Cyclospace – French Family Velomobile Seeking Crowd-funding

Posted on November 11, 2014 by Kenneth

After the successful crowd-funding campaign that kickstarted the ELF velomobile into production in the US comes a new campaign, this time in Europe, using the Kiss Kiss Bank Bank crowd-funding site. Regrettably all the information that can currently be gleaned, including the Cyclospace’s Kiss Kiss Bank Bank page, is in French (Carfree.fr, Roulez-different, & Velorizontal) and is scant of technical information. However with a bit of machine translation we can provide the reader with the following details

The Cyclospace, like the ELF, is a practical velomobile, with more than a nod to the original Mochet velocar of the 1930s. Unlikely to appeal to those who aspire to the high-end race capable machines, and even less likely to overtake them, it is none-the-less a relatively economical solution for those who are looking for a sociable Human Powered Vehicle, with some degree of both weather protection and aerodynamic advantage. As such it meets our definition of a velomobile.

Designed by Nicolas Trüb in 2007, a French engineer with some experience in bringing designs to market. The Cyclospace “Classic” is a 2.5 seater (officially 3-seater as there is a small child seat between the rear wheels) formed from either steel or aluminium frame work with some components in carbon and stainless steel. Depending on the frame choice, the weight comes in at either 40kg or 60kg. The design is aesthetically simplistic and evidently chosen for economy of construction and can be compared to the Rhodes Car produced in the US. Those used to the double curvature and sculpted forms of the established velomobile designs seem to have a problem with the aesthetic, however, as others have pointed out, it is not really fair to compare a Citreon 2CV with a Ferrari. The following video might give some taste of the ride.

So far the Cyclospace has seen limited production, with a total of 7 machines on the road, one as far away as Azerbaijan! It is unclear if the various prototypes are included in this figure. Should you wish to acquire a Cyclospace Classic for yourself you can order one through La Boutique du Futur for collection in France.

The Cyclospace Classic has seen continuous development since 2008 with plenty of feedback from real world testing. However development is now going up a gear which is where the crowd-funding campaign comes in. In 2013 M. Trüb began construction of a 5-seater prototype, to be called the Cyclospace XXL. The new model design will have 4 sets of pedals and a 250W electric assist system with solar charging.

Funds are now needed to finalise the prototype and take the design into production. Should the campaign’s rather modest goal of €4,600 be broken investment in further designs are promised. These include a pedal-powerd trailer, compatible with both the Cyclospace Classic and the Cyclospace XXL, and a narrow single seater model. The combination of the XXL and trailer is interesting as it offers the prospect of a staggering 8 person sociable cycle experience, a HP Minivan, albeit only 6 would be providing power and the remaining 2 passengers would have to be small.

The pledges range from €6, for a signed print, all the way to €5,400, for a Cyclospace XXL you can call your own.

Finally a brief video of M. Trüb enjoying his own creation.

One Tough Velomobile? No! Two Whole Teams.

Posted on September 6, 2014 by Kenneth

In typical Ozzy style Trisled performed the following good humoured stunt to effectively demonstrate the durability of their robust and practical Rotovelo velomobile. Perhaps the beginnings of a new sport – Velomobile Ice Hockey.

The video clip was produced and edited by Lochlan Gay, a Year 11 student from Mt Eliza Secondary College. Working with six cameramen across 26 cameras, Lochie was then charged with poring over 20 hours of footage to produce the final five minute cut.

The players are evidently enjoying themselves immensely, and the resilience of the roto-moulded shell to the repeated impacts is clear. As one commentator has remarked, “don’t try this in your Quest.” Perhaps not so obvious is the clear stability of the trike compared to a bike in icy conditions. Another feather in the velomobiles all-weather cap.

The opposite extreme to Trisled’s practical velomobile are the high end racing machines that they produce for Australia’s flourishing sport of HPV racing (See the Australian HPV Super Series Pedal Prix and RACV Energy Breakthrough pages). Trisled took these machines a step further in 2012, when they entered one bike and one trike, in the World Human Powered Speed Challenge at Battle Mountain. The Trisled machines performed well with the trike, with Gareth Hanks in Completely Overzealous, setting a new world record in the three wheel category and stimulating interest in further trike development.

The following video gives a mostly cockpit eye view of the record setting run.

Trisled are expected back at Battle Mountain this year with an all new trike, All Overzealous, no doubt with expectation to push the trike record further still. The results should be available by the end of next week.

Battle Mountain 2014 Coming Up

Posted on September 5, 2014 by Kenneth

The 2014 World Human Powered Speed Challenge, organised by the IHPVA and held annually outside the town of Battle Mountain in the US State of Nevada, starts on Monday 8th, and promises a week of interest as several International teams of engineers, technicians and athletes compete to set records and push the speed boundary achievable by human power alone.

It has been two years since we last reported on Battle Mountain and the last two occasions set new records in several categories and served to raise the public profile of the event. The 2013 WHPSC was significant as a new top speed world record was set by Sebastiaan Bowier of Human Power Team Delft, in the Velox 3, with a speed of 83.13 mph, displacing long time record holder Sam Whittingham. A depiction of the Velox 3 is featured on this years WHPSC poster. Human Power Team Delft and Sebastiaan are back this year with a new machine, the Velox 4, and two new riders. Sam Whittingham has suffer a couple of injuries recently and will not be competing this year, however Varna builder Georgi Georgiev will be there with female world speed record holder Barbara Buatois, to defend and/or extend her title. After pulling out of the 2012 WHPSC, Graeme Obree did compete in 2013. While not achieving his stated aim of 100 mph, he was successful in setting a new prone rider world speed record as well as drawing media attention to the event as a whole.

Additional teams include: Team Cygnus, also from the Netherlands; a Canadian partnership between the HPV development lab AeroVelo and the University of Toronto with their ETA which used Kickstarter to raise funds for the build; a team from Russia; and several other teams and individuals from the US, Europe and the UK. Not wishing to jump ahead too far but a couple of similar university teams/partnerships to AeroVelo have plans to compete in 2015, but more of that when the time comes.

Lastly and by no means least, Australian velomobile manufacturer Trisled, who set a tricycle world record in Completely Overzealous in 2012, are back with a new and more advanced trike, All Overzealous, and the old trike has been passed on to a US team so it should be interesting to compare how each perform.

Results should be posted as usual on the WHPSC 2014 Results Page.

For any unfamiliar with the WHPSC, the following News clip provides a good, albeit dated, introduction.

How They Build a Brompton

Posted on February 7, 2013 by Kenneth

It is not a velomobile, but it is certainly a very valid part of a transport portfolio. In the how-stuff-works category is the following, short US produced video, showing the manufacture of an iconic British folding bike, the Brompton.

Now what we need is a video showing a velomobile being made.

But wait we do! Below you can watch an Alleweder A4 build itself – apparently untouched by human hands.

Cyclevision is on for 2013

Posted on February 7, 2013 by Kenneth

There were rumours that the Dutch specialist cycle, recumbent and HPV event Cyclevision had run out of steam and been cancelled for 2013. However we learn from Ligfiets.net that this is not the case and the dates have been set for June this year.

Cyclevision has also returned to the usual location of FlevOnice near Biddinghuizen on Flevoland. Last year FlevOnice was undergoing financial difficulties which forced a relocation to the Midland Motor Racing Circuit outside Lelystad, on the other side of Flevoland. Now with a new owner those difficulties have been resolved and it is possible to return to the preferred location.

More details will be posted on the usual Cyclevision page in due course and there is also a facebook page and a facebook event page. Links to photos blogs and reports on Cyclevision 2011, the previous time at FlevOnice, are on this page.

The program is still being developed but there will be the usual races, competitions, lectures and recumbent try-out opportunities. New this year will be a dedicated dealer and manufacturer area and trade show.

EuroTour – Plan B, Plan C and 2014

Posted on February 6, 2013 by Kenneth

As hinted, when the cancellation was announced, other plans have arisen from the ashes.

A new European based volunteer, Evelien van Jeroen, has stepped forward to continue the plan for the original EuroTour, which has now been postponed to 2014, and lead the organising. With the organisation now based in Europe there is good hope that many of the difficulties the previous organiser encountered will be easier to over come. At present there are plans for the organisers to meet at SPEZI in April, meantime announcements will be made via the logical-vehicles forum.

Additionally, a group has been formed to continue with plans for a somewhat smaller tour, to take place this year. Originally proposed by Carl Georg Rasmussen of Leitra and dubbed Plan B, more details, and the option to register, can be found at the original eurotour2013.com site.

EuroTour Plan B Draft Map

The tour is expected to take place over two weeks with two rest days and the intention is to start the tour in Leer, Germany, about a month after the HPV World Championships are held there. The route will then take the velomobiles through a number of principal cities in the Netherlands followed by Belgium and a corner of France. From there the proposed route will pass through Luxemborg and then follow the Mosel and Rhein rivers back to Leer.

A third plan has also been proposed, by organisers from Austria to incorporate a further small scale tour into their third summer velomobile gathering at Lake Constance (Bodensee). Perhaps it might be appropriate to dub this additional alternative Plan C?

However these various plans develop, there looks to be plenty of positive velomobile promotional activity over the coming months.

Pedal-Powered Snow Removal

Posted on January 19, 2013 by Kenneth

Since I wrote the previous post, dreaming about a Human Powered Snowmobile, more snow has fallen. Dry stuff this time and the forecasters might be right that there is more to come. So naturally thoughts turn to human powered ways of snow removal – ideally ways that don’t break your back.

Good memories will probably remember the Google sponsored Innovate-or-die competition (c. 2007) and may perhaps remember the following entry by MrPlowKevin Blake:

Kevin’s snowplow design got him a lengthy report in Mother Earth News, in which he explains the design and build method in quite a lot of technical detail, very useful for anyone wishing to make one for themselves.

However Kevin is not alone. Bob Beechy of Ontario, has designed and built a series of HP plows starting with a trike and evolving the design through a number of diverse machines. Here he is explaining the collection before the snow sets in.

He goes on to demonstrate shifting snow in the following two videos, and he has more on YouTube. In the first he gives an overview of the first two machines and then gives the viewer a driver’s eye view

In the second, which is quite lengthy, you get a demo of the quad plowing the driveway clear.

But there are others too.

Trailcart, website now defunct, and production in limbo due to conflicting business priorities, produced a number of these all-terrain HP quads, one of which is shown above, fitted with an impressive snow plow. It would be great to see these back in production!

Finally there is the tow-plow created by Dave Peterson. A design reminiscent of the old horse-drawn plows of the past, it is fitted behind a regular bike like a bike-trailer, and used to maintain a clear path through the snow. There is more about the plow and how it developed over on a wiki site Appropedia.

Above the plow in action. Below the results.

A Velomobile for a Real Winter

Posted on January 19, 2013 by Kenneth

After all the dire media hype about severe winter weather warnings here in the UK, we finally had a fall of wet slushy snow followed by a hard freeze. The white traces that are left are not much to look at, and the ice, while a hazard for some, is not much compared to what was threatened, but there is now a wintery brightness in the crisp air which sets the mind going. Now I know there are plenty of places further North or inland that have more snow than they could wish for, and where weather warnings really do warn about severe weather, but all the talk of snow and ice has set me wondering what options there are for winterised human powered transport.

The last video in the recent post about the Drymer trike and the video above, demonstrate that it is perfectly possible to take a human-powered, or even an eAssist trike out in the snow; and it is obvious that a velomobile body goes quite a way toward keeping the rider warm. But what about something beyond this? Going beyond the environmental rows over motorised snowmobile use in Yellowstone park, what about a human-powered snow-mobile?

Minds have already been exercised about this, and a mixture of concepts and products exist which tackle various aspects of the problem.

This concept for a track driven pedal-powered vehicle in skis by Michelle Marin, an industrial designer from Venice, Italy, did the rounds of the design blogs a couple of years ago. As with most concepts there are technical niggles but the general idea is sound. A lower seating position would be good and perhaps larger skis to handle soft snow and a better steering mechanism, something more like Akerman than a home made box car racer.

Following on from this concept, there already exists a commercial kit to convert a standard mountain bike to snowmobile mode. The K-trak is a Canadian developed system where you swap out the front and rear wheels for a ski and tracked wheel assembly which fit directly into the respective fork drop-outs. Thus allowing you to ride your bike through the snow much as you would in normal weather. Regrettably the manufacturers site and online shop has gone offline but the following US promotional video gives a good idea

US adventurer Greg Kolodziejzyk has a review of the K-Track. While his first impressions were positive he is much more cool about the K-Trak’s performance overall. He sumarises the K-Trak system as being a very fun way to go down hill.

However Swis Catrike dealer Bike to the Future has fitted a Catrike with both skis and the K-Trak system and reports better success. The secret it seems is achieving floatation in the snow, something that the MTB mounted K-Trak can only do at speed, i.e. downhill.

Greg’s original purpose for the K-Trak was to enable him to maintain an all-year cycle training program to support his other pedal powered projects, but perhaps another motivation was to test the design for suitability for his plan to pedal across the Greenland Icecap. As he notes on the initial concept page, there are no developed plans as yet, but one of the concepts is a track driven velomobile on skis.

Large skis and a larger track system should help with the floatation but one does wonder how the head-in configuration would perform when it comes to window fog. Unless a successful anti-fog coating or system be applied to the canopy, it is likely that a head-out configuration would be more successful.

While drag reduction due to vehicle speed would be a none issue; reduction of drag due to opposing wind, such as one would expect to meet with on the ice-cap, would still be a very good idea. Also a fairing or enclosure, covering the feet and legs at least, would also be very valuable; as David Gordon Wilson suggests in an editorial in Issue 28, and further hints regarding an observation by Philip Thiel in Issue 29 of Human Power; this would prevent heat loss due to pedalling motion.

Greenspeed, Australian recumbent trike builder, has experimented with the Snow-Trike concept and successfully built the following tracked trike using off-the-shelf components for a motorised vehicle. Please excuse the background ~~noise~~ music, not my choice.

Another home builder has fitted both skis track to his recumbent only in the opposite configuration with the track up-front.

A Finnish HPV enthusiast, inspired by an 1885 Ice-Velocipede, has been experimenting with a Cycle-Ski, but apart from a single page outlining the project and the following short video there is nothing more.

Searches for for more information turned up: a patent for a HP Snowmobile; a project to develop a human-pedal-powered caterpillar-drive; and some information about ski-bikes.

Ski-bikes are purely downhill machines, and currently exist to serve a niche sport. A history of Ski-Bikes is given on the following pages. and kits such as this one from Alpine Ski Bikes can be used to convert a typical MTB but there is absolutely no drive mechanism, just gravity.

I was unable to find much else. I would be interested to know what work, if any, has been done by others; and also to hear any further thoughts or comments. So please add your thoughts via the comment form below.

Sinner and Drymer are now partners

Posted on January 16, 2013 by Kenneth

From a post on Ligfiets.net we learn that Sinner Bikes, makers of the Mango velomobile, and Drymer, manufacturer of the eAssist Drymer tilting trike, which comes with an optional fairing, have entered into a partnership. One of the first outcomes of this partnership is that the manufacture of the Mango is to be moved from Groningen to Stadskanaal, where the Drymer is currently produced.

We mentioned the relaunch and commencement of commercial manufacture of the Drymer last summer, after WITEC bought out Drymer which had been suffering from financial difficulties. That Sinner has entered into this partnership should not come as much of a surprise as they were involved in the original consortium that first developed the Drymer concept. It would also seem to be consistent with the recent news that Sinner are dropping their line of recumbent bikes focusing instead on the Comfort delta trike and the Mango velomobile. It would seem very reasonable to expect that this co-location would bring benefits to both businesses which will translate into the current products of both, but more than that, one can begin to imagine what new and improved machines might be developed and brought to market.

In the same ligfiets article we also learn that Sinner are continuing to develop the Mango and are now offering an alternative upper body. Called an Aero-top it features a “viewing-slot” down the centre, comparable to the upper body shape of the WAW, Evo-K and Alligt A8. This is touted as giving not only improved road vision for the rider but also providing some improve aerodynamics. Ligfiets however observe that the new shape will likely impact on the usability of the interior space. An example of the new upper is seen here mounted on the wall.

magotopmetsleuf

Returning to the Drymer we are refered to a blog by Philip Smits, Dagboek van een Drymerrijder. Philip now has a Drymer Leisure, the trike without the fairing, and has been blogging his experiences over the last few weeks. He has also produced a few videos. Below is one which gives a good overview with commentary in Dutch.

The following give a short, and cheerful, rider’s view in the snow.

Minor personal niggles aside Philips report of the performance is very positive.

ELF velomobile surpasses Kickstarter goal

Posted on January 14, 2013 by Kenneth

Organic Transit’s Kickstarter project has been a huge success. “Roll out the ELF to your City,” finished this weekend $225,789 was raised from 547 backers against a goal of $100,000. That is a stagering 225% and almost double the amount pledged when we mentioned the project 3 weeks ago.

There is the following brief comment on Organic Transit’s facebook page:

Kickstarter is over and we more than doubled our goal!
Tiny vehicles that don’t pollute can now move forward and have positive effects globally.

This is the start of something really SMALL!

Thank you all.

We look forward to more “smallness” to come.

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