Vivax

Whilst riding my bike I day-dreamed up a new bike.

Lo and behold, all the bits exist.

Vivax Assist, a German company, has an electric motor that assists the crank of a bicycle and hides in the downtube. It doesn’t impede the free-wheeling capacity at all.

The battery can be disguised as a water bottle. It would be nice if they could re-format this so it too could be hidden in an over-sized carbon downtube.

And there is this tiny little button to activate it that can be hidden in the bar-ends.

They will even provide the thing in a carbon frame, ready to go.

I don’t want it for a road bike with gears as they use it. I want it for a single speed bike.

Normally the gear ratio of a single speed bike is limited by the biggest hill you are likely to face. But that gearing isn’t optimised for fast cycling on the flats or downhill.

By having this electric assist for hills the gearing can go up on a single speed which makes them even more useful but without adding any extra maintenance issues, which would take away the benefit of a single speed.

The system only weighs 1.8kg and with a carbon frame and lightweight wheels and such the whole thing could still be less than 7kg’s.

An additional option would be an automatic mode where the system assists only once you hit a specific angle up a hill and fall under a certain speed, or a quick bit of assist from standing start to help get off the mark if you a very high gearing.

I have also asked them to ponder the idea of a rear-wheel system with a push button to automatically switch between free-wheel and fixie modes. This would be a great.