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Urban Transport

Yikebike Fusion - a bit heavier, a lot cheaper

By Mike Hanlon
May 20, 2011
Yikebike Fusion - a bit heavier, a lot cheaper
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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 Yikebike Fusion will ship four weeks from now.

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Urban TransportElectricTransportYikebike
6 comments
Mike Hanlon
Mike Hanlon
As a photojournalist, Mike’s work has been published in a dozen languages across 20+ countries. He has edited or managed over 75 different print publications, each with a different target audience: sports, automotive, advertising, marketing, design, ad infinitum. Mike has been working in the internet for more than 25 years and was the veteran of five internet start-ups before founding New Atlas in 2002.

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6 comments
Chi Sup
Good start. Lemme know when it stops ticking the \"silly looking\" box.
Bryan Paschke
It\'s not your little brother\'s Big Wheel?
Skeptical Jones
I think I\'ll just keep my SUV, thanks very much. It has a range af about 400 miles and doesn\'t get me beat up when I get where I\'m going.
William Volk
I AM NOT A NUMBER!
Frank van Schie
I\'ve got a similarly two-wheeled device that has a range of *at least* 30km, is a lot cheaper, doesn\'t contain toxic materials such as those found in the YikeBike\'s batteries, improves my health and is fueled by food. And which will not be featured on GizMag.
The trouble with devices like this is that they don\'t solve an actual problem. I mean, I like toys as much as the next guy, and this looks fun, but honestly, if you\'re talking about a range like that, you\'re better off getting a decent bicycle for at most a fifth the cash, and cruising around on that. You\'ll get similar top speed, better theoretical range, easier maintenance and less environmental impact. And $2k is a lot of cash for a toy.
Taryn East
@Frank, I think you don\'t look enough at the http://www.gizmag.com/urbantransport/ section. At present, 50% of the latest ten articles are about commuter bicycles :)
But yeah, I agree - this is a toy, like the segway. Fun concept - but not really practical. Anybody that can\'t ride a bike is most likely going to use a car (or a motorbike). Still - perhaps it\'ll evolve into something that will be more useful someday - like electric cars have been slowly doing. They too had basically no useful range at first. For now, though, I\'m content to watch and wait...