New Peugeot bike - it's the future!!

proto

What say the BR massive?

http://www.yellowwheels.com/2010/03/gen ... cept-bike/

fast as fupp

it wont get past the UCI

Chip \'oyler

I can see the UCI head honcho's fuming!

attica

What's with the leather tyres then?

MRadd

Hideous! Ugly!

But I bet NapD would still buy it...

pst88

I think it looks nice, but until they come up with a model that's actually ridable it's pretty pointless. Not sure about the riding position with those bars though!

Ben6899

Where do I put my water bottle(s)?

balthazar

It looks the same as all this "concept" junk has looked for the last few decades. I guess the companies that hawk these things periodically give the projects to the truculent work experience kids in their design studios, so unimaginative are they – looking more like confused teenage wet-dreams than coherent designs. Either way, it makes me think only that their design team is bereft.

Apart from that, there's a real rudeness evident, in their arrogant refusal to research why bikes are as they are: why spoked wire wheels work, how a pneumatic tyre works, and so on. Lazy, boring fantasising which only discredits the company responsible: bad move Peugeot.

lae

^ I was waiting for the inevitable 'all designers are idiots' post.

If all design was based on what already works, then we wouldn't really get anywhere at all. The whole point of a concept is not necessarily to have an object that works aesthetically or in terms of engineering or production, it's to think creatively and devise a solution that hasn't been tried before.

The vast majority of concepts don't work in the real world and the designers know this - but elements from it will be carried into production models, and occasionally someone will think up a completely novel idea that can be developed into a great design. It's like fashion design - the stuff you see on the catwalk is ridiculous, but parts from it filter down to what you can buy in the high street. The same thing happens with engineering - maybe if someone can design a stiff and light hubless wheel, we'll get folding bikes that fold into their own wheel, or more aerodynamic wheels. Maybe if someone can design a frame in that shape that works well, someone will use that design to develop mountain bikes with better ground clearance, or frames with better aerodynamics. Peugeot aren't saying that they're gonna put that bike into production, what they're saying is 'This is the direction that our designs are heading'.

And what exactly do you mean by 'all this concept junk' from 'the last few decades'? So there isn't a single concept (be it a bicycle, automotive, engineering, product design, architecture, user interfaces, computing, or just about anything in fact) from the last 30 years that you've liked? And can you give some examples of concepts from before this, or are you just harking back to some golden age of design that never actually existed?

desweller

I like the saddle concept. Is that mounted to the stem via a control arm with a short stroke damper beneath it?

balthazar

@frink:

I'd like to write a longer comment here, but I'm pressed for time and must be brief. I think you misunderstand my objection: as a designer myself, I'm not going to pursue an "all designers are idiots" theme. Rather, it's the limited range and lazy design here that annoys me.

It's as if a designer saw a suspension bridge arcing and glinting across a valley and thought "I know, a massive pile of bricks there would be much cooler". Most bikes use triangulated girder frames, and wheels made – like suspension bridges – with tensioned wire. These are fabulous solutions and you'd need very good reasons to dispense with them. Those reasons may well exist, and I'd be delighted to see them from an intelligent designer; I'm as critical of luddite retrogression (Morgan, Rivendell) as I am of this empty, showy cack. But you need a better reason to completely remove a hub from a wheel than "It definitely looks cool".

If I were setting "redesign the bicycle" as a brief, I'd encourage my students to research: find out who rides bikes, and why; who makes them, what from, and why; which aspects of the design have endured, which have never settled. NOT – draw a spaceshippy thing that makes you a "bit tingly in your bits" and then go – there I've finished. That's what children do in the back of their exercise books.

One of the most feted product designers teams is at Apple, headed up by Jony Ive. When did they last release a "concept"? Not for a couple of decades at least. Steve Jobs said: "Real artists ship". Damn right.

whydoesitalwaysrainonme

That would be so cool if tht was actually put into production......... we can always hope
:shock:

Chrissz

fast as fupp wrote:

it wont get past the UCI

What does? They can't stand any sign of progress!

whydoesitalwaysrainonme

Chrissz wrote:

fast as fupp wrote:

it wont get past the UCI

What does? They can't stand any sign of progress!

I've got to agree with that, imho they're holding back development, look at other sports, formula 1 for example, the cars looks completely different to what they did 50 years ago, look at football, they used to be stitched leather now technoloy's gettin involved and it's a good thing, look at cycling, they're just different materials and a bit lighter. Nothing noticable to the untrained eye.
Just had to put my two pence worth in

AidanR

balthazar wrote:

It looks the same as all this "concept" junk has looked for the last few decades. I guess the companies that hawk these things periodically give the projects to the truculent work experience kids in their design studios, so unimaginative are they – looking more like confused teenage wet-dreams than coherent designs. Either way, it makes me think only that their design team is bereft.

Apart from that, there's a real rudeness evident, in their arrogant refusal to research why bikes are as they are: why spoked wire wheels work, how a pneumatic tyre works, and so on. Lazy, boring fantasising which only discredits the company responsible: bad move Peugeot.

+1

So many bicycle concepts that have floated around for the past 10 years look just like this. If I see another render of a hubless wheel I might just scream. Bicycles are a highly evolved design and fantastically efficient structurally and mechanically, but "designers" see fit to scrap all that and make something just because it looks cool. That isn't design, it's doodling.

lae

@balthazar

It's interesting to know that you're a designer - what kind of designer are you? Perhaps we could talk about this further through PMs rather than filling up the forum.

Anyway. Neither of us actually know why that particular frame or wheel design has been chosen, so I don't think you can dismiss the entire design as 'showy cack' just because it looks different. There may well be very good reasons for that design - I've managed to think of a couple of advantages of oddly shaped frames and hubless wheels. We've already got successful carbon fibre solid wheels which are mechanically dissimilar to wire spoked wheels. I agree with the sentiment of your second post, but it just seems like a very extreme (and possibly irrelevant) reaction to have to a design that neither of us are very familiar with.

Monkeypump

frinkmakesyouthink wrote:

@balthazar

It's interesting to know that you're a designer - what kind of designer are you? Perhaps we could talk about this further through PMs rather than filling up the forum.

Anyway. Neither of us actually know why that particular frame or wheel design has been chosen, so I don't think you can dismiss the entire design as 'showy cack' just because it looks different. There may well be very good reasons for that design - I've managed to think of a couple of advantages of oddly shaped frames and hubless wheels. We've already got successful carbon fibre solid wheels which are mechanically dissimilar to wire spoked wheels. I agree with the general ethos of your second post, but it just seems like a very extreme (and possibly irrelevant) reaction to have to a design that you don't actually know anything about.

I think that's the point - it doesn't look that different to lots of other concept bikes which have appeared over the years. Most of the elements have been seen before.

freehub

Does it have a built in mount of 605/705's?

Pokerface

balthazar wrote:

@frink:

I'd like to write a longer comment here, but I'm pressed for time and must be brief. I think you misunderstand my objection: as a designer myself, I'm not going to pursue an "all designers are idiots" theme. Rather, it's the limited range and lazy design here that annoys me.

It's as if a designer saw a suspension bridge arcing and glinting across a valley and thought "I know, a massive pile of bricks there would be much cooler". Most bikes use triangulated girder frames, and wheels made – like suspension bridges – with tensioned wire. These are fabulous solutions and you'd need very good reasons to dispense with them. Those reasons may well exist, and I'd be delighted to see them from an intelligent designer; I'm as critical of luddite retrogression (Morgan, Rivendell) as I am of this empty, showy cack. But you need a better reason to completely remove a hub from a wheel than "It definitely looks cool".

If I were setting "redesign the bicycle" as a brief, I'd encourage my students to research: find out who rides bikes, and why; who makes them, what from, and why; which aspects of the design have endured, which have never settled. NOT – draw a spaceshippy thing that makes you a "bit tingly in your bits" and then go – there I've finished. That's what children do in the back of their exercise books.

Do you know WHY bikes continued to be designed and produced the same way, year-in, year out?

While there's probably a LOT of truth the the idea that the current design works VERY well, etc, etc - the fact that the UCI dictates things like a triangle frame, wheels with minimum spoke counts, etc - is a significant reason.

rake

i bet new wheel bearings would be costly on that bike. not to mention weighing a ton. seems like trying to reinvent the weel.