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Conscious Commuter, Folding E-Assist Bicycle With Internal Gearing

Written by Colin McCaleb
3 Comments
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Conscious Commuter Folding Electric Bicycle Profile

Set for release in 2013 is a new folding e-assist bike, the Conscious Commuter. It’s been in development for a while and raised funding through a Kickstarter campaign last year.

The Conscious Commuter is built around an aluminum frame that breaks apart in sections and compacts around 20″ wheels. Range is stated at 15-20 miles and power comes from a 350 watt front hub motor. A throttle on the bars boosts the bike to 20mph top speed and recharge takes about 2 hours. Linked to a choice of  either 3 or 7 speed Shimano Nexus internal hub is a chainless drive system. Because of the lack of components, Conscious Commuter is grease free, so no dirty pants legs on short rides. It’s promised to be a viable solution for corporate and university transportation where riders don’t want to get sweaty. No weights are stated yet, or pricing, but the original batch of Conscious Commuter bicycles ran $1,395 per.

Click ‘more’ to see how it folds and compacts…

Consciouc Commuter Folding Electric Bicycle Bars

Conscious Commuter Folding Electric Bicycle Wheels

Conscious Commuter Folding Electric Bicycle Folded

Conscious Commuter Folding Electric Bicycle Compact

 

 
Colin McCaleb
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Mike
Mike
12 years ago

Maybe, it folds in “design style” but unless they put a stronger frame,
they can get a “collapsable one time only bike” instead.
Can’t unsderstand the use of so bad 7 gears Nexus instead of Alfine 8 or even better 11 gears type.
Love the cardanic transmision sistem.
Hei do it properly…please

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12 years ago

In my experience the frame looks strong enough, many bikes have had monotube frames of similar size for decades. The rear triangle attachment looks… interesting… but again looks up to task.
Regarding gears, if you buy a bike with a shaft drive you’re clearly not interested in efficiency, or weight and therefore probably speed. So the outdated gear system probably won’t make a difference to the intended consumers.

On a plus, unlike most ‘designer’ bike concepts this at least looks to have reasonable geometry and sizing so at least it will be rideable.

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slow joe crow
slow joe crow
12 years ago

Since I have been looking at folding commuter bikes recently, I’ll get right to the big problems. First is the folding design, while rotating the front wheel above the curved spine tube looks cool it adds unnecessary weight and complexity compared to folding the rear triangle under like a Brompton or Bike Friday. The sideways rear fold compounds the problem because you end up with the folded bike sitting on the bottom bracket shell and frame tube instead of on the rear wheel (Bike Friday) or caster wheels (Brompton) so you are forced to carry the folded bike since there is no way to roll it around. This is a double fail in this case since the Conscious Commuter is an e-assist bike so there is is the extra weight of the battery and motor. Which begs the question of where did they put the battery pack?
As far as the curved frame tube goes, it is not as strong as a straight tube so there are strength and weight costs to looking cool.
For completeness I will point out that the side fold designs like the Tern and Dahon bikes are stronger looking than this and also provide either an integral or optional means of rolling the folded bike.

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