Elegance and practicality are a killer combination, and both are abundant in the latest concept from Peugeot. The company's rethinking of the traditional urban bicycle won't suit everyone, but it will almost certainly appeal to enough cyber-serfs to warrant production. The design highlight is the positioning of bike's leather laptop compartment, which is safer for the laptop, and provides a better balanced bike that's nimble and fun to ride. You can even lock the briefcase in place.
The genius of the design is how the location of the leather carrying compartment has relocated the center-of-gravity of the bike/luggage combination back to roughly where it is when there's no luggage.
Luggage capacity on a bicycle can be carried many ways - predominantly a backpack worn by the rider or a carrier above the rear wheel or on the handlebars. All of those locations are far from ideal for the handling of a light two-wheeler because they put heavy objects a long way from the center-of-gravity. The center-of-gravity is just the average location of the mass of a bicycle, e-bike or scooter. If you make as much of the weight as close to the center-of-gravity as possible, you can significantly reduce the moment of inertia in pitch, roll and yaw. It's a similar process that Erik Buell went through when he rearranged to components of the motorcycle to such great effect.
A more compact center-of-gravity results in a MUCH better handling two wheeler, regardless of how it is powered.
Having achieved all this so elegantly using non-traditional bicycle materials such as aluminum, wood and leather adds further to the allure of the DL122.
Peugeot has a long and proud history of building bicycles, beginning in 1882 and predating its motorcycle and car production which started in 1889. The company's bikes have won the Tour de France 10 times.
A few last thoughts - there has been no price mentioned at this point in time. It is a concept but will probably see production because it is so good. The design really offers a safer bicycle, because the DL122 is maneuverable when loaded, which most bikes are not.
