equally, a truck is a terrible delivery vehicle in downtown Barcelona.
That’s completely fair. I bet there are plenty of dense urban last mile use cases for this thing
