Folding electric bike - the "mini-farthing"

The YikeBike is an electric, folding "mini-farthing" (think "penny-farthing") bike -- €3,500 gets you a 10kg electric scooter that folds up to the size of a cymbal set and travels 10-20km on a single charge at 20km/h. Ideal for short-hop commuters who are too lazy to pedal a bicycle, as well as anyone who doesn't think a Segway is dorky enough!

But it is a sweet bit of design.

About YikeBike | YikeBike - The world's first super light electric folding bike (via Red Ferret)

Previously:

Folding scooter from the 1960s - Boing Boing

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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YikeBike

“Undignified riding position,” “overly complicated,” “intolerably inefficient,” “expensive,” “nothing more than a passing fancy,” “no chance of success,” “distasteful”…….interestingly these criticisms are about the what we now call a normal bicycle on its introduction in 1885 (“Bicycle – The History”, by David Herlihy. Lets face it most people aren’t so good at understanding new things (even BoingBoing readers….)

Check out Discovery channel show that describes the YikeBike in detail
http://www.yikebike.com/site/gallery/video/yikebike-discovery-channel

If you want to know why it doesn’t make you fat check out
http://yikebike.com/site/blog/surely-yikebike-will-make-you-fat

There are over 25 million electric bicycles sold in the world and the YikeBike is about half the weight and a third the size of any other folding electric bike meaning it can be taking on trains, buses, cars and never left out side to be stolen. The YikeBike was on the cover of Time magazine as one of the Best Inventions of the Year for a reason
http://yikebike.com/site/blog/yikebike-cover-time-magazine

YikeBike CEO
Grant Ryan
Phikus

If I saw a bunch of these at a store on display, all I would be able to say is: “Yikes!”
george57l

“anyone who doesn’t think a Segway is dorky enough” long ago bought a second-hand Sinclair C5
andygates

What, I can’t ride my bike, mock the Yike and bitch about traffic all at the same time? Aw shucks!

Uber-bikes are a special class of design porn, trying to improve a very nearly perfect machine, barely ever workable (let alone saleable). What is it about bikes that draws designers to them?
Anonymous

My buddy has a Pedego Umbrella bike, which folds up but looks cooler and only $1,100 (compared to the YikeBike) If only I could afford one.
http://www.pedegoelectricbikes.com/twelve_inch_umbrella/19
Anonymous

They obviously do not care about head injuries in old Europe as nobody is wearing a helmet. Or they are really hard headed to be able to survive a hit on the pavement at 20Km/h
stratosfyr

It kind of freaks me out that the handles aren’t in front. I mean why not just make it look like a weird scooter?

That said, my mom and grandparents should totally get one each.
Phikus

If you’ve got pennyfarthing going on you should stop eating loose change.
RedShirt77

I would buy an assist for a regular bike, But this is just stupid.

For a little more, I could buy a car an put an electric motor in it.
Anonymous

There are a lot of uses for a small bike/mover like this, but this one I think seems dangerous. If you were to go slightly off-balance, your body (or at least the body of the gentleman riding in the photograph) is not in a position to react quickly. His weight is behind him already, there is no way he can shift it and use it to his advantage.
jimh

What, no cupholder?
foobar

I’ve got a device that’s auto-stabilizing like the segway, goes about the same speed, and can be fueled by products found in every grocery store.

And it’s free.
Anonymous

That thing looks terrifying. A broken cheek bone waiting to happen
Rindan

Eh, looks like a shitty bike for the rich and lazy. Every few months we get another glorified moped that all share the exact same qualities:
1) They vastly more than a moped or bike.
2) They can’t go as far as a moped.
3) They have the same running conditions as a bike (i.e. it sucks to ride during a sleet storm in Boston) but no exercise benefit.

This makes the target audience for this kind of junk to be rich environmentalist who live in a place without public transportation or bad weather, but are only a few miles from work and have no desire to live healthy and just ride a bike. Um, yeah. Have fun with that target audience.
Anonymous

Can you say road rash?
Vidya108

As I started reading this article, I thought, “Wow, that would be perfect for me,” as my (invisible) disability causes me to limit my non-work and non-school related travels — as is the case for quite a number of my friends who also have impairments or chronic health conditions.

“Ideal for short-hop commuters who are too lazy to pedal a bicycle.”
Now I’m just thinking about how I would face disapproving glares and insults from scores of ableist jerks along my travels. Thanks for the heads-up before I contemplated spending money on something like this.
- Anonymous
  
  I agree with you I have osteoarthritis, and I’m just not ready for the the granny, mobility, scooter. I think something like this that looks light weight and portable, could help me do neighborhood errands without looking and feeling so decrepit and frail. If this had a better design this would work!
Anonymous

“too lazy to pedal a bicycle”

And they wouldn’t be too lazy to peddle this….why?

and 3K buys a helluva bicycle.
EscapingTheTrunk

This should have been the logo for the smaller, lazier Prisoner re-make.
IWood

God damn it this is a folding carbon fiber electric bike that’ll fit on your back and I love it even though I would shatter it with my heft and it wouldn’t get me to the office once the battery life degraded by 10%.

I say this as a man upon whose walls hangs a Greenspeed GTO trike (which I rode about the U.S. for four months accompanied by trailer and solar mad science) and a 1993 Specialized Epic Pro carbon fiber road bike that I rebuilt with original-spec parts. (They don’t just hang there, either, that’s how I get around.) I’ve also got an HP Velotechnik Street Machine stashed in the shed at mum’s because I’ve run out of wall space.

I mean, come on people! This is the sort of thing that will eventually lead to fucking hoverboards, just dig it already.
_OM_

…Actually, Cory, that “lazy” crack I take offense to. A bike like this would be a godsend for someone like me who used to love riding bikes on occasion, but now find it rather difficult if not impossible now that I’m missing a leg and the fake leg isn’t exactly designed for anything other than barely walking. This beats the damn Segway in the fact that the rider can sit down and not have to worry about balance issues brought about by the loss of a leg.

I’ve fired this link off to several people who are in the same situation as me, even though I also doubt they’ll go for the “lazy” remark as well…
Anonymous

the perfect device for the humans in “Wall-e”
Tdawwg

Dunno about laziness, but bicycles like this rather suck from a bike advocacy standpoint. Here in NYC there’s a constant battle over the right to bring one’s cycle or bike inside where one works: building owners and managers citywide have resisted this like the plague, despite a new law that mandates said access. I’ve often had these collapsable foldy bikes pointed out as valid exceptions, and have even been told by security and grounds people, “Why don’t you get one of these if you want to bring your bike indoors?” I don’t want to over-exaggerate the effect of these bikes, but they seem to be creating a “separate but equal” category of privileged cyclists, leaving the rest of us to carry heavy chains, locks, etc., and otherwise leave our (sometimes quite expensive) bikes to the mercy of thieves and the street.

And that’s without going into the sheer idiocy of trying to replace a century-old model of perfect human transport, one that utilizes the human engine of heart, lungs, and legs, with a faddish redesign of the same that utilizes unnecessary supplemental energy to make it work. No thanks!
Anonymous

I used to own a folding electric bike called e-cycle. Got it off ebay for $600. But that thing was damn heavy because of the Lead Acid Battery pack. These days, I think better to go with Lith-Ion battery pack. The best deal I found is on greenbikeeffect.com that’s having a special for a lithium-ion folding bike for only $499 (it’s about $300 off) and free shipping.
El Zilcho

I was hypothetically all for this until I watched one of the demo videos where they compare the 3k electric ass-scooter to some guy on a shitty mountain bike. No surprises which performs better.

@_OM_: there’s really no reason for you to take offence, you either misread the comment or missed the point.
Pantograph

Marketing lesson of the day:

Don’t call something that connects with someone’s bottom a “…farthing” it sounds too much like… well you know, *snicker*
thatbob

I don’t know about the scooter itself, but their word Yike appears to have a lot of very smurfy usages:
http://www.yikebike.com/site/freedom
srvasdf1

these are the worst ripoff ebikes i have ever seen. they have no power and are way ridiculous expensive.
Anonymous

Eh? I think some have missed the point. I can’t take a moped or my bike on a tram or bus (at least where I live). I can’t put it inside at work where it is protected from theft. And it’s a pain to take on a plane. This wouldn’t replace my bike, but there are certainly situations where I could find a use for it. A folding bike addresses some of these concerns — the inventor claims that using an electric motor, rather than pedalling, keeps things smaller in a folding platform, which could well be true (until I learn to ride a unicycle).

Given the inventor seems keen to license the technology cheaply, and to multiple manufacturers, economies of scale ought to bring the price down closer to existing electric bicycles (that is, if turns out to be popular.).
Anonymous

One major bump and you will end up flat on your face. Actually slamming the brakes on and probably the same result. It doesn’t look stable at all.
andygates

They ain’t though, they’re calling it a Yike. As in “Yike! Pothole! Crac-boum-aiee!”

That scares me and I *do* have a pennyfarthing.
Marcel

Why do I get the feeling that a jock strap might be a useful accessory while riding this vehicle?
fellbackalone

Is that Red Foreman?!?!
- IronEdithKidd
  
  I was just thinking the same thing, only it came out: Is that Kurtwood Smith?
Krisjohn

You can poke fun at the silly-looking bike, or you bitch about traffic. Pick one now.
Anonymous

And the dentists rejoiced…
Anonymous

I’m surprised at how many people here completely miss the point of this bike:
portability.
For those who are interested in foldable bikes, this thing IS revolutionary… if it actually has the weight and size they claim.
Those who don’t need a foldable won’t see the point of this, but that doesn’t mean they have to write insulting comments or brag about how they don’t need a motor. That’s not the point.
Tedsville

10 – 20kph? whoah thats slow – i ride my bike all over london and average about 20 to 25 mph (~32 to 38kph), and since londons mostly flat i can get anywhere much faster than either car or public transport. Also, doesnt run out of charge. All i need is a bag of chips and bam, im good for another 30 / 40 or so miles.

Why are people so bloody lazy these days…
Anonymous

I don’t think this sort of thing’s just for the lazy. I use my bike to commute to uni, and during heat waves like we’re going through now down here, I’d much rather not warm up even more by pumping my legs for a third of an hour.

Of course, I don’t have 3.500 Euro to spend on a Yike…