[HN Gopher] Reviving a modular cargo bike design from the 1930s
___________________________________________________________________
Reviving a modular cargo bike design from the 1930s
Author : surprisetalk
Score : 110 points
Date : 2025-05-12 14:29 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.core77.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.core77.com)
| analog31 wrote:
| Three wheeled cars and trikes mostly moved to having the two
| wheels in front for stability when cornering. Same reason why 3
| wheeled all terrain vehicles were taken off the market.
| Otherwise, cool idea.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| See also: Reliant Robin.
|
| Obligatory Top Gear link:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQh56geU0X8
| CalRobert wrote:
| I was so excited to try a cargo bike I made sure to rent a
| Cristiana bike on a holiday to Copenhagen with my pregnant
| wife. Then I crashed while turning with her as a passenger. She
| was displeased.
|
| We now ride a two wheeled urban arrow. Three wheelers seem
| incredibly unstable except perhaps for ones with independently
| pivoting wheels like the babboe carve
| tokai wrote:
| While super unstable three wheelers are good for very heavy
| or large loads. Like moving a refrigerator. Start stop city
| traffic with +100kg load is easier on three than two wheels.
| Must say I never liked riding the Christiania bikes myself.
| econ wrote:
| The old ones in NL easily take 300kg. You just have to
| learn not to attempt sharp corners. A normal bike also
| allows you to jerk the steering wheel 90 degrees at high
| speed.
| Steltek wrote:
| It begs the question, are you carrying extreme loads, like
| refrigerators, on a daily basis? If not, then this is like
| buying an F-350 when you're mostly taking your kids to
| school. If so, then maybe none of these are the right
| design and you might want to look into something like a
| cargo trailer.
| tokai wrote:
| Well yes a ton of people are ferrying multiple kids plus
| their school bags everyday. They are far from common
| enough to get compared to F-350s. Nobody would commute on
| them daily if they didn't have a recurring need to haul
| something. They are far too expensive to buy as a beater.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > Nobody would commute on them daily if they didn't have
| a recurring need to haul something. They are far too
| expensive to buy as a beater.
|
| I really can't tell, are you referring to an F-350 or a
| cargo bike?
| prmoustache wrote:
| otoh there are large bicycle trailers that can carry those
| refrugerators.
| olau wrote:
| When you buy one, they come with the warning to drive around
| first without cargo. But yeah, you need to take it easy. Safe
| speed is perhaps 10-12 km/h on a bike path with other
| bicycles, and you need to slow down to almost a complete stop
| for 90 degrees turns.
|
| Perhaps I should add to this that they're actually super
| stable at slow speeds, compared to two-wheelers, especially
| when loaded. My wife prefers a cargo bike to her usual non-
| cargo bike, I think for this very reason.
| mnky9800n wrote:
| Weren't most of the babboes recalled?
|
| https://www.babboe.nl/klantenservice/terugroepactie
| DocTomoe wrote:
| Pedals directly on the front wheel means no shifting the chain,
| which means you better have not skipped leg day if there is even
| the slightest hill on your route while you are fully loaded.
| smlacy wrote:
| Electric motor though?
| zellyn wrote:
| It apparently has a gearbox in the hub.
| dmurray wrote:
| Isn't it the other way around? One revolution of your pedals
| gets one revolution of the wheel. Normally you'd get several
| revolutions out of it. So you need to pedal faster than you're
| used to, but each push is easier. It's like being in a very low
| gear suitable for climbing hills.
|
| The penny-farthing solved this problem by having a very large
| wheel.
| doctoboggan wrote:
| The chain is the transmission, and the shifting mechanism works
| with it. But you can easily have more compact gearboxes
| directly on the wheel without the need for a chain.
| tokai wrote:
| >A three-speed gearbox in the hub makes starting easier.
|
| It was not direct drive.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| That front bike section looks so cool. I guess it's so alien
| looking because the whole section turns instead of just the wheel
| which affords it more creative license than a traditional
| handlebar attached to a fork.
|
| I bet it also feels alien to turn a steering wheel with your feet
| on bike pedals.
| 0xEF wrote:
| I'm not sure where you grew up, but in the US we had a kid's
| toy called a Big Wheel which your feet had to turn with when
| you turned the handlebars. It was wildly awkward, terribly
| designed, but we got really good at it, anyway. The pedals
| would even scrape concrete on turns often enough to wear them
| down.
| hackingonempty wrote:
| A USA company has/had a patent on a pivoting bottom bracket
| bike transmission like this and has been making bikes for a
| while.
|
| https://cruzbike.com/
| jmercouris wrote:
| This design is unstable and expensive to produce with a
| complicated in wheel transmission. It is novel, but almost
| certainly more expensive and less reliable than existing designs.
| camtarn wrote:
| You've not come across hub gears on bikes before, have you?
| They were pretty much the standard before derailleur gears
| became popular, and modern ones can have up to 7 speeds.
| mrob wrote:
| Modern ones can have more than 7 speeds. The Rohloff Speedhub
| has 14 speeds, and the Shimano Alfine is available with
| either 8 or 11 speeds.
| lostlogin wrote:
| They are so so nice to ride.
|
| I've ended up with some electronic road SRAM which is
| seriously quick in comparison (except for the slow rider),
| but do miss the smooth internal hub and the stationary gear
| changes.
| jmercouris wrote:
| I meant the whole design. The hub gear is no different than
| on any other bicycle and _can_ be reliable.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| In wheel gears have been in use for over a century very
| successfully. I had a Raleigh bicycle with Sturmey Archer gears
| as a child. It never gave me any trouble, unlike the derailleur
| gears I had on later bicycles.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hub_gear
| jerlam wrote:
| But modern hub gears are no longer standard, and relegated to
| specific use cases.
|
| There's a lot of friction in hub gears (at least the one I
| rode a decade ago), and fixing them is generally impractical.
| puzzlingcaptcha wrote:
| Shimano Nexus is from 1995. What did you ride twenty years
| later, in 2015? I call BS on the friction argument.
| iambateman wrote:
| Please excuse my hacker-newsyness...
|
| This idea is absurdly underbaked...other commenters mentioned
| that it's going to flip, and it is. Not to mention that no bike
| shop in the world will know how to work on these things.
|
| There's lots of reasons that this design died in the 1930's after
| a short run.
|
| But...so you know I'm a reasonable guy despite my blithering
| criticism...I love weird alternative vehicles and I hope that
| version two of this is a massive success because this world needs
| more tiny vehicles and fewer 8' tall Ford F-150's.
|
| Best of luck!
| oulipo wrote:
| Really good looking :)
|
| You should definitely put a repairable Gouach e-bike battery on
| it haha https://gouach.com
| btbuildem wrote:
| Tricycles are inherently unstable in turns, especially when not
| loaded down, because they cannot lean. And when carrying a load,
| the same rules of physics apply, resulting in a lot of torsional
| forces on the frame. There's a reason we see so few of those on
| the roads, amidst an explosion of various human-powered modes of
| transport.
|
| Here's the original: http://youtube.com/watch?v=RuPwRQOUhl4
|
| Here's the reimagined modern version:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA7qGYNFuY0
|
| In both cases, the rider effectively sits atop of where the
| handlebars would be on a traditional trike. You can see in the
| first video the lads have a hard time keeping all wheels on the
| ground.
|
| One notable difference between the new model and the old is that
| they seem to have changed the geometry of the frame so that the
| driver doesn't lean into the turn (the turning wheel stays
| upright). They don't demonstrate it in motion very well, but that
| kind of turn action will tend to throw the rider "out" of the
| turn, making the trike fall over opposite of the direction of the
| turn. The old version tends to fall "into" the turn.
|
| I can't think of many advantages to this design, other than the
| driving unit and cargo are modular. Even then, the rider would
| not be able to travel without the cargo portion.
|
| Trikes are tricky, they don't go very fast, they don't turn well,
| and they're wider than most other pedal-powered vehicles, making
| them hard to use on existing cycle infrastructure.
| econ wrote:
| If you have a large preferably rusty box in front of you the
| cars treat you like royalty.
| jandrese wrote:
| If you're trying to keep all of the wheels on the ground you're
| not using it efficiently. With trikes when you go around a
| curve the inner wheel lifts off the ground, especially as many
| trikes have solid rear axles. It feels scary to have it pitch
| outward in the turns, but it is how the machine works.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| What makes this true of trikes but not of the typical
| automobile?
| mtreis86 wrote:
| They do. Volkswagens from the 80s and 90s that have solid
| dead rear axles "tripod" around corners.
| jandrese wrote:
| Automobiles have 4 wheels. The geometry of the situation is
| very different. This is also why cars have differentials,
| because otherwise the car would be fighting against the
| turn.
|
| Basically when you turn your trike turns into a bike.
| 00N8 wrote:
| Some cars like the Mini Cooper S _do_ lift a rear wheel
| when turning sharply under braking -- I 've seen this a lot
| in autocross racing. I normally only see front engine/FWD
| cars with limited suspension travel do it though. Trikes
| are less stable & will lift a wheel more easily overall.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| The principle is the same, the distinction has more to do
| with suspension (or lack thereof) and the solid rear axle.
| The same strategy of lifting the inside rear tire is used
| in competitive go-kart racing:
| https://youtu.be/cMAtgPX6st8?t=312 . If the carts had a
| differential then it would be a different story (and they
| would be cars and not karts according to the SuperFastMatt
| taxonomy)
| layer8 wrote:
| Isn't it the outer wheel that would lift off the ground?
| jandrese wrote:
| You would think so but no. The inner wheel is the one that
| lifts.
| layer8 wrote:
| What's the explanation that this is different from bi-
| wheelers?
| Gracana wrote:
| It wants to roll over, just like a car would if it had
| very sticky tires and took a sharp turn at speed.
|
| The fun bit is that on three wheels it steers like a car,
| but on two wheels it steers like a bicycle.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| it's the inner wheel with a tilt/lean. Your weight has to
| get out over the COG to balance. The feeling ranges from
| foreign to terrifying and I'm not sure why you wouldn't
| just go with an excellent cargo bicycle that avoids the
| entire issue.
| amalcon wrote:
| > especially as many trikes have solid rear axles
|
| Do you (or anyone I guess) happen to know why? Low speed
| differential non-drive axles are not that complex, and would
| sermingly help a lot.
| rtkwe wrote:
| If they're not drive why connect them at all? Why not have
| them mounted independently and eliminate the need for an
| extra part? My only real guess is it's easier for carrying
| capacity.
| crimony wrote:
| I suspect it because with a single piece axle the torsion
| forces trying to twist the wheels into negative camber
| are taken by the axle and the forces on the two wheels
| negate each other, leaving the frame to only have to deal
| with vertical linear force.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The problem is that trikes don't steer with countersteering.
| When you transition to one wheel lifted, you have a brand new
| mode of operation with a misaligned rear wheel.
| cpgxiii wrote:
| > There's a reason we see so few [tricycles] on the roads,
| amidst an explosion of various human-powered modes of
| transport.
|
| Perhaps in the US and western Europe, but tricycle tuk-tuks and
| cycle rickshaws are extremely common in other parts of the
| world.
| TrueGeek wrote:
| In The Netherlands 3 wheel bikes are fairly common to haul
| kids and dogs.
|
| I can easily get mine on two wheels if I take a sharp, fast,
| turn - but after you do it once you learn the limits and it's
| a very stable bike.
| clan wrote:
| Same in Denmark. It is almost a must have for inner city
| families. Much more common than two wheel Long Johns.
|
| Two very common models are:
|
| https://www.christianiabikes.com/classic/
|
| https://www.ladcyklen.dk/ladcykel/nihola-ladcykler.html
| cycomanic wrote:
| The common aspect is that both the Netherlands and
| Denmark are flat. The danish/Dutch trikes are really just
| unsafe when you pick up significant speed like down a
| hill. I am a long time cyclist, who raced for years. I've
| never felt as unsafe on a bike as when I tried riding and
| a fast bike speed on a Christiania.
| bgnn wrote:
| Luckily cargo bikes aren't for speeding and racing but
| for carrying cargo. It would be like using a truck to
| race instead of a mid-engine super light sports car.
|
| Durch cargo trikes are generally assumed safer than their
| two-wheeled alternatives here.
| msk-lywenn wrote:
| You mean like this DAF Turbo Twin overtaking a 405t16 in
| the Paris-Dakar?
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AWCNnlk8rkU
| tda wrote:
| No they are not popular in the Netherlands. Easily 90% of
| cargo bikes are two wheeled, because tricycles are really
| only for novice/disabled cyclists. Going above say 20km/h
| is just plain dangerous with a tricycle, definitely not
| stable at higher speeds in even the most gentle curve
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Three wheel motorcycles are popular amongst bikers who get
| too old to handle a two wheeler. Some have two wheels in
| front, one in back, and look almost like cars, others are
| just a standard motorcycle chassis fitted with two rear
| wheels.
| asveikau wrote:
| I see the word "tricycle" and I'm reminded of the Piaggio MP3,
| from the parent company of Vespa. It has two front wheels and
| one rear.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| It is the Velorex that pops into my head.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| The instability in turns was what made the "Big Wheel" fun when
| I was a small child. Too low to the ground to really tip over
| but easy to make it spin out.
|
| I had a conventional tricycle too, don't recall ever falling
| over on it, though it could get tippy. You learned to lean to
| offset that.
| steanne wrote:
| there are trikes that can lean. this is one, and not the one i
| remember see an article on a few years ago, so there's at least
| two companies out there doing it.
|
| https://youtu.be/9LwqIIqysZ0
| somat wrote:
| Yes, the tricycle. Masterfully combining the exposed position
| of a bicycle with the space requirements of a car.
|
| They really don't make sense in motorcycles, A large part of
| the point of a motorcycle is that you are willing to give up a
| lot of comfort and safety in exchange for having a very small
| nimble personal transport. Nothing wrong with this tradeoff,
| but why would want a vehicle that takes up the same amount of
| space as a car that gives you the safety and comfort value of a
| motorcycle?
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| I personally set aside the safety & comfort sacrifice of the
| motorcycle but cannot accept the performance loses. Similar
| to when I see people maneuvering a bicycle over rough or
| varied terrain while sitting down; you might as well be
| driving a car.
| turbosepp wrote:
| My uncle always said: "those things combine the weaknesses of
| a motorcycle with the weaknesses of a car"
| cycomanic wrote:
| Yes when my kids were young I tried out a bunch of cargo bikes
| and the christiania trikes feel so unnatural and unsafe it's
| really hard to describe. I still ended up with a trike but it's
| a leaning one which feels just like a normal bike (and it's
| very narrow so fits through doors into backyards...). This is
| what I got: https://chike.de/en/ it was the best purchase I
| ever made! For anyone thinking about a cargo bike when having
| small kids; go ahead your kids will love it, you will love it!
| matt-p wrote:
| It's totally mad and impractical; I love it!
| dpedu wrote:
| While interesting, I feel like this would be difficult or at
| least feel extremely weird to ride. When you steer on a 2-wheeled
| bicycle, you countersteer, which is pushing the wheel left in
| order to go right, or vice-versa. But this has a steering wheel
| that I assume works like a car, you turn the wheel left to go
| left. It would feel weird riding a bicycle while having to
| remember to steer like a car.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| Probably less weird than you think. For one thing, it uses a
| steering wheel like a car, so that steering motion would feel
| more natural, and most people don't _know_ they need to
| countersteer on a bike, they just do it without thinking. Even
| if it used handlebars, people ride trikes all the time without
| any real problems.
| gomox wrote:
| Lol @ what appears to be paddle shifters or paddle brakes [0]
| under a steering wheel on a bike??
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA7qGYNFuY0&t=77s
| MomsAVoxell wrote:
| Revive? These things are still in active use all over Europe ..
| backfiet .. and while they're fun, they can be exhausting if you
| overfill them with groceries, kids, roadkill, oilyballs, etc.
|
| There's a tricked out one in my 'hood (Vienna) that has electric
| assist. I guess that'd be practical for a daily ride ...
| IneffablePigeon wrote:
| Did your read the article? It's talking about a totally
| different design to a standard bakfiet.
| uxp100 wrote:
| When I look up backfiet I see a typical cargo bike, what the
| article is discussing is a design where you directly drive the
| front wheel (with a 3 speed hub in this case). Seems worse, but
| nifty.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| You can see how it's different from a backfiet though, right?
| the article describes:
|
| > places the rider directly above the front wheel. They pedal
| this wheel directly; there's no chain, reducing maintenance
| needs. A three-speed gearbox in the hub makes starting easier.
|
| > An additional benefit to the two-piece frame is that the bike
| can be broken down for transport, allowing the user "to load it
| into a trunk for easy transport from point A to point B."
|
| > Lastly, the company says the shorter wheelbase of their
| arrangement provides a tighter turning radius, making the bike
| easier to maneuver in urban environments.
| century19 wrote:
| Bakfiets no? That's what the Dutch call it and they use them
| widely. Especially the electric versions you can get nowadays.
| ploum wrote:
| Am I the only one unable to open that website ?
| dsr_ wrote:
| It half-opened for me, bogged down, and on re-load crashed the
| Firefox tab.
| ploum wrote:
| had the same experience, even in private windows without any
| plugin. People really goes to great length to make sure their
| text is unreadable for some of their users.
| ploum wrote:
| Funnily enough, it works "great" on Librewolf (with quote
| around "great" because that design is awful, eating most of
| the screen estate with a fixed menu)
| onlypassingthru wrote:
| There's probably a good reason nobody has touched this design in
| 90+ years. As the last photo demonstrates, banging the back of
| your leg against a trailer hitch every time you turn would get
| annoying _real_ quick.
| torlok wrote:
| Looks like something that can easily be solved by tweaking the
| curve. I also don't think you'll be doing such sharp turns
| often, and at that angle and speed you may as well get off.
| onlypassingthru wrote:
| On the contrary, it's a fundamental flaw in the design. The
| second to last photo shows the trailer directly over the
| pedal which will inevitably either push the rider's leg off
| or limit the turn radius.
| rtkwe wrote:
| It's pictured at the furthest back position for the pedals
| though which means your leg will mostly go forward of the
| pedals and not much back. I would trust people having
| actually ridden this to not have their legs slammed into
| the trailer vs how it looks on one render or photo.
| Calwestjobs wrote:
| Please do not mention spray from cars in front of you! XD
| ljf wrote:
| Off topic - the the colour scheme choices for the Cookie
| selection pop-up on that site are awful. I'll admit I'm colour
| blind, but I assume those are hard for others to see when the
| switches are on or off? Unless that was their plan?
| nabilhat wrote:
| It's always exciting to see this idea get revived for the first
| time in ninety years every ten years!
|
| I've pedaled around on a couple variations of this design. Like
| everyone who had never ridden one but saw it on the internet, I
| also confidently imagined it would violently hurl me to the
| ground at the slightest provocation. I was wrong, which strangely
| seems to be a pattern for confident opinions I've formed based on
| things I've only seen on the internet. Having not been for a ride
| on this particular iteration, I will not post confident opinions
| about it on the internet.
|
| The best (granted, of two...) version I've tried was semi-
| recumbent, with a standard geartrain and flevobike-style
| steering. The steering was a little weird at first, but I quickly
| figured out how to fully steer it hands free. Fully unloaded it
| was possible to tip it with hard front braking while turning, if
| you pitched your body weight into the effort. Loaded, it was
| absolutely nailed to the ground. You're just a mule winching a
| load down the road at that point. Sometimes it's fun to be a
| mule, piloting a weird bike-cart.
|
| It turns out everyone flamewarring about stability on the
| internet forgot to get mad about drive wheel traction limits when
| pulling a load uphill. Which for me was a loading consideration
| rather than a problem. The underseat steering was brilliant for
| reasons I'd never thought about. But don't take my word for it,
| ride one and decide for yourself.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20130309080557/http://hpm.catore...
| jabl wrote:
| For everyone complaining about tricycles, one thing I've seen
| here and there in Europe being used for inner city deliveries is
| what I learned is called "Velove Armadillo", a 4-wheeled cargo
| bike
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAaVXKBamd0
|
| You can even hook up a trailer to it for even more cargo.
| RajT88 wrote:
| I was under the impression these had been out for a while. Last
| May, when my wife and I went to France, these cargo bikes all
| over the place, especially in Paris.
| lostlogin wrote:
| With a front wheel design like this one?
| antfarm wrote:
| Cube has a model called "Trike Hybrid" that has a similar, more
| practical design: https://www.cube.eu/de-
| de/e-bikes/transport/trike-hybrid
| sn0n wrote:
| Kids these days would take the unicycle front and just roll
| around doing their free wheelie thing.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| feels like these types of human-powered cargo vehicles work
| better when they're pushing the load vs towing a trailer, either
| the 2 wheeler cargo that's got the payload way out front, or the
| reverse trikes. The closest I've tried to this type of geo is a
| regular bike towing a 2-wheeled trailer, and that has both
| logistic & performance issues. This setup has you really
| tall/forward, and the trailer interfering with the pedaling & leg
| movement.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Berm Peak reviewed a cargo bike some months ago:
|
| https://youtu.be/H7w57U3ijHY?si=EWXoYPNVpkwxh-oT
| ben7799 wrote:
| These comments just read like a whole bunch of people who never
| rode a bike and yet are somehow experts on everything about
| bikes.
|
| This thing is not for Le Tour and you don't go fast on it and you
| don't go up giant hills on it. That makes a lot of the concerns
| here go out the window.
|
| These types of bikes shaped objects often have all kinds of
| issues with trying to use bike parts designed for standard bikes
| on something that is very different. Issues with needing enormous
| chains, huge cable runs, etc.. when designers try things like
| this they are worrying about issues like that more than whether
| you can climb a mountain on it or stuff it into a corner at high
| speed without going out of control.
|
| The thing with these is the cost to design & manufacture
| components that need to be different than normal bikes can be
| astronomical, so anything they can do to design the frame to use
| normal components in a normal/non-compromised way pays off in a
| huge way.
|
| The ideas behind this aren't that different than the Cruzbike
| being front wheel drive to get rid of a lot of the
| component/drivetrain issues that recumbent bikes are famous for.
| bgnn wrote:
| People comparing these with racing bikes is so unbelievable.
| elliottkember wrote:
| The comment asking about riding positions drop bars was
| hilarious.
|
| Lots of Americans in the comments is probably why, plus the
| Hacker News tendency toward armchair expertise.
|
| The American grid system tends to produce hills that are
| unmanageable on a town or cargo bike, so bicycles are a
| fitness/enthusiast thing. And US cities are much more spread
| out, too. In more walkable European cities, these bikes make a
| lot of sense.
| bgnn wrote:
| This is neat but I'm not sure sbout sitting on top of the wheel.
| An electric version would be great
|
| For people questioning the viability of trikes, here is what the
| Dutch postal service uses:
|
| https://www.bikeshift.com/nl/assets/components/phpthumbof/ca...
|
| And this is ehat they are testing for future: https://fulpra.com/
| fitsumbelay wrote:
| There are a couple of long time bike messengers here in DC who've
| been using this same rig for 15+ years. One has a rear seat for
| one of his kids.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Bike is short for bicycle. That means exactly two wheels.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| This looks cool. I'd have to try it, myself, to see if it works.
|
| However, it also looks like these are all renderings. It would be
| interesting to see a live demo.
|
| The one actual photo looks quite different from the renderings.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-05-12 23:00 UTC)