Bodhi Bicycles are built from the ground up to be e-bikes. That blue patch on the down tube isn't a modern cubist graphic. It is the integrated, removable battery.

I met the co-founder and President of this Ft. Worth based company, Paul Jung, and had a chance to get a quick preview of the bike. Bodhi and Alien Scooters are arranging to get us a test model for a full detailed review later this month.

Bodhi developed and designed their own e-bike motor front hub.

The first thing I noticed is that this is a bicycle truly built from the ground up to be an e-bike. Instead of a cheap hybrid with a battery and motor hub thrown on, there are really nice looking features like a battery integrated into a compartment on the frame and integrated lights. The folks at Bodhi have developed and designed the electric front hub and relatively light weight battery. They also are using quality parts like bamboo fenders and the infinite gear NuVinci 360 hub from Austin based Fallbrook Technologies.

Bodhi uses the NuVinci 360 internal hub with infinite gearing.

I’m looking forward to the review testing to see if the function lives up to the well thought out style and design.

More about Digifit:

If you have an iPod touch, iPhone or iPad, you have probably checked out some of the cycling apps in the App Store. The award winning Digifit Ecosystem recently took “best fitness product” in the Wireless Association® “Hot for  the Holidays” awards. MSNBC and Mashable also recently mentioned Digifit in their tech holiday “top ten” gift guides. Digifit, a free app that just launched October 6th, 2010 is currently in the top 25 Top Healthcare & Fitness Revenue rankings.

So how does a free app make its way to the top of a revenue ranking? In App purchases. Digifit has a scorching hot holiday special. If you download Digifit from the App Store, upgrade the app for $14.99 through In App Purchase and register with Digifit.com you will get a FREE Digifit Connect ($79.99 value). Digifit Connect is the accessory that enables the iPhone to communicate with more than 80 ANT+ interoperable fitness sensors from the likes of Adidas, Cycleops, Garmin and Quarq.

Want to give the gift of Digifit this year to a cyclist who has been nughty? Go to the Apple Store and buy them a $15 gift card (free shipping). If they have been nice, throw in a bike mount or maybe a Garmin heart belt or speed & cadence sensor.

Interested in becoming an A2W sponsor? Visit our sponsor info page or contact Elliott at sponsorships@austinontwowheels.org or (512) 791-9874.

SEIL bag by Lee Myung Su design lab from Ben on Vimeo.

The design is pretty nifty, kind of a high tech FlashBak. It’s not bright enough to replace a rear light (anyone else having trouble with the fact that the model in the video has no headlight?) and no idea how much the system weighs. Personally, I’m a fan of the simple old arm signal which requires no batteries or other manufacturing of resources.

Still, if we want to be seen at night with turn signals AND make helmets cool, maybe we should bring back the Super Helmet Seven so we can “join the men of action!”

First, cargo bike maker Madsen has come out with a new and improved version of their long tail bucket bike. From the video, it appears they’ve addressed a lot of the issues I mentioned in my review of their initial product.

With these improvements, I think the Madsen makes a pretty compelling choice for those with kids.

On the other end of bike, quality commuter bike brand Civia is dipping their toe in the cargo bike pool with their bike truck design, the Halsted. Bike trucks like the Halsted and Puma/Biomega Mopion use small 20″ front wheels and lock the front rack to the frame rather than the turning fork for stability. I think of bike trucks as pint sized cargo bikes with nearly the carrying capacity of larger cargo bikes like long tails and bakfiets. There are limitations to how much they can carry, and at heavy loads, they get a bit squirrely (as opposed to bakfiets which seem to get more stable the more weight you to the cargo box.)

Bicycling Magazine did a short interview on the Halsted here.

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The prototype looks a little clunky, but I like the direction they are going. For all their utility, cargo bikes take up a lot of space, and this is the first design I’ve seen that attempts to tackle this problem. Also, the use of the 3 wheel design will probably be helpful with those new to cycling, those with balance problems, or those who haven’t ridden in a long time.

Your cargo bike options are about to get electrified, offering what I think is a a real, all around car replacement. Earlier this year, Trek announced it was pulling it’s Gary Fisher brand under the Trek name and dubbing it the Gary Fisher Collection. One of the new bikes announced with this name shuffling was the Transport, a bike barring a striking resemblance to the Kona Ute. Trek took things to their natural next step by also announcing they would offer an electric version of the Transport to give you that extra push up hills.

On the other side of the pond, a new prototype electric bakfiets was presented at Eurobike. This is one of those developments that makes you wonder what took so long. Bakfiets have long been the big kahuna when it comes to carrying things by bike. Their huge buckets and design putting cargo low and infront of you made them a great option. Plus they are almost always built with fenders, full chain guards, locks, and dynamo lights making them ideal for everyday use. Unfortunately, they are the heaviest of cargo bikes and are usually pair with internal hubs that have limited gear range. This is probably one of the reasons their popularity has been limited to flat countries like The Netherlands and Denmark.

At Eurobike, Dutch designer Wytze van Mansum introduced his prototype of an electric bakfiets that is set for production in the near future under the Urban Arrow brand. You may remember van Mansum from his very cool Dutchess protoype made last year. In addition to all the regular goodness of the bakfiets, he has used lighter materials and designed a clever built-in lights. Pair the electric motor with actually including cup holders, and you just might have a cargo bike mainstream American could really get into. Exciting!

Finally as with any rising products, you soon will have those wanting to ride the trend with no business in the industry. They provide products that are usually heavy on style and light on substance. Enter the fine folks at Puma who are producing their version of a cargo bike called the Mopion. Aside from the color choices inspired by Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo, the Mopion really is a half hearted attempt at fullfiling the needs of utility cycling. There is storage in a reasonable sized front rack (though no where near the hauling capacity of long tails or bakfiets), however the design comes from Biomega, who specializes in “urban bike design” with almost no urban utility in their other designs. Wanting to ride after dark or when the road is wet? You’ll be a mud splatter ninja rider. Yes you can add lights and fenders aftermarket, but curiously there appears to be no braze-ons for fenders on this bike. To each his own, but you’d think they’d give you the option to add gear to make the bike useful. Update: I’ve had a chance to see a more detailed picture of the bike at BikeHugger, and it looks like there are braze-ons for fenders and a rear rack. I take back my earlier snarky remarks. While I’d like fenders and lights to be standard, this does look like a pretty cool light duty cargo bike. Still, more bikes on the road capable of carrying things the better, and Puma’s entry hopefully signals more cargo bikes to come.

I got my bicycle stolen some time between 10:30 PM last [Monday] nightand 8:30 AM this morning. It has a black GT mountain bike frame and hybrid tires, a green/blue sticker with white letters that say, “MAKE BIKE NOT CAR.”

It has upright, moustache handlebars with black grips that have white stars. It has a black milk crate bungee corded to the back.

Please keep your eyes out for it and watch out for your own stuff.  TIS THE SEASON FOR THEIVERY!!!

That’s a real bummer, and please let Nadia know if you think you’ve seen this bike. ATXBS is reporting some other bikes recently being stolen so it might not be a bad idea to revisit our primer on securing your bike or some of the other less conventional methods of theft deterrents.

The Copenhagen Wheel. Image courtesy of the SENSEable City Lab

Seeing as we can not go a day this week without mentioned Copenhagen in some way, MIT introduced a new product yesterday that could make this whole bike theft thing moot: The Copenhagen Wheel. This standard wheel with a electric assist hub can be installed on virtually any conventional bike and captures energy from pedaling and braking. When you need that extra energy to get up to speed or up hills, you can engage the motor as an assist. The Copenhagen Wheel also interacts with your smart phone recording distances and routes so you can keep track of workouts or share rides with friends.

These are all cool features. My favorite part of the Copenhagen Wheel though is that if the bike is stolen, you can send a message to it, and it will engaged at the highest resistance in the hub and text you with its location. Pretty slick!

No word yet on when or if this will become a consumer product.

Well, not a day had passed when I came across the trailer for this new film “Beauty and the Bike.” The documentary interviews several young British women about why they don’t cycle and exposes them to the cycling infrastructure and great bikes of Continental Europe. Britain embraced car culture more than any other Western European country after WW II, so this film serves as an interesting reference for our country’s struggles to make space for people over cars. The fight to just get bike lanes painted in this movies sounds oh too familiar. The film appears to anecdotally support the ideas behind the research: women want to feel safe, find biking convenient, and ride a bike that is stylish and allows them to wear whatever they want.

Their discoveries of the ease and simplicity of travel by bike appears to reawaken the joy of cycling. More on the film here which is scheduled to premier in England on December 9. We are being sent a copy and hope to have a review in the coming weeks.

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As a dedicated transportation cyclist and builder of city bikes, I have been pretty disappointed by what the bicycle industry has attempted to offer the U.S. market as utility or transportation bikes. The offerings have inevitably been a variation on the mountain bike or fixed/single speed bike or both. If we are wanting anyone other than the already dedicated cyclist to regularly replace car trips with trips by bike, these products leave a lot to be desired.

The Dutchess concept includes integrated lights, fenders, and rack. Image courtesy of Cartlon Reid.

The fact of the matter is that most people just want to get from point A to B in regular clothing in the cheapest, most efficient way possible. They don’t see themselves as urban warriors or racers. It is also true that the majority of trips people take are less than 5 miles from their house. It would seem like the bicycle would be a great match to this, but it has to be the right bicycle for people who happen to ride bikes (as opposed to cyclists) to use them regularly. Unfortunately, usually these folks either purchase a low quality, desposible bike from a big box store or get something performance oriented foisted upon them at the local bike shop.

On the up side, the bike industry is slowly catching on with several serious attempts at offering true transportation bikes showing up at Interbike this year. Now, BikeBiz is reporting that Cannondale is entering the fray with a concept bike called the Dutchess. Considering Cannondale’s pathetic presentation of the urban bike at this year’s Interbike, there is a lot to like here. Based on the Dutch city bike concept, Cannondale modernizes the look with brushed aluminum and integrated lights, fenders and rack. This yields a bike they say is around 30 pounds, a shockingly low weight for so much utility. Full chain guard and drum brakes are also included, a practical, low maintenance touch that is pretty universally ignored on U.S. city bikes. Curiously, this bike also has a very radically oversized bottom bracket with a huge open space in the middle. One assumes this was done as a wow factor for a concept as I know of no one actually making something like this right now.

All the functionality of a Dutch bike, but why the "sit up and beg" geometry? Image courtesy of Carlton Reid.

It’s not all good. Cannondale kept the hybrid geometry that yields the sit up and beg riding position instead of the highly comfortable fully upright, arms at the side position of a true Dutch bike. Also, the marketing material on this assumes a gender bias in the design. “Designed for women keen to express their style amongst the fast paced and ever changing urban vibe, the Dutchess brings modern lines to the environmentally conscious whilst at the same time offering longevity and low maintenance.” I know us men can be kind of bone headed, but since when is having a well functioning, nice looking city bike a women’s specific design? I know we have a North American gender prejudice on step through frames, but this gender design designation is inspired by 19th century hoop skirts, not 21th century transportation needs. When you are carrying things or in stop and go traffic, the step through is a hard design to beat as our European brethren have learned. Finally, a kickstand is curiously absent from the mix. Ever tried to load some groceries on a bike with no kickstand? Do it once, and you’ll throw all concern about Fred-dom out the window and strap one on.

Short comings aside, Cannondale’s Dutchess concept is a welcome 21st century take on the tradition Dutch city bike. When you think about the needs of an average person just wanting a bike for transportation (regular cloths, low maintenance, low physical impact, short distances, carrying stuff), the Dutch design has a lot to offer and more refinement is great to see. I’d say the biggest down side to this bike is that it is not available for sale to the public right now.

In April during one of my first ventures to the Sunset Valley Farmer’s Market with the Violet Crown Cycles tent, I met an individual who loved the look and functionality of my Ferguson city bikes but really wanted some form of electric bike. He initially asked me about a solar powered pedal assist option, but I indicated that I thought a drive train powered system would be much more efficient and economical.

We had an ongoing conversation over the next three months via the telephone and e-mail to narrow down the bicycle he wanted. Initially, he wanted a standard Ferguson bike with an internal hub and pedal assist. The first challenge we faced was combining the internal hub with a standard bicycle frame. There are pedal assist motors built into hubs, but they are currently always paired with a traditional external derailleur. Other systems use a secondary chain drive but require non-traditional frames to accommodate this system. After a bit of research, I recommended the Stokemonkey system produced by Clever Cycles, a Portland transportation cycling shop I visited last year.

The Stokemonkey was designed to work with Xtracycle compatible frames and Free Radical conversion kits. The customer was initially resistant to the long tail concept wanting as normal a looking bike as possible. I offered to build a custom rack on a long tail but suggested going with the Xtracycle platform as the company is always coming up with new accessories. This would give the customer a lot more flexibility to change the utility of his bike in the future (plus I’m a big fan of the Xtracycle.)

Once we settled on the drive train and long tail platform, it was down to the design. Fortunately, Xtracycle has made their design open source in the last year saving me much time in measuring everything out. Surly is the only company currently making a mass produced Xtracycle frame, the Big Dummy. I took a look at their design to see how they tackled the design issues, but ended up going my own way wanting a little more classically styled frame. My initial design involved a series of long double stays on the back, however one set of stays had to be replaced in the design with a single oversized tube to hold the heavy Stokemonkey motor and its brackets.

One odd bit from the Xtracycle design recommendations was the statement that horizontal drop outs in no way could be used with the design. Since I was going with an internal hub, this would be a bit of a problem meaning I’d have to put a chain tensioner on the bike. One of the reasons I like internal hubs is for the clean chain lines. I was using 26 inch wheels and since the design is meant to accommodate larger 700c wheels, there was plenty of room to put horizontal drop outs on this bike which I did.

I have to say I am quiet happy with the final results, but getting there was quiet a chore. I had estimated the build time would take about 50% longer than one of my normal bikes, but there was an awful lot going on with this bike and the build time on this bike took twice as long as estimated. Part of this was developing the system for building the rear of the frame. This was my first long tail frame, and I build my bikes without a jig (not that a conventional jig would have helped me.) My alignment table was just barely long enough for the frame which also became a little unwieldy to work with in my smallish workshop. I’m not in any hurry to start building tandems!

The customer opted for the midnight blue and had the chain guard, stem and fenders powder coated to match the frame. This yielded one of the better looking electric bike on the road (For some reason, the makers of e-bikes produce some of the ugliest bikes I’ve ever seen.) At first, I was a little nervous about installing the Stokemonkey system as this was my first e-bike. Luckily, the system is very straight forward with easy to understand instructions from the Clever Cycles site. Stokemonkey uses a second chain drive on the left side of the bike that engages when you turn the rev switch on the handle bars. The sensation is interesting, similar to that of a fixed gear bike. You feel the pedals continue to push even though you are no longer pressing the pedals. The entire red motor unit spins which is a little disconcerting at first, but the system itself is quiet and intuitive.

I let my wife take it for a spin around the block and she immediately started talking about getting rid of our car. She rides to work on an Xtracycle with my son on the back but has a hard time with the hills and longer trips. I think the Stokemonkey makes this more practical than standard e-bikes because it is paired with the Xtracycle platform meaning you can carry a weeks’ worth of groceries and 1-2 children on the back. For those looking to go car free with children, I’d give the Stokemonkey/Xtracycle combo a serious look. As for myself, I will be adding both the Xtracycle frame and Stokemonkey to my Ferguson line options for those wanting more in transportation cycling utility.