Mobi Bicycle Rental Concept by Lucas Neumann de Antonio
Urban mobility is an overwhelming topic that contains an universe in itself, and one of the major issues we experience in cities today. Through design and innovation, it is possible to make people more aware of the mobility problems we face, and more eager to develop and use systems that foster the better use of space, time, and resources. This concept was developed as a custom designed bicycle rental system for our Universidade de São Paulo campus but its features make it suitable for many other situations.
The bicycle was designed by a 4-student team, part of a 20-student team that designed the whole system, as follows:
• Team 01: Bicycle Fabricio Rodrigues, Henrique Corazza, Lucas Marques Otsuka and Lucas Neumann
• Team 02: Rental station Beatriz Duduch, Julia Contreiras, Thomaz Abramo and Alicia Flores
• Team 03: Helmet Vinicius Ladivez, Vivian Fugiwara, Mariana Menegon and Rízia Carneiro
• Team 04: Bicycle path and urban planning Caio Caly, Laura Pires, Fernanda Nunes, Nívea Pascoaloto
• Team 05: Support Vehicle Miguel Costa, Henrique Gomes, Fabio Salmoni
01/29/2013, 09:47 am
Looks good, won’t work in sooo many ways. I’m Dutch and we have more bikes than people here. We get our first bike at the age of 3-4 and own different bikes for different purposes. So we know that e.g. 21 gear won’t work in the city because within 2 weeks someone else will park his/her bike against yours and the derailleur system will be broke. Apart from this local knowledge i’ve worked several seasons for a private bike-rental company. I might say i’ve got an eye for rental bikes and their faults.
First of all, everything that CAN go broke WILL go broke and furthermore: everything that can rust will, can get dirty will as well. The object holder and adjustable rear rack will just gather dirt, rain and dust. Your bell, mirror, handbreak levers, their cables and auto gear can and will aal break within a season. Repair of all those is time-consuming and there for costly. Repair can’t be done at the Rental Station (wow how much space is every bike taking like this? 2,5m!) so they have to be gathered and repaired at a central location. Here we come to the MAIN design fault: you can’t stack your bikes. To do so pedals are positioned in de 6/12 o’clock position. Then the upper one should fit in the V of the frame. The lowest part of the V is way too high. The front wheel, the fork and the handle bar are designed like a moutainbike. That’s probably the least comfortable design for going around town. It gives a nervous ride and again the bars wont fold together when you stack the bikes on a lorry. Since stacking is essential for any rental bike also bell, mirror, handbreak levers and cables will be damaged. Technical comment: the spokes look lovely in this parallel way. They wont work though with handbreaks: there is no strength at all with radial spokes in the horizontal direction (the riding vector). With radial spokes you need 3x more spokes (not less) and no break.
Missing: a lock.
Last comment: fast adjusting by letters and numbers is a great idea. Adjusting also means vandalism+theft: you can pull off the seat and take it home. Good idea as a lock: park your bike and take the seat with you!
Nice project, great looking design but you’re not an experienced cyclist. You’re most welcome in Holland to see how it’s done and invited to comment/trash my samba skills!