Media Coverage

The Yikebike is a sensational product - I called it the first "transportation appliance" when I rode the miniature electric penny farthing last year. Funnily enough, when I wrote about the ingenious range-extender earlier this year, I wrote that the Yikebike ticked all the boxes but one - its range. Now that the company is to offer a slightly heavier version at roughly half the price, you can probably bury the last objection that could be aimed at the Yikebike.

The Very First YikeBike, Released In 2009, Was The Smallest (6 X 23. 6 X 23. 6 Inches) And Lightest (22 Pounds) Electric Bicycle In Existence. But It Was Also Expensive --- Mostly Due To A Carbon-fiber Frame --- Costing Almost $4,000.

That Was, Until Inventor Grant Ryan Showed Up At The Daily Offices With A New Aluminum-framed Version That's A Touch Heavier (23 Pounds) But Also Far More Affordable At Less Than $2,000. Unconventional? Sure! But It's A Hoot To Ride, With Brisk Acceleration And Top Speed Of 15 Mph.

The Yikebike is a miniature, electric penny farthing made of carbon fiber and now it's on sale, it is quickly gathering a cult early-adopter following thanks to its weight of 10.8 kilograms, that it folds so small it can fit in a backpack, and that it will run at 25km/h (15 mph). Until now, it has ticked all the boxes except one – its limited range of just 10 kilometers. Now it has released an extender battery pack so you can add additional 10 kilometer increments to the range of your YikeBike.

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Each battery costs US$195 and weighs 1.95kg and there's a special backpack to carry multiple batteries so it becomes a very practical solution that offers the Yikebike unsurpassed bang-per-kilogram and versatility as a commuting appliance. Though it's hard to equate the US$3600 price tag with primary transport, the addition of a Yikebike to any automobile storage compartment significantly extends the capabilities of both vehicles. The facility to carry secondary transportation inside cars has been explored many times in recent years by Honda and General Motors in particular … and it makes a lot of sense.

Gizmag's editor Noel McKeegan and myself both rode the YikeBike in Koln last September and were both very impressed. Normally, it takes 10 minutes or so to get acquainted with the handlebars which sit behind your hips. Noel is a keen mountain bike rider and dirt bike enthusiast and he simply got on the Yikebike and rode away, even though most folks have a few false starts.

I fared slightly less well, but had it all happening within a few minutes - if you can ride a bicycle, you need to rewire the brain slightly, but it's going to be a simple job accomplished within ten minutes.

Once mastered, the Yikebike offers remarkably quick transport for something that is so small – only Honda's still-unreleased U-3X (right) and Toyota's also-experimental Winglet (left) offer comparable weight-performance figures and it will be interesting to see how long these devices take to reach market and at what price point they greet the public.

The Yikebike is in many ways a revolutionary device, as it is the first of a new class of vehicle which we're almost certain to see proliferate as congestion and travel times force us all to consider transportation options. It has won or been a finalist in just about every major design award on the planet for which it is eligible, including making it onto the cover of Time's Invention of the Year issue in 2009 and now a Guinness Book of World records citation as the most compact electric bike in the world.

Now it's on sale, it will be interesting to watch marketplace acceptance.

The electric bicycle is closer on the consumer devices family tree to a computer than it is to a motorcycle, and just as laptops have a limit to their battery capacity, small transportation devices will also have a form factor that limits battery size. While it is by no means an elegant solution, it is one to which we are accustomed thanks to laptops and cameras, and once exploited, enables much greater runtime.

The Yikebike sells for US $3,595, GBP2,422, EUR2,872 and AUD $3,909. If your commuting regime involves train or road and a spot of walking, the Yikebike could be the answer.

By Christopher Trout posted Mar 12th 2011 11:57PM

Okay, so you'll probably still look like a circus bear on a penny-farthing when you hop on the YikeBike, but with the introduction of the new extender battery backpack, you won't have to stop every six miles to juice up. You heard right, this otherwise inconspicuous knapsack is actually packing a second YikeBike battery, which can be hooked up directly to the collapsible bicycle to keep you riding for another six miles -- and if you like riding high on a tiny bike for long distances, it's got room for more than one.

So go crazy, pack this thing full of batteries and hit the road, but if your keister starts smartin', don't say we didn't warn you. You can get your YikeBike juice on for $229 at the source link below.

Click here to see the engadget.com story and feedback

February 3, 2011, 2:30 pm

This week, most people on the East Coast were hunkering down indoors, prepared for this winter’s fourth Snowstorm of the Century. I, on the other hand, was riding around a hotel ballroom on a YikeBike. And I’ll be straight with you: I had kind of a Segway moment.

 Remember that? After inventor Dean Kamen first gave secret demos of his self-balancing upright scooter to industry hotshots, their awed reactions included remarks like, “They’ll redesign cities for this thing.”

Of course, the Segway never did become a as commonplace as the bicycle, and the YikeBike won’t either. But what a cool idea.

 It’s an electric bike. Top speed is about 15 miles an hour. The accelerator and brakes are smoothly controlled by buttons that are right under your thumbs on the handlebars. The handlebars themselves are at your waist level, which might seem odd but makes sense—you ride sitting fully upright instead of bending forward, as on a bicycle. That design also means that you can jump forward off the bike in a crisis; there’s no hardware in your way.

 Here’s the twist: the whole thing folds down into its own front wheel. You undo four stainless-steel latches, then snap the back wheel, seat and handlebars into the front one. It takes about ten seconds. (Watch the video embedded in this post to get the idea.)  

 The YikeBike is therefore perfect for covering that distance between your home and the train station. You can fold it down and set it next to you on the train, then unfold it and ride to your office at the other end.

In other words, this is not a bike you lock to a post in front of your office; this is a bike you fold down and carry into your office.

The YikeBike goes six miles on a charge (about 6 cents in electricity). That may not sound like much, but remember that you’re supposed to carry it inside with you. For example, you can just plug it in next to your desk at work. It recharges to 80 percent in 20 minutes, to full in 40 minutes.

 It weighs 22 pounds, less than half the weight of a typical electric bike. The balance point is different from a regular bicycle, because the front wheel is practically right under you. Grant Ryan, the New Zealander who invented it, says it usually takes half an hour to master; it took me four tries before I could ride without having to shoot out my foot to the ground to steady myself.

(Our original idea was for me to try riding the YikeBike in a hotel parking lot. Because of the nasty, frigid weather, we wound up migrating inside, to the ballroom. The hotel staff was either too preoccupied or too friendly to care about the spectacle.)

The bike is covered with safety features. For example, it lights up everywhere to remain visible to cars. The right and left turn signals, which both beep and blink, are controlled by buttons right on the handlebars, so you never have to remove your hands. Mr. Ryan says that the YikeBike is the world’s first electric to have electronic anti-skid brakes, giving it a shorter stopping distance than a bicycle with caliper brakes.

 The bike also makes a pretty loud whirring noise when in motion. Mr. Ryan says he could have muffled the sound, but thought it would be safer if the bike announced its presence to fellow travelers and pedestrians.

 So why won’t the YikeBike become a mega-hit? Well, first, because it costs $3,600 (you can buy it from yikebike.com). And it costs that much because it owes its light weight to a carbon-fiber body, which has to be handmade. Eventually, Mr. Ryan hopes to create an aluminum version that will cost far less.

 You also look pretty strange riding the YikeBike, too. It’s perfectly comfortable and very stable once you get the hang of it, but you’re going to get stares. It’s not for the self-conscious.
Furthermore, because it’s so small, there’s no basket or rattrap. If you want to carry something, you’ll have to wear a backpack. (Mr. Ryan did show me, however, an ingenious idea: the bike’s shipping suitcase will soon be able to hook to the back of the bike, creating a trailer.)

 Overall, it’s astounding that this idea, and this radical design, could work as well as it does. Every design detail has obviously been thought through. Acceleration and braking, for example, take absolutely no time to get used to.

 I’m not sure how many takers the YikeBike will have at $3,600. But I really admire Mr. Ryan’s lean, green folding machine, and I wish him the best of luck.

The Intermot motorcycle and bicycle fair rolled around in Cologne earlier this month with a lot of focus clearly beginning to shine on the area of electric bikes, scooters, bicycles and even smaller devices.

The highlight for me was getting a ride on the Yikebike, a tiny electric mini-farthing which is the world’s first commercially available vehicle to be small enough to warrant a new category – it’s the first commercially available transportation appliance.

Just as computers have had to be continually redefined by category from desktop to laptop to netbook to tablet, transportation devices of the future are likely to proliferate in the space between a pedestrian and a motorcycle.

Currently, there’s a lot of development activity going on in this area by mobility manufacturers across the world but very little has actually reached market just yet. Dean Kamen’s Segway will one day be seen as the very first of this entire wave of mobility devices, but the Segway weighs in at 50kg plus, and such devices will become increasingly compact and light weight and quite a few such devices will be available a decade from now at the extreme lightweight end of the market – my suggestion is that to qualify as an transportation appliance, a device must be 10kg or less and fold to a size manageable for carrying.

Honda’s U3-X (U3-X video here) and Toyota’s Winglet would both fit into the rough definition of this category above as they too weigh in at 10kg or less, but the big difference is that the Yikebike does 25 km/h, at least twice as fast as that celebrated duo, and the Yikebike is available NOW!

It weighs so little and folds so small it can be carried in one hand and can be easily managed on a train or bus by even a child – it weighs less than 10 kilograms thanks to its economical design and carbon fiber construction. Just how important the Yikebike becomes in the future is going to be interesting to watch. It is the smallest viable transportation device yet invented and it has the added advantage of being similar enough to the bicycle that 75% of the learning to ride it is already done. Noel McKeegan, Gizmag’s editorial director is featured in the video in his first two minutes on the Yikebike and apart from a quick wiggle as he rewired his brain to the steering, you’ll see how quickly he picked it up. In short though, this is a very significant product as it’s commercially available, you can buy direct from the manufacturers over the internet and we’ll have a lot more detail in a feature video in the next week.