The thing with the modern bicycle wheel is that it is simultaneously wholly integrated with the function of the overall bike, while also still modular enough to allow swapping out parts against it. Whereas this bike failed to meet both those criteria.
If changing from standard hub bearings to this hubless design with a larger bearing structure was an isolated change, this might have been alright. But that also took away the tensile structure, swapping for a heavier compression structure to achieve the same rigidity. And then that complicated the brakes, the drivetrain, and frame.
Whereas a standard bicycle wheel works with both rim and disc brakes – heck, even spoon brakes if that’s your thing – and mostly doesn’t care about single- or double-sided forks, and can even be adapted for 2x2 drive on some ebikes. All of this is possible because the bicycle wheel is an objectively good design: the sum is greater than its components, and that makes it a high bar to beat.
Even with certain edge-case requirements – eg radial lacing to reduce weight, improve aero at the cost of hub torque resistance – there’s simply so much upside with the spoked, pneumatic bicycle wheel that it’ll still trounce other designs.
At some point, Beno must have recognized this and either ignored it early on out of hubris, or had too many dollar signs clouding their vision, until it was well too late in the project to stop this trainwreck.
I mean, yes, all that’s true, but they were also doomed from the get-go just because the huge bearing creates so much more unnecessary friction. Did you see how poorly it coasted? That negates one of the biggest advantages of cycling over walking all by itself!
Engineering-wise, large diameter bearings with low friction are entirely possible. This just happens to be one of the worst implementations of a large bearing, in an application where it really, really matters to be low resistance.
My point is that low-friction bearings still wouldn’t have saved this design from impracticality, so focusing on just the bearing issue would be giving a free-pass to the rest of the design pitfalls of this monstrosity.
The thing with the modern bicycle wheel is that it is simultaneously wholly integrated with the function of the overall bike, while also still modular enough to allow swapping out parts against it. Whereas this bike failed to meet both those criteria.
If changing from standard hub bearings to this hubless design with a larger bearing structure was an isolated change, this might have been alright. But that also took away the tensile structure, swapping for a heavier compression structure to achieve the same rigidity. And then that complicated the brakes, the drivetrain, and frame.
Whereas a standard bicycle wheel works with both rim and disc brakes – heck, even spoon brakes if that’s your thing – and mostly doesn’t care about single- or double-sided forks, and can even be adapted for 2x2 drive on some ebikes. All of this is possible because the bicycle wheel is an objectively good design: the sum is greater than its components, and that makes it a high bar to beat.
Even with certain edge-case requirements – eg radial lacing to reduce weight, improve aero at the cost of hub torque resistance – there’s simply so much upside with the spoked, pneumatic bicycle wheel that it’ll still trounce other designs.
At some point, Beno must have recognized this and either ignored it early on out of hubris, or had too many dollar signs clouding their vision, until it was well too late in the project to stop this trainwreck.
I mean, yes, all that’s true, but they were also doomed from the get-go just because the huge bearing creates so much more unnecessary friction. Did you see how poorly it coasted? That negates one of the biggest advantages of cycling over walking all by itself!
Engineering-wise, large diameter bearings with low friction are entirely possible. This just happens to be one of the worst implementations of a large bearing, in an application where it really, really matters to be low resistance.
My point is that low-friction bearings still wouldn’t have saved this design from impracticality, so focusing on just the bearing issue would be giving a free-pass to the rest of the design pitfalls of this monstrosity.