Retractable sail could give bikes a boost of wind power
newatlas.com
Although there's nothing like cycling with a good tailwind, your bike and your body are only capable of catching a limited amount of that wind. The CycleWing was designed to help, acting as – you guessed it – a sail for your bike.
    • Bloody Harry@feddit.deEnglish
      3·
      11 months ago

      I bought my last bike used for 10 €. That’s less than a pizza.

      Sure, I needed to tighten the brakes, buy new batteries for the light, and the gearshifting only works on 7 of 21 gears. But come on, what do you expect from a pizza?

    • HubertManne@kbin.social
      1·
      11 months ago

      I had high hopes for the carboard bike but the guy seemed to be to restrictive in his ideals to get it to production. I was hoping for a bike so cheap I could lock it up with a luggage lock and light wire. something like what an av projector might have in a classroom.

  • Jeena@jemmy.jeena.netEnglish
    201·
    11 months ago

    This is practically how my older cousin died, but he was on a motorcycle and comming out from behind a truck and then the wind hit him from the side, he lost control, went off the motorway crashed and died.

    This is a terrible idea and totally unsafe.

  • AA5B@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    11 months ago

    So they expect to get the weight down to 15 lbs, and think it would interest long distance cyclers? I can’t imagine that going well - “hey, I understand you plan to ride 50 miles today. Do you want to carry an extra 15 lbs?”

    • snooggums@kbin.social
      4·
      11 months ago

      “It will totally help as long as all of your roads are the optimal direction to catch the wind!”

    • bob_lemon@feddit.deEnglish
      12·
      11 months ago

      You know what else is 15lb. and helps you ride long distances on a bike? An E-Bike Motor.

  • Grass@geddit.socialEnglish
    2·
    11 months ago

    Lol I’ll stick with the motor and battery. For an extra pound and a half of weight over this I can get home from work uphill, even if I happen to get injured enough to not be able to pedal.

  • xapr@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    21·
    11 months ago

    Cool idea, but only a small minority of people will adopt something like this given that electric bikes seem to be all the rage right now. I can maybe imagine touring cyclists getting into this, but that’s it. This would make cycling even more complicated*(!) for most people.

    *Probably three quarters of the people I see riding bikes don’t even know how to set the proper height for their saddles. They also don’t know which roads are appropriate to ride their bikes on, or to follow the direction of traffic, or to not ride on sidewalks. Oh, and no lights at night either. It’s no wonder that the US has a high rate of cycling fatalities.