We like innovation at FMFT. The application of engineering to find a practical solution to a cycling problem excites us in a small way. Here we can bring you the best we’ve seen in the last few days, and you will be pleased about this, we predict.
If you are too lazy to actually pedal your bike, or even too poor to go and buy one of those ugly electric bikes, then help is at hand in the form of a conversion kit, by Shimano, to make your bike instantly electric, with assisted pedalling. This kit is apparently going to fit easily to a bike, and is fully rechargeable . Shimano have also managed it jam it into an excellent acronym, so the system is called STEPS and will almost certainly feature some fresh-faced pop-starlets, or it would if I had my way.
Also useful, and a whole lot more worthy, is this bike-trailer conversion to make an ambulance for use in less developed countries where access to health-care could be limited by a lack of motorised ambulances. It’s things like this that show how universally important bikes can be, and how much people can rely on what we often see as a toy.
Sometimes the simple and effective design of a bike just invites people to fiddle with it. Take as an example this rejigged design for a drive chain which aims, apparently, to do away with dirty and potentially breaking chains. To be honest I’m not convinced. Nor do I think that the revised set-up will be any cleaner, but I’m no engineer.
In an effort to get behind cycling some people, it seems, will say anything. Even if it’s the most ridiculously obvious and pointless press-release. Mind you, it gives a perfect chance for anti-bike bingo again, and my prize goes to “BJ” for the most expected and tired comment…
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