Vanilla Bicycles (vanillabicycles.com)
The bike of the future will be made in the same community where it
will be used. The rider and builder will have face-to-face interaction
and the result will be a bike that closely matches the rider, and their
riding style. The craftsmen and craftswomen who build the bike of the
future will earn a living wage on par with other trades (electricians,
plumbers, carpenters, etc.) affording them a standard of living that
every hard-working individual should have, which would include health
insurance, quality food, a good house for their family, and a
retirement plan. The basics.
Adorned with tasteful and timeless color schemes as well as locally
and domestically made components from solid businesses, the bike of the
future will pluck the heart strings of individuals and families who, in
years past, would have fallen in love with a sharp, well-designed auto,
but are ready to get out of their cars, simplify their lives, and truly
live within their neighborhoods.
Either that or it will be made by robots, have hover plates instead
of wheels, furry animal pelts for a seat, secret stash chambers, and
multiple weapon holders on it.
Matt Cardinal and Nate Meschke
Signal Cycles (signalcycles.com)
The first idea that came to us was a rocket-powered bike. Rockets
are futuristic, right?
Or how about bikes that play MP3s? What could be more futuristic
than compressed music? In the future your bike will “dock” into its
home base station and will sync with iTunes, so you can listen to NPR
on the commute to work. Maybe future bikes will borrow from other
convergent technology, so not only will they play music, your bike will
also be a phone and a seven mega-pixel camera with internet browser,
GPS, and Google Maps!
We’re pretty sure this is a future we want no part of (even though
we just invented it, patent-pending Signal Cycles™). The truth is
the only way to improve a bicycle’s design would be to ensure that it
doesn’t sit in the garage under a tarp. Over 40 percent of car trips
are less than two miles! Put a basket on your bike and ride it to the
grocery store, or to pick up a DVD, and you are riding the bike of the
future.
We think the future bike will be much the same as the present-day
bike, but in our idealized vision of the future, bikes will command
more respect from motorists, and will be seen as a viable solution to
urban pollution and gridlock. A bicycle is a nearly perfect machine, a
bicycle that gets out for a ride every day is as close to perfect as it
gets.
Jonathon Sieber
Cascadia Bicycles (cascadiabicycles.com)
In the not-so-distant future, monkeys, apes, and robots will rule
the earth. Humans will have created solar-powered robots for all their
wartime killing and such, except the robots will get so good at killing
that they’ll wipe out the human race. Because the robots will only be
trained to kill people, however, the monkeys and apes will step up in
the humans’ absence to become the robots’ masters.
The monkeys and apes will need bikes to get around, but they’ll make
the robots do most of the work. They’ll have special tandems to do the
job. The front half is for the primate and the back half for the
robots. The front has all the things apes and monkeys need in a bike:
ape hanger handlebars, banana seats, and fur guards around the
chain. They also have foot pegs on the downtube to relax and let the
robots do the work. Primates will steer because they don’t trust the
robot 100 percent. They will have coconut helmets—at least I
would, if I were a future monkey.
The back half will be different. The robots will need a super strong
rear to withstand their crazy robot power. All the tubes will be twice
the diameter of today’s bike tubing. The bikes will be fixed gear.
Fixed, because robots will be able to spin their legs super fast and
then slow down even faster, with no skidding. I think they should have
a big fat tire like on a drag car.
I hope I get reincarnated as a primate bike builder so I can come
back and make some wicked cool bikes.
Joseph Ahearne
Ahearne Cycles (ahearnecycles.com)
Bicycles will be equipped with energy storage cells, capturing the
sun’s energy from all the bike’s surfaces coated with a solar energy
sheath. The stored energy will supplement pedal power, so that when
transporting a load of groceries over longer distances, even a
moderately fit person can easily make the trip at an average speed of
50-70 kilometers per hour.
Bicycles will have an internal computer system with a GPS and
measurements shown on a small display on the stem: speed, average
speed, distance, cadence, and you’ll also have access to heart rate,
blood pressure, temperature, incline readings, caloric output, G-force
through turns, and ride-time comparisons between previous rides on the
same routes.
There will be no more finicky derailleurs in the future. All gearing
will be internal and based not on the number of gears, but on ratios,
so that a bike will have an infinite range of gearing between certain
limits. A bicycle owner will easily be able to go between an automated
and manual gear changing system, depending on preference.
Bicycles will also have a highly refined security system. Basically,
when the owner of a bike is not on it, the bike will seize up and be
un-rideable. If a potential thief somehow bypassed this, and got the
bike to move, once they got on and weren’t “recognized” by the bike’s
internal monitors it would give them the equivalent of a Taser burst to
the hands and crotch.