Bike-pack: the bicycle that folds into a backpack

July 10, 2008 This entry from Taiwan's International Bike Design Competition tickled our fancy; it's a smooth looking city bike that tucks and folds itself into a 5.5kg backpack or a nifty hand trolley so you don't have to leave it locked up anywhere.

The bike itself is very basic, but does feature a headlight and brake light. When it comes time to transform the bike, the seat and handlebars telescope and fold down into recesses in the chassis. The bike then folds in half, and at this point you can either pull out two straps to make it a backpack, or drop a small front caster wheel and extend a handle to make a baggage trolley.

The wheels and chassis are covered with smooth plastic so you won't get road grit on you from carrying the bike around on your back.

It's clearly not any sort of rugged machine - and as the folks at Gizmodo say, you wouldn't want to be a heavy rider on something with a plastic frame - but this kind of design could prove itself handy as part of a staged commute - ie. bike to the train station, catch the train into the city, then bike to work, the sort of way you'd use a foldable Razor scooter.