Recycled Cardboard Bicycles For $9?

http://nocamels.com/2012/07/recycled-cardboard-bicycles-for-9/

by jackau • 14 years ago

103 78 14 years ago

pmccool2• 14 years ago

"In an interview with Newsgeek, Gafni said that the production cost for his recycled bicycles is around $9-12 each, and he estimates it could be sold to a consumer for $60 to 90, depending on what parts they choose to add."

Assuming they're talking US dollars, that's roughly the price of a bike from the supermarket. Granted, it'll be a truly dreadful bike, but it'll be OK as basic transport. I don't understand the emphasis on cheapness. Making cheap bikes is a solved problem.

Don't get me wrong, I think a cardboard bike is cool. I'd be particularly interested to hear about what they've done about things like bearings and attaching tyres.

The green side of it is interesting, as is the idea of an explicitly disposable bike. If it's easier to manufacture locally, or on a small scale or whatever, that'd be something. But a bike for $60-90 is not a new idea. They're out there right now.

cemerick• 14 years ago

Don't confuse data used to persuade investors with end-user features and benefits. The article has quotes where Gafni talks about initial feedback from investors; I think it's reasonable to assume that the $9/$60 figures are efforts to establish a notion of expected margin, not a marketing pitch.

The bicycle doesn't need to be cheaper than the traditional alternative. In fact, it'd probably sell better if it were slightly more expensive than the alternative, while emphasizing its apparently significant advantages elsewhere: disposability, fashion novelty, and "green"ness, the latter always being valuable social signal, perhaps especially among people I know that are enthusiastic about bicycles.

excuse-me4• 14 years ago

Ironic that being disposable makes it 'greener' than a steel bike that will last for 10+ years

And steel or aluminium is a lot more recyclable than cardboard.

mootothemax4• 14 years ago

Granted, it'll be a truly dreadful bike, but it'll be OK as basic transport. I don't understand the emphasis on cheapness. Making cheap bikes is a solved problem.

But a bike for $60-90 is not a new idea. They're out there right now.

I very much disagree with your stance on this. I have yet to see a cheap bike that will stand up to more than a few months of daily commuting without various bearings wearing out. Use of non-standard parts makes fixing them uneconomical, as you could quickly buy a decent bike for the replacement value required.

I'd argue that the cheap bike problem is only currently solved in that cheap, good quality, second-hand bikes are available in most markets.

If this bike barely lasts as long, it'll at least have sold the problem of having all these useless lumps of metal lying around once your cheap bike has died.

pmccool2• 14 years ago

> I very much disagree with your stance on this. I have yet to see a cheap bike that will stand up to more than a few months of daily commuting without various bearings wearing out. Use of non-standard parts makes fixing them uneconomical, as you could quickly buy a decent bike for the replacement value required.

Agreed, but the article seemed to be arguing that there was demand for a cheap, essentially disposable, bike and that's what I think is a solved problem

It's not clear from the article whether the bike is any better from a waste/disposal point of view than a traditional metal bike. I expect it could be, I just don't know.

michaelt• 14 years ago

Yes, I'm a bit confused about how much you get for the $9 to $12 if the retail cost would be $60 to $90. Is that just an $81 markup, or does $9 only get you a frame without pedals and a chain?

On the other hand, Boston's Hubway cycle hire scheme [1] costs $12 for three days of membership. A bike for $12 could open up interesting avenues for similar bike uses as you wouldn't have to worry about getting the user to return it.

[1] http://www.thehubway.com/pricing

lgeek• 14 years ago

> as you wouldn't have to worry about getting the user to return it

I'm sorry, but bicycles abandoned after a few days of use seems like an incredibly wasteful idea.

olefoo• 14 years ago

The $9 figure is the cost to make the bike, but doesn't cover the cost of moving it around, storing it or selling it. Given it's size and awkwardness to handle, it would be hard to charge much less for it. You have to factor in the opportunity cost that when you sell such a bike you are giving up almost 100 Square Feet of retail space that you could be using to sell products that are smaller and more valuable.

hammock2• 14 years ago

For me the benefit of a cheap bike is that it then becomes disposable, meaning that no one wants to steal it and even if they did it would be no skin off your back.

Amsterdam has this problem solved in an interesting way. I am told there is a ring of drug addicts that steal and resell bikes for a living. You buy a bike from them for 8-10 euro, ride it around for a couple months until it gets stolen, then buy another stolen bike to replace it and repeat the cycle.

R_Edward• 14 years ago

It's interesting, I suppose, to know that his production cost is $9-12, but that's really pointless, isn't it? The important figure to know is what it's going to cost me to get my hands on one. That's the $60-90 figure. Which makes bizarre the later paragraph about it being pointless to lock up a cheap bike like this, because the lock is going to cost more than the bicycle it purports to secure.

Excuse me? I'm sure bike locks exist that cost a Century or more, but I've never bought one. The locks I buy cost $10-20, which is still well below the purchase price of one of these cycles. And even if I could somehow buy one for the $12 production cost, I'd still lock it up. Because in addition to the annoyance of having lost my $12 possession, now I also have the inconvenience of having to call someone for a ride, or pay for cab fare.

apendleton• 14 years ago

Maybe you don't live in a city with a big bike theft problem? Here in DC, where I live, there are kids who wander around with bolt cutters lifting bikes from bike racks, and at least in my experience, they're just as likely to go for a cheap bike as an expensive one, so you pretty much have to have a bolt-cutter-proof lock, regardless of your bike, if you don't want to get it stolen, which means a tempered steel U lock. I've never seen one of those for $10. It's especially frustrating because while the old rule of thumb was that you should spend 10% of the value of the bike on a lock, there's a floor of about $30, at least here, because of how easy it is to defeat cheap locks, which means you end up way over-spending on locks if you ride a cheap bike.

The goal here, as I understand it, is to make the bikes so cheap that there's no resale market for either the bikes or the parts, which might mean a "keeps honest men honest" $10 lock would be good enough.

aplusbi• 14 years ago

I live and bike in NYC and often carry two locks, one which cost me $80-90 and another that cost me $40-50. My commuter bike is more expensive than my locks, but not by that much.

DanBC2• 14 years ago

> The locks I buy cost $10-20

Have you checked Youtube for the make of lock?

Derbasti• 14 years ago

I'd be interested if cardboard is easier to work with than metal. I have this vision of a huge machine that basically eats waste paper and stamps out bicycles like paper cups.

You know, something that you could buy on a vacation trip for 20-30$ and just discard at the end. It would not need to be very durable. In fact, it would be fine if it lasted a few weeks. After that, it is biodegradeable paper waste.

Alterlife• 14 years ago

On a recent trip to San Francisco I've remember seeing adverts for bicycle rentals at 18$ an hour. I think the idea of a disposable 'one week' bicycle for 30$ would be absolutely brilliant and cost effective for tourists.

I wonder if it would create a new kind of trash, though...

And ofcourse, a lot depends a lot on how the cardboard vehicles stack up against their metal equivalents in terms of usability.

rapind• 14 years ago

Ixnay on the disposable.

Even if it's cardboard you have to consider how efficiently it can all be recycled and how much energy it takes to create it in the first place, and what happens with any parts that can't be recycled.

As an example, many North American cities are sending their recycling materials overseas, using up a ridiculous amount of fuel.

I guarantee you're doing a lot more for the environment buying used or renting / borrowing. Is it really so inconvenient?

sopooneo4• 14 years ago

But what is the nature of the failure? If the way you know the bike is ready to throw out is that it collapses underneath you, that's no good.

pavel_lishin3• 14 years ago

I imagine that for $20, the way you know the bike is ready to throw out is that you've been riding it for more than a week on vacation.

Trezoid• 14 years ago

My biggest concerns are how it handles impacts and how it stops. I can just see it folding just like cardboard if it ever hit something and emergency stopping, especially in the wet, could cause all kinds of painful and expensive problems.

mootothemax4• 14 years ago

I can just see it folding just like cardboard if it ever hit something and emergency stopping, especially in the wet, could cause all kinds of painful and expensive problems.

To be fair, if you want to avoid painful and expensive problems on a bike, the only viable option is to not have the accident in the first place. If you hit something at any noticeable speed, you're going to bend your forks, and it's also pretty easy to bend your wheel beyond repair.

If you get into racing bikes, it really doesn't take much for bits to break.

I've ridden mountain bikes with hydraulic brakes, and racing bikes with those tiny blocks. Whilst you definitely stop faster with the former, I didn't have any issues with the racing bike brakes, so I'd imagine that the brakes on these should be fine.

lucaspiller• 14 years ago

If anything I could see this being safer. Rather than just snapping (e.g. a carbon fibre front fork) this would just deform and take away the impact force - kind of like a crumple zone in cars.

maayank2• 14 years ago

A very nice video and story, but I would just like to highlight something. He says that he realized "there's no real know-how about how to work with cardboard beside making packages out of it".

I don't know if to say it's standard, but in industrial engineering there's certainly knowledge about it. For example: http://smarterware.org/890/the-office-made-entirely-of-cardb...

agumonkey• 14 years ago

Static structures VS Dynamic Ones I guess. That said the video doesn't show details about transmissions, gears, etc..

ktizo• 14 years ago

I immediately thought of Shigeru Ban and his paper tube buildings - http://www.shigerubanarchitects.com/SBA_WORKS/SBA_PAPER/SBA_...

mootothemax4• 14 years ago

Is it right to expect this bike to be pretty lightweight compared to the normally quite hefty cheap bikes that are for sale at present? If so, that's quite a nice innovation in itself.

jeremymims• 14 years ago

There's a company in New Haven, CT that makes furniture out of cardboard. It's surprisingly strong but I wouldn't jump on it:

http://www.chairigami.com

My concern with cardboard is that there is going to be some lower breaking point (especially the fork portion of the bike) due to the stress of riding it on uneven surfaces, debris getting caught in the spokes, or because of user motion. Carbon fiber forks have failed before causing catastrophic injury and death. Depending on tests, it may be an accident waiting to happen.

curveship• 14 years ago

If you look closely in the video, the front brake has never been used. There are no scuff marks on the rim, and brake pads always make scuff marks.

I suspect that if he used the front brake, it would crush the rim. This is one of the big engineering challenges for companies making rims out of carbon fiber: the compression forces from the brake pads can reach up to a thousand psi, because the brake levers provide mechanical advantage and the pads are so small. If that's not enough, the sheer forces can also cause the fibers to separate.

Building bikes out of cardboard is a very cool idea, and I wish him luck, but I think what we're seeing here is a very early and probably still unsafe prototype. There are many engineering challenges to be solved still.

I'd be interested in seeing a cardboard bike frame that was built from molded pieces rather than cut and glued prefab sheets. This is how modern carbon fiber bikes are constructed. I would think that a lot of that tech could cross over.

lukeholder• 14 years ago

thats a big assumption to make from a video. I am not engineer, but isn't there other methods for brakes other than rubber on metal?

newman314• 14 years ago

That's not an assumption. You can clearly see the brakes in the video which shows the intended use.

If it's single gear, you can simply stop pedaling to brake since it would be direct drive. In fact, that would probably be the easiest as I doubt this bike is capable of any serious speed.

AUmrysh• 14 years ago

I'm sure you could use the actual drive chain (it looks like a cogged belt) to slow the vehicle down by removing energy from the rear wheel. My guess is that the front brake is only used for emergencies, and the bike works as a fixed-gear.

see this about stopping a fixed-gear bike: http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Stop_a_Fixed_Gear_Bicycle

hammock2• 14 years ago

It's a fixie. The front brake doesn't ever need to be used.

pavel_lishin3• 14 years ago

Then why even have one?

patdennis2• 14 years ago

The primary use, like any bicycle, is to prevent pollution while encouraging physical activity and exercise.

I don't know about other people, but my primary use for my bicycle is transportation.

Edit: Also, does anyone else think that disposable bikes are a step backwards, not forwards, in terms of environmental responsibility?

pohl• 14 years ago

My answer to your last question is that it depends heavily on the expected mileage/lifetime one gets out of one. Surely they're not single-use, but they're also probably won't last multiple decades.

makmanalp• 14 years ago

I agree that it's a step backwards. My current bike is over 50 years old and I got it for $100. Performance is not top notch but better than a new big box store bike for 3 times its price. I would estimate that it has seen at least 5-6 previous owners.

Or, you know, I could have bought a cardboard bike.

I feel like while this is a fun project, some people need to sit back and take a big picture view before spending years to develop a product only to realize that you've been bested by the tech of 60 years ago.

jmduke• 14 years ago

Agreed.

I still think there's a lot of room for improvement in modern bikeshare paradigms. The most common time I tell myself 'man, I wish I had a bike' is when I want to get to a convenience store/lunch spot one-three miles away, where walking isn't really feasible but driving seems exorbitant.

I wish there was a system where I could pay fifty cents at a bike station and get the use of a bike for an hour, or something similar. That's my ideal system.

wtvanhest• 14 years ago

They have it in Boston and many other cities for $80 a year. Stations set up all over the city.

maayank2• 14 years ago

There is a system like that in Tel Aviv. Interestingly, the #1 criticism of it is that the system doesn't recognize correctly if there are or aren't available bikes at the station. A software/hardware bug.

brc3• 14 years ago

The original system like this started in Copenhagen, and doesn't cost anything - when you return the bike to the special rack, you get your 20Kr piece back.

Lots of other cities around the world have bike sharing programs now. The more fancy ones have a smartcard system that you charge up and it deducts money for usage.

jlarocco• 14 years ago

"Fun" is another big use, but I don't think that's the market he's going for.

Being made of cardboard, I don't think the disposable part is so bad. Cardboard is easily recycled, and, if not recycled, biodegradable. And the trees used to make the original cardboard are a renewable resource. That still leaves the non-cardboard components, but they're a small part of the overall bike.

patdennis2• 14 years ago

The same applies to paper plates.

I think the difference arises that once you factor in the energy it takes to make a cheap product repeatedly (then collect it and recycle it) vs the energy it takes to make a quality product only once.

freiheit• 14 years ago

For a "real" bike (the kind you buy for $500 US or more from a shop that basically just does bikes, or buy used): yes

For a "department store" bike aka "bicycle shaped object" (the kind you buy for $100-$300 from Walmart, Sears, Costco or another store that doesn't actually have anybody that knows how to properly assemble a bike): no.

Those department store bikes are estimated to average something like 75 miles of use in their lifetime (showroom floor to landfill) and are generally not made to be very serviceable.

So if we assume that a $60 cardboard bike is intended to compete with $100 disposable bikes, it's probably still a good step forwards.

Retric3• 14 years ago

IMO 500+$ bikes are far more about fun/ego than transportation. A cheap bike that let's you comfortably travel 3 miles and not really care if there stolen is worth a lot. A bike that weighs 10lb's less but is more likely to be stolen and costs 2-3 times as much is far less useful.

klodolph• 14 years ago

I have a "department store" bike from about 13 years ago, purchased as a birthday gift when I was young. I'm sure it was less than $300. I probably rode it around 1400 miles in the past year, and I've been riding it heavily for the past ten years or so (my high school was about 5 miles away).

Whatever the intent of the manufacturer, I'm convinced that a metal "bicycle shaped object" will get you pretty far if you want. I find it serviceable enough despite its rough origin. The brake levers, derailleurs, frame, and front wheel are all original, but everything else has been replaced.

I doubt much of it would end up in a landfill, metal recycling is far too profitable for that kind of outcome.

syedkarim• 14 years ago

In 2005 I bought a 5-year-old used Huffy beach cruiser for $18. The new model of the same bike was about $120. For two years, I used that bike as a commuter and averaged about 40 miles per week on it during good weather; I was living in Chicago at the time, so let's call it 20-weeks of biking, or 800 miles.

After that two years, I still used it as a backup and regularly lent it out to friends; easily 400 miles per year for the next four years. I never upgraded a single component, other than change the tires once and inner tubes as needed. I never changed or oiled the chain; I purposefully did not maintain the bike so I could find out when it would self-destruct. For the past three years, I had been storing the bike outside and uncovered (during Chicago winters). Once spring rolled around, I would just hop on and grind through the rust.

The only reason I stopped riding the bike was because last year both wheels were stolen.

brc3• 14 years ago

Yes, as a lifetime cyclist I find it quite annoying that people now assume I'm riding my bike to make some sort of statement. I'm riding my bike because I like doing it and always have.

sopooneo4• 14 years ago

This seems cool and fun, and potentially a great engineering exercise. That is, you have to build around the properties of your material. But from an environmental and economic perspective I am deeply unconvinced. A simple but well made and well maintained bicycle can be quite cheap and perform extremely efficiently for decades.

I used to fix bikes and old Raliegh three speeds were just the most amazing machines I've ever dealt with. Replace the rubber parts, true the wheels, and tighten the brakes and they are good to go again... thirty or forty years after they rolled off the assembly line. That is efficient.

pikewood• 14 years ago

I wonder how much of the strength comes from cardboard and how much comes from the glue. Wood glue is stronger than wood, so is the cardboard just a lattice for a PVA shell?

I guess it could use a similar principal in carbon fiber reinforced polymer, with cardboard taking the place of the carbon fiber and glue taking place of the polymers.

It also reminds me of wood turners who "fill voids" with cyanoacrylate glue so much that the main material they're turning is the CA glue itself.

dkroy• 14 years ago

This would be great if you were on vacation or just visiting a city, and wanted a cheap mode of transportation that you wouldn't feel guilty for leaving behind.

stcredzero• 14 years ago

Interesting topic, but Onswipe sites freaking suck. Do they actually test on the iPad? This Onswipe page crashes Safari on my iPad.

teju• 14 years ago

Where did everyone get the idea that it was "disposable"? All I got from the article/video was that it was made of recycled material.

I would like to know how durable this bike is, and how much energy is saved by using recycled cardboard versus a metal sourced by mining.

olsn• 14 years ago

I didn't see this in the article, but does anyone know how much the bike actually weights?

js2• 14 years ago

Non-swipe: http://nocamels.com/2012/07/recycled-cardboard-bicycles-for-...

kristopolous• 14 years ago

The "Cheap as an anti-theft mechanism" hypothesis has interested me in a while. I don't know how true it is though.

I see the cost/benefit argument, sure. But then again, thieves come in all stripes.

brc3• 14 years ago

The problem with the cheap-as-anti-theft means non-theft can be replaced with vandalism.

I've seen plenty of old worthless bikes lying destroyed by vandals, sometimes still chained to a fence.

lsc• 14 years ago

this is interesting; I mean, it's not cheaper than a used bike, but buying a good used bike in that price range is a whole lot more work than a trip to wal-mart, and usually requires a fair bit of tune-up work before it's ready to go.

I recently had my mid '70s early '80s junk steel frame bike stolen from the parking structure beneath my condo. I wondered why someone bothered; I mean, when I put the bike away it had two flat tires and badly needed a tune-up; And it was stolen from a bike rack that was packed with mostly better-looking bikes.

I mean, two flat tires; it's not like they were just looking for a quick ride to the liquor store.

But yeah, there is value to a cheap bike I could pull off the rack and just use, something easier to get working than a used bike. (speaking of, I'm looking for another <$100 steel-frame bike if anyone is getting rid of something.)

lsunden• 14 years ago

Stanford has been using paper bicycle design as an exercise for aspiring product designers for years now. (http://www.stanford.edu/group/me310/me310_2011/fun.html?fid=...)

I admire the guy trying to make this concept into a product, though they ultimately may be to the bike world as IKEA is to furniture (accessible but unfortunately hugely disposable)

Recycled Cardboard Bicycles For $9?

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