The Csepel neighborhood of Budapest is really a 2,000-acre sprawl of working-class flats and industrial facilities. A sizable swath from the district was once exclusively the domain of heavy industry, where each street required its title in the goods created within the mostly abandoned brick structures lining its curbs.
It's here, inside a nondescript building on Bicycle Street, blocks from Energy Station Street and Oil Street, where a number of engineers are creating a bicycle from another world.
The Stringbike is really a cat s cradle of alien beauty, an automobile devastating in the mechanical elegance. Installed on a sinuous whitened frame (additionally, it is available in black) the Stringbike s drivetrain consists of a triangular aluminum swinging arm connected via colorful Dyneema strings to spring-loaded modems installed on the trunk axle. You pedal it as if you d pedal a normal bike, and also the strange form of within the swinging arm converts your circular pedaling right into a horizontal back-and-forth motion. This pressure is relayed towards the rear through the Dyneema strings, which pull around the modems and rotate the trunk axle.
You will find two identical drivetrains on both sides from the bike, offset by 180 levels therefore the pedals can offer continuous energy. There s an entire insufficient gears, chains and oil stains.
The Stringbike clients are run like a skunkworks within the Schwinn-Csepel bicycle factory, that also makes conventional bikes. On the tour from the factory, Robert Kohlheb, the 46-year-old co-inventor from the Stringbike, can t help but roll his eyes after i compare the signature visual element of his avant-garde bicycle drivetrain, the triangular aluminum swinging arm, towards the triangular cast-iron rotor of the Wankel engine.
However the comparison is inevitable. Felix Wankel invented his car engine in 1929, fifty years after Nikolaus Otto designed the gasoline-powered four-stroke engine, even though the Wankel is more compact, lighter, simpler and fabulously more elegant compared to Otto, it's still the second which forces the huge most of cars today. The Wankel was rather consigned to vintage German sports saloons and hot Mazdas. It found the scene past too far.
Past too far isn't what you believe when you initially visit a Stringbike within the flesh. The word more rapidly involves thoughts are beautiful. It's at the same time easy and headache-inducingly Goldbergian.
On the test ride, my first pedal strokes are ungainly and self-conscious when i leave the factory. The street in to the city is rough and potholed. Then, inside a couple of minutes, an enchanting transformation happens. I recognize that pedaling a Stringbike is similar to pedaling every other bike. After I stop taking into consideration the uncanny mechanism beneath and behind my ft, I get speed and that i m soon pedaling just like I'd on every bike I ride: just like a maniac. This is only if I look into my ft which i obtain a slight feeling of vertigo all the weirdness lower there, the aluminum swinging arms returning and forth, blue strings relaxing and tugging back.
I mind from noisy Csepel, bombing lower certainly one of Budapest s boulevards toward the town s 19th-century velodrome. The path consumes a portion of the nineteen thirties Grand Prix circuit. Throughout the ride, the Stringbike is strong, supple and, first and foremost, quiet. You will find no chains and gears to clack and rattle. The only real seem may be the soft clicking from the spring-loaded rear modems. I m told this is normal. You will find 19 gears, operated having a regular, handgrip-mounted gearshift, which moves the Dyneema strings anchor points around the swinging arms.
I really like the Stringbike. This is extremely original, this is beautiful also it requires hardly any maintenance should you in some way have the ability to break certainly one of its super-strong Dyneema strings, each costs merely a couple of dollars to exchange and you will do-it-yourself. However it s costly enough (prices start around $3,500) to preclude it from being a regular city bike, also it s a microscopic drop within the huge ocean of bicycles available. During the time of my trip to the organization last fall, 24 bikes have been offered.
It wouldn t be considered a terrible fate for that Stringbike to offer the same cult status as Mazda s Wankel-powered sports cars. This is a motorcycle for individuals who love out-there designs, and who do not mind spending used-vehicle money for something which rides virtually just like a regular bicycle, but which feels and looks such as the commitment of a global where clever engineering always trumps things as they are.
Whether it will get the cold shoulder, it won t be for insufficient determination from the organization. This is already focusing on a carbon fibre frame that will cut a complete ten pounds in the Stringbike s current 28-pound curb weight. Hungarian ultramarathoner Ferenc Sz nyi will ride it within the insane Race Across America.
WIRED Stunning avant-garde looks. Zero learning curve. Can make people prevent you and discuss it.
TIRED Slightly too costly. Uncertain future. Can make people prevent you and discuss it.
Photos by Peter Orosz/Wired. Videos thanks to Stringbike.
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