Imagine designing a bicycle without triangles. Every joint needs to be overbuilt, because there’s no structure from the geometry. But you make sure it still has a top tube, so its just as hard to mount and dismount as a normal bike. Incredible!
Right? Who would be crazy enough to do that?
Next you’re going to tell me someone will make one without a top tube?
Hey, look here buddy. You can’t be your own comment thread and post all the plausible responses yourself like that. You’re putting all the trolls out of work.
As far as I can tell, this product never panned out. It was backed by 132 people to cover 150k GBP in 2017. It was called the “Cyclotron Bike”.
Wait, I’m confused. Does it have tires or is that just a big ring of plastic?
From the video it looks like the plastic rings are casings and the wheels are inside them, and the wheels poke out at the bottom. Seems dumb to me.
You can kind of see it here but it looks like they’re intentionally hiding a good view of it with angles/lighting:
What happens when you ride through mud?
You ride into the mud. Not so much out of the mud.
I don’t think this will work on the long run.
First, the hold on the rim must be very tight and precise or the wheel will wobble like mad.
Second, such a tight hold will be very sensitive to any kind of dirt, so it has to be sealed.
Any seal tight enough to keep extremely small dirt out will cause loads of friction.
Tight seals in general is not an option, they exist en masse with e.g. hydraulic cylinders. But for them, the friction is basically a non-issue in comparison to the overall power budget. But I cannot imagine an even halfway free wheeling wheel that will not break down after getting in contact with a bit of sand.
