Megan Lynch (she/her)Now That's Interesting! Highlights from Spezi 2025 with our Panel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=su6Jhqj68-g #Spezi2025 #Recumbent #BikeTooter @fedibikes @bikenite
YouTube
Another attempt to add upper body workout to lower. https://www.velogym.de/
One thing that I've seen and also heard is that more recumbent trike manufacturers are adding handcycle options to their lines.
If this sticks, it's very good news for disabled riders who need it as the competition will likely bring prices lower. #Recumbent #Accessibility #Spezi2025
Golo cargo quad system by Flevo. Flevo has been in recumbents for decades and worked with Velove to develop the Armadillo. But Velove stopped selling the Armadillo to the public and Flevo seems not to work on that anymore so they had to come up with their own design. This is probably the closest thing you can buy (if you're not a business) to the Armadillo system. (The Armadillo looks better to me, though. I have not ridden either.)
Home - GoLo, delivering the future!
GoLo, delivering the future! revolutionary Comfortable Build to last Modular https://golo.bike/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/golo_render_animation_final_no_logo0001-0696.mp4 The GoLo The GoLo is a unique cargobike platform that is as versatile as it is practical. It combines comfort with cargo capacity and practicality, making it ideal for day to day operations. One of the unique aspects is the low cargo area between […]
The panelists are enthusing about the Cixi chainless system that GoLo and others are using. It allows you to pedal in reverse, which is definitely something trike and quad users need due to not having as tight a turning radius as short wheelbase bicycles.
EDIT: Also has automatic shifting and allows use of regenerative braking (if I understand correctly).
They didn't mention an URL for it, but there was an advanced prototype of the Carbike there and they said it was constantly busy on the test track...very popular.
I think we're seeing a rise of enclosed e-bike/trike/quad ideas in order to get folks out of cars, whether they see themselves as "bike people" or not. There's a segment of the population that really wants an all-weather, inexpensive e-vehicle.
I hope the macho ableist "that's cheating" guys shut up. #Spezi2025 #Recumbent #BikeTooter
If we want to get people out of cars, esp gas cars, old guard macho ableist cycling culture has got to unlearn their ableism and other toxic crap.
If people want a covered bike/trike/quad with e-assist, you should be happy they are going car-light or car-free! Be supportive!
It is a real frontier period in micromobility so there are still things to work out as far as infrastructure, rules, etiquette, etc. but we'll do better if we work together #Spezi2025 #Recumbent #BikeTooter #ClimateChange
This reminds me of a pedal boat. Panelist says it's well built, with great suspension.
Another design for being able to ride tandem as a wheelchair user.
https://dreirad-zentrum.ch/dreiraeder-elektro-dreiraeder/hcp-swiss/
Another light electric vehicle that was at #Spezi2025 They make both fully electric and ones that are pedalable with e-assist.
The #Spezi2025 site put up links to photos from this year's event, so you can see more of the show.
https://en.spezialradmesse.de/ #Recumbent #BikeTooter #CargoBike @bikenite @fedibikes
Jesse@meganL I love e-bikes as an assist to allow more people with varying abilities to access cycling, but my big concern is the increase in speed, weight and size that e-bikes can allow and the decrease in the 'active' part of 'active transport'.
I worry a bit that e-bicycles will evolve to just become a different kind of car again with similar space and danger problems.
@jessta Again, that's an ableist way of looking at it. Some people need that and it's better that something affordable be available for them that is less of a drag on the environment than cars, esp gas cars, are.
It's one of the things I hate about the "active transport" framing - it gets a lot of its funding from orgs that have ableist and eugenicist aims. Which means it's only a lateral move compared to dismantling ableism entirely.
@jessta I've never met an "active transport" advocate who gave a single shit about my health and about accessibility. Supposedly that's why it's important to be active - my health. It's all concern trolling.
Few of those people signed the petition I had to make infrastructure accessible and ensure accessible micromobility choices and absolutely ZERO of them joined me in the hard work of showing up at meetings, lobbying, etc. for it.
There are and will be growing pains because of how transport
@jessta is changing right now. I have already had problems with pseudo-bikes on cycle paths in Davis.
But working in coalition and figuring out how infrastructure, rules, and etiquette need to change to be anti-ableist, pro-environment, etc works better than hoping the tide doesn't advance or simply joining with car-centric NIMBYs to ban e-bikes, etc.
@meganL The design of a bicycle didn't change much for 100yrs mostly because you have to pedal it. The fact that you had to put physical effort in to moving it naturally put restrictions on the design. You couldn't really go that fast or accelerate very quickly. The bike was relatively light and had to be relatively aerodynamic. My worry is that without these natural restrictions the market will push them to be faster, bigger and heavier and more car like with the only way to restrict this being regulations.
I also worry that this will get so out of hand that there will be additional regulation on traditional bicycles (eg. removal of bikes from shared paths or dense pedestrian areas, and with greater policing and stricter enforcement).
@jessta The design of the bike didn't change much for 100 years because people were bending the knee to Union Cycliste Internationale.
Recumbents are more aerodynamic and they were banned. https://www.bikeroute.com/NationalBicycleGreenwayNews/2013/06/30/best-history-of-the-recumbent-why-its-faster-how-it-came-to-be-banned/
The way to deal with that worry, in my opinion, is to do outreach and build activist coalitions for an anti-ableist and climate-forward consensus instead of fueling the talking points car-centric NIMBYs are already promulgating.
@jessta We have to talk back to the focus on cyclist behavior anyway. On any given day drivers kill and injure more people than any e-cycle rider.
Misuse Case@jessta @meganL I am plenty active with my e-bike and the fastest I can go on it is 28 MPH (I almost never reach that speed).
Also I don’t know about other people but I can’t act like a reckless car driver without putting myself at serious risk of injury because it’s not, like, a two-ton metal box or something.
@MisuseCase @meganL 28mph is scary fast for a general bicycle speed, it's elite athlete speeds. I'm rarely going faster than 9mph and where I live e-bikes are supposed to be assist restricted to 15mph. 28mph is very hostile to a person walking.
I ride slow because it's physical effort to ride faster, this creates a natural limit on my average speed. I'm not going to accelerate unexpectedly or accelerate quickly in a situation where I'm likely to have to brake again because it would be wasted effort. E-bikes lack this natural restriction and predictability of behaviour that makes it easy for bicycles and people walking to get along.
My partner has an e-bike and she gets a good amount of exercise from it, and enables us to ride together at similar speeds and over similar distances.
E-bikes are great when they are an assistant to allow people to access cycling who otherwise wouldn't due to fitness or other mobility issues.
But they also allow people to have heavier and larger bikes and go at higher top speeds and higher average speeds than a traditional bicycle rider would. This makes bicycles less compatible with walking and pose a greater risk to people.
I'd hate to have worked hard to advocate for bicycle infrastructure just to end up with bicycles eventually being car-lite with people on traditional bicycles being scared off the paths, lanes and tracks by dangerous space hogging mini-cars.
They're fine for disability access, well restricted and in small numbers but I worry they won't remain that way.
@MisuseCase @meganL Just the fact that the bike is capable of that speed is going to be a problem. In the next 5yrs when the cycling population has doubled and every new rider is on a very fast e-bike. If the bikes can go 28mph then some percentage of reckless people will go that fast and this will change the level of danger in people's interact with bicycles.
I don't know what the solution is.
@jessta Cars are capable of going over 100 mph.
Cars currently have absolutely no speed governors on them and the population of drivers is huge. How active are you in lobbying for speed governors to be put on all new cars and retrofitted onto old ones?
@meganL I contact every government representative I have and tell them on want speed governors on cars, I advocate for 30km/h speed limits on local streets and street designs to enforce it and I'll always argue that bicycles are safer than cars at any speed (https://aus.social/@jessta/114418057937565749).
But just because cars have forced us to become so used to looking at transport safety in terms of fatalities doesn't mean we shouldn't be considering severe injury as well.
I don't want to spend decades advocating for better bicycle and car-lite infrastructure for high speed electric bicycles to be a large source of traffic stress and injury and fear preventing kids from playing in the street.
Jesse (@[email protected])
@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] The specific case pushing for this law change is "Kim, then 44, was out on her lunch break on 12 February 2016 when Alliston, riding a fixed-gear bike with no front brake, collided with her as she stepped out into Old Street, in east London. She was taken to the Royal London hospital, where she went straight into theatre. The head injury she had sustained was catastrophic, and she died a week later." The bicycle(100kg including rider) hit this women at 28km/h. That's the equivalent kinetic energy of hitting someone with car (1000kg) at 9km/h. A bicycle without a front bike isn't safe, but it's much safer than any car traveling at any speed. Kim got really unlucky and fell awkwardly resulting in a fatal head injury, but if this cyclist was driving a car it would be deemed a very sad freak accident. Nobody would try to claim it was reckless.
Gssy@meganL That looks awesome, but my understanding is that if you go mechanical -> electrical -> mechanical there's an approx 40-50% efficiency loss -- I couldn't see anything on their website about the proportion of pedal energy that makes it to the wheel?
@wall0159 I'm not techy enough to know, but the panelists seemed very impressed with it and the panel includes recumbent manufacturers and dealers.
Loss of power isn't always the biggest concern - solar power still isn't that efficient in transferring from sunlight to DC power, but we still use it.
@wall0159 My guess is that for applications where you don't want the maintenance/cleaning headaches of a chain system, and you prioritize being able to reverse with a trike/quad, that those folks would consider the loss of efficiency an acceptable trade.
Richard@rj ahh, yes -- I think this is the kicker -- it's done to comply with regulation. I mean, it's still an efficient vehicle that will use very little power to move people and goods, but the pedaling is unlikely to contribute much at all to the battery charge. Still, one can get some exercise, I guess :-) I can certainly see the benefits of no chain! @meganL
@meganL A clever design but I'd need to be convinced that all that suspension can be made reliable enough for constant daily use in mucky conditions - sometimes simple is better. Also unsure how practical a recumbent design is when you need to get on and off a hundred times a day, when the saddle is at hip height you easily slide on and off to standing
@rj YOU easily slide on and off to standing from an upright saddle. Not everyone does better on an upright.
Luckily for you and those who prefer it, there are many delivery and vending bikes/trikes/quads that have upright positions.
@meganL Have you seen the Easy Rider adult trike? https://www.vanraam.com/en-gb/our-bikes/tricycles/tricycles-for-adults/easy-rider Saw a few in use in the Netherlands
@rj Yes, I'm aware of Van Raam. Glad those options are out there for folks who like them.
I started as an abled upright bike rider. I then went USS recumbent bike, then recumbent quadricycle, and next will be a folding recumbent tadpole trike. I've also ridden upright cargo bike (Xtracycle FreeRadical attachment), and upright folding bike.
One of the reasons I like Spezi so much is the variety there.
Ashley Reynolds@meganL they’re so cute!
@ashinonyx They said there was always a line to try those out at Spezi 2025. Lots of curiosity about them.
gallaugher@meganL I visited the page and am realizing that if I lived in Germany and tried to learn German I’d be constantly delighted by the language. The button in the upper right says “Zum Shop” although translate said this was “in the shop”. Still fun to say. And I want one :)
@gallaugher One panelist said that rear wheel allows for a real amazing turning radius so it's great for fitting into small parking spaces.
The low clearance in front, though, means you have to live someplace with well-maintained infrastructure. Definitely wouldn't work well in most of Albania, for instance.