I mentioned in an earlier post that Philippe Starck had been invited by the City of Bordeaux, France to design “the town bike of the future”. He recently unveiled his PIBAL concept bike, which you can see in the attached rendering. If I understand correctly, the idea behind the platform on the step-through frame is that the bike can also be used as a scooter for short distances. Maybe I am misunderstanding the translation, but I am not really sure why anyone would want to do that. Besides, a rider’s full weight on this platform would only add to the structural issues with the frame design. I’ll reserve further judgment until I see a rideable prototype though. Apparently the PIBAL will be manufactured by Peugeot and will be available in December as a part of a free bike share program in Bordeaux.
Thanks to Russell from Bike Share Philadelphia for the link.
Update 2/16: Via a post at PSFK, this bike will be “produced as part of Mu by Peugeot, the automakers’ mobility services division.”
Speaking of bike share programs, “ntb” is a concept by German industrial design studio Teams Design. The project group, which included the designers Ulrich Schweig, Oliver Keller and Stefan Hermann, sketched it as a “new generation concept of the famous hire-able public town bike in Hamburg.” See more images on Stefan’s blog and thumb through his portfolio to see another of his e-bike concepts.
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