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Patent Battle May Loom Over 'Copenhagen Wheel' Electric Bike
curtwoodward writes "Nearly four years after the concept was introduced, MIT spinout Superpedestrian has started selling its $700 'Copenhagen wheel' kits that promise to turn any old bike into an electric-powered, smartphone-connected dynamo, simply by swapping out the back wheel. But they're not alone: a competing startup called FlyKly has already raised $700,000 worth of pre-orders for a similar device. Superpedestrian, which holds exclusive license to the MIT patents covering the Copenhagen wheel, clearly thinks there's some foul play going on. 'Their founder actually dropped by our lab at MIT a year and a half ago, saying he wants to collaborate, and spent quite some time with the Copenhagen wheel team. We'll leave it at that,' Superpedestrian founder Assaf Biderman said."
Every Facebook has its Winklevoss brothers....
just now in wheel form.
When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras
...on non-vintage bicycles pedaled by non-hipsters in rural areas too? Just checking because their kickstarter videos seem to imply you have to swallow your pride and look like a fashion concious douche to make it work.
Why bother? My bike works fine without an electric wheel.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
that people behave this way... :(
> all truth contains falsehood
Got a nice paradox there, assuming that's true
I've not found anything.
Can anyone point to the actual patents involved?
This seems to be a standard regenerative electric drive 'on a bike wheel', with nothing startlingly new.
Clearly the competitors are adherents of the "Many Wheels" theory.
after something like 10000 years since the wheel was invented you would think that patent was expired
Only Luddites worry about things like "patents" and "manufacturing".
that their commute is too hilly, or they don't want to get to work sweaty, this eliminates a couple reasons not to commute by bike. If my commute were longer I'd take a look at one of these.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Seams like it's just batteries and few sensors mounted to the wheel and not the frame. Can't see it really changing anything since a conventional electric bicycle can be bought with more batteries for less money. Haven't looked at buying one. but I'm sure they have ones you can peddle on too. Regenerative braking is just looking online for circuits or hire an expert. Also, the fancy sensors could be added if desired along with a custom app. Give me $500,000 and a month; and I'll have 80-100% of their features (minus being on a wheel) on some prototype bikes. Give me some more money and another month or two; and I'll have the assemble line in China shipping them. Can't see it coming in over $150-500 retail depending on quality and features of the bike like suspension, steel or aluminum etc.
Dude. You can't like own an idea, man. FREE THE WHEELS!!!!!!!!!
From the article:
Superpedestrianâ(TM)s products: those red-disc equipped rear bike wheels, housing a sophisticated battery-powered drive system built with U.S.-made parts that can connect to the Internet to learn about its ownerâ(TM)s riding habits.
Fuck no.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Sheesh 12 lbs for a wheel. Might as well be dragging a boat anchor up that hill.
My entire triathlon bike comes in at less than 25 lbs., and most of that is the frame and components. If I had the cash, I'd be drooling over the sub-20 models.
Putting the batteries inside the wheel? Are you kidding me?
After a few months of biking regularly without assistance
And then repeat at least some of those few months every cycling season. I typically start cycling once freezing weather has left for the year, typically in March, but don't feel up to peak form until the end of April.
On my bike, with walking effort, I can easily maintain 22-25 km/h on the flats.
Perhaps the real problem is that flats are a luxury. After a long day at work, an uphill ride home isn't very fun.
Novel and non-obvious improvements to an invention are still inventions, eligible for their own patent. For example, even though the wheel itself is public domain, a wheel with a particular method of regenerative braking might not be.
The FlyKly claims that it's product weighs less, goes faster and farther than the Superpedestrian. Colour me skeptical, but that smells more like marketing than engineering to me.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
On the TV show Weeds, Andy became sales agent/importer of a bicycle propulsion device that seems to fit the description in this thread. Is it the same device?
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
I think they made the video to look like it's for hipsters to mask that the system doesn't look great. I realize I'm burning a few Karma points here, but I'm really not interested in a bike with a big white (or red... or whatever) back wheel that screams "hey, over here... big lazy nerd coming through! "
I've been looking at buying an electric conversion kit for my bike for ~24 months. My requirements are:
- Be under $700 for the conversion kit
- Look like a normal-ish human would ride it on a regular basis (ie. inconspicuous)
- Have a battery that can be replaced/swapped
I've discovered that there are few options out there that meet my most basic requirements. I've been considering building my own electric bike from components. As for the battery, I plan on hiding it in an old-timey leather pannier that will also house a recharging unit that I can take off and recharge at work. I believe you would REALLY need to look at the bike to figure out that it's electric... and that's what I want.
I am just wondering when this type of technology is caught in 'Tour de France'... It is not easy to design this thing to be small enough in order to fit in regular wheel, but I don't think it is impossible?
So if I live in flat Florida this bike would not be as effective?
So we have a link to a story about Company A who has exclusive license to use BigShot school's patents to make a fancy wheel and at the end of the article the reporter asks Company A whats they think about Company B's simliar product. The CEO says "Company B CEO came by 18 months ago wanted to co-lab, hung out and left, but I haven't looked at his patents" and we're slashdotting "impending legal doom", yet neither side has said boo to that nature or is there any other relevant link to anything remotely newsworthy. Where's the story?
No, there are hills that are just reasonably uncycleable.
Here in San Francisco, you could be a Tour-de-France rider and not be able to make it up some of the streets, which are well over 30 degree gradients 300m or more in length. There's a couple of streets near my house that approach 40 degrees, and which make walking up them very difficult (they have stairs specifically for that purpose, but walking up the normal street is quite difficult). Maintaining balance at that angle-of-attack on a bike is really hard to do, and, even with extremely low gearing, there is a minimum amount of forward progress per pedal rotation that has to be done to keep the gyroscopic stability needed to keep from falling over sideways.
When it's really not possible for any human being to use any commonly-available bicycle to ride the hill, it's "uncycleable". A hill that can't be ridden by 99% of the public is de facto "uncyclable".
Here's the published application
US20110133542
Doesn't look like it granted yet. A quick trip to USPTO PAIR system will tell you everything you need to know.
motors and batteries require size and mass to be effective. Shrinking them to be small enough to fit in a standard hub would render them pointless. Also, one side of the hub doesn't rotate (the motor needs something to push against), so it would be simple to detect
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
4. When sharing a road with other traffic, you are safer the closer you are in speed to that traffic. Electric assist can help an otherwise slow rider to be closer to the speed of other traffic.
In my lil' suburban neck of the woods, 20MPH won't even cut it driving through a residential neighborhood. People generally do 40MPH in the 30MPH zones and 45MPH means unless you're doing 50MPH, everyone and their cousin will pass you. In other words, whether you're puttering along at 20MPH or whatever speed you can manage under your own muscle power, you're still "that douchebag on a bicycle" who is holding up traffic.
Besides ending up all sweaty and being at the mercy of the weather, the major problem with commuting on a bicycle is constantly being mere inches away from a grisly steel death. At least if you're on a motorcycle, you're riding with traffic (and have ample horsepower in reserve to avoid an accident), rather than playing the odds that the driver of every single vehicle that passes you is paying enough attention not to hit you. Considering how many people screw with their smartphones while driving, you'd need a death wish to ride a bicycle on the road these days.
The issue most people have with riding a bicycle is that you're on a bicycle. This really isn't something the addition of a piddly little electric motor is going to fix. We already have mopeds, which are essentially just a bicycle with an extremely underpowered gasoline engine and they're still incredibly unpopular, because they're every bit as inconvenient and dangerous as a bicycle - you just don't have to pedal.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
If you're out after midnight, do wear white!
Reinventing the wheel all over again and then fighting over who made it round.... This will end up as one of those brilliant ideas nobody will ever use because it's too expensive and people buy new (used) bikes every few years anyway, or they only have one for show and they don't actually ride it. What's the business case for spending $800 on a wheel to still ride an old bike if you can buy an all new shiny electric bike for less.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
43 years ago there was a student at MIT who put a car battery and a starter motor on his bicycle. Now it's a big deal?
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These have been available for years. I bought a no-brand Chinese one for my bike not too long ago, of course without the fancy batteries, sleek plastic cover on the hub and iPhone app.
If that's not good enough then here's a petrol version petrol version (engine inside the wheel! from 1901)
The Rubbee electric bicycle motor seems a better option in any case. More portable and practical.
'Their founder actually dropped by our lab at MIT a year and a half ago, saying he wants to collaborate, and spent quite some time with the Copenhagen wheel team.
Sounds like Apple to me, most all of their early "innovations" come right out of Xerox parc.
"Bluetootsh"? (found on they FlyKly specs)
"Their founder actually dropped by our lab at MIT a year and a half ago, saying he wants to collaborate, and spent quite some time with the Copenhagen wheel team. We'll leave it at that,' Superpedestrian founder Assaf Biderman said."
Wrong state. But doesn't that remind you of a certain IT visionary who developed this idea for a graphically-oriented computer?
all bicycles are vehicles
According to their blog the Copenhagen Wheel can fit on multi geared bikes: http://copenhagenwheel.tumblr.com/post/69243810968/multiple-speed-gears-supported
I'm really excited about this, I live in south Brooklyn and the commute to manhattan is about 10 miles, 15 to midtown. Something like this would be a boon to commuting here, maybe eventually relieving the subway system. Plus the 20mph would help with keeping up with traffic.
I'm willing to bet that there in many places are people who are right there on the knife's edge of deciding whether to use the car or bike to get around. If this technology can help some of those to decide for thre bike, I imagine this will relieve some strain from our resources and cause much rejoicing.