Reviving a Modular Cargo Bike Design from the 1930s
82 comments
·May 12, 2025btbuildem
somat
Yes, the tricycle. Masterfully combining the exposed position of a bicycle with the space requirements of a car.
They really don't make sense in motorcycles, A large part of the point of a motorcycle is that you are willing to give up a lot of comfort and safety in exchange for having a very small nimble personal transport. Nothing wrong with this tradeoff, but why would want a vehicle that takes up the same amount of space as a car that gives you the safety and comfort value of a motorcycle?
skeeter2020
I personally set aside the safety & comfort sacrifice of the motorcycle but cannot accept the performance loses. Similar to when I see people maneuvering a bicycle over rough or varied terrain while sitting down; you might as well be driving a car.
cycomanic
Yes when my kids were young I tried out a bunch of cargo bikes and the christiania trikes feel so unnatural and unsafe it's really hard to describe. I still ended up with a trike but it's a leaning one which feels just like a normal bike (and it's very narrow so fits through doors into backyards...). This is what I got: https://chike.de/en/ it was the best purchase I ever made! For anyone thinking about a cargo bike when having small kids; go ahead your kids will love it, you will love it!
jandrese
If you're trying to keep all of the wheels on the ground you're not using it efficiently. With trikes when you go around a curve the inner wheel lifts off the ground, especially as many trikes have solid rear axles. It feels scary to have it pitch outward in the turns, but it is how the machine works.
layer8
Isn’t it the outer wheel that would lift off the ground?
skeeter2020
it's the inner wheel with a tilt/lean. Your weight has to get out over the COG to balance. The feeling ranges from foreign to terrifying and I'm not sure why you wouldn't just go with an excellent cargo bicycle that avoids the entire issue.
jandrese
You would think so but no. The inner wheel is the one that lifts.
amalcon
> especially as many trikes have solid rear axles
Do you (or anyone I guess) happen to know why? Low speed differential non-drive axles are not that complex, and would sermingly help a lot.
rtkwe
If they're not drive why connect them at all? Why not have them mounted independently and eliminate the need for an extra part? My only real guess is it's easier for carrying capacity.
0_____0
What makes this true of trikes but not of the typical automobile?
00N8
Some cars like the Mini Cooper S do lift a rear wheel when turning sharply under braking -- I've seen this a lot in autocross racing. I normally only see front engine/FWD cars with limited suspension travel do it though. Trikes are less stable & will lift a wheel more easily overall.
enragedcacti
The principle is the same, the distinction has more to do with suspension (or lack thereof) and the solid rear axle. The same strategy of lifting the inside rear tire is used in competitive go-kart racing: https://youtu.be/cMAtgPX6st8?t=312 . If the carts had a differential then it would be a different story (and they would be cars and not karts according to the SuperFastMatt taxonomy)
mtreis86
They do. Volkswagens from the 80s and 90s that have solid dead rear axles "tripod" around corners.
jandrese
Automobiles have 4 wheels. The geometry of the situation is very different. This is also why cars have differentials, because otherwise the car would be fighting against the turn.
Basically when you turn your trike turns into a bike.
cpgxiii
> There's a reason we see so few [tricycles] on the roads, amidst an explosion of various human-powered modes of transport.
Perhaps in the US and western Europe, but tricycle tuk-tuks and cycle rickshaws are extremely common in other parts of the world.
SoftTalker
Three wheel motorcycles are popular amongst bikers who get too old to handle a two wheeler. Some have two wheels in front, one in back, and look almost like cars, others are just a standard motorcycle chassis fitted with two rear wheels.
TrueGeek
In The Netherlands 3 wheel bikes are fairly common to haul kids and dogs.
I can easily get mine on two wheels if I take a sharp, fast, turn - but after you do it once you learn the limits and it's a very stable bike.
clan
Same in Denmark. It is almost a must have for inner city families. Much more common than two wheel Long Johns.
Two very common models are:
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SoftTalker
The instability in turns was what made the "Big Wheel" fun when I was a small child. Too low to the ground to really tip over but easy to make it spin out.
I had a conventional tricycle too, don't recall ever falling over on it, though it could get tippy. You learned to lean to offset that.
econ
If you have a large preferably rusty box in front of you the cars treat you like royalty.
steanne
there are trikes that can lean. this is one, and not the one i remember see an article on a few years ago, so there's at least two companies out there doing it.
asveikau
I see the word "tricycle" and I'm reminded of the Piaggio MP3, from the parent company of Vespa. It has two front wheels and one rear.
skeeter2020
feels like these types of human-powered cargo vehicles work better when they're pushing the load vs towing a trailer, either the 2 wheeler cargo that's got the payload way out front, or the reverse trikes. The closest I've tried to this type of geo is a regular bike towing a 2-wheeled trailer, and that has both logistic & performance issues. This setup has you really tall/forward, and the trailer interfering with the pedaling & leg movement.
nabilhat
It's always exciting to see this idea get revived for the first time in ninety years every ten years!
I've pedaled around on a couple variations of this design. Like everyone who had never ridden one but saw it on the internet, I also confidently imagined it would violently hurl me to the ground at the slightest provocation. I was wrong, which strangely seems to be a pattern for confident opinions I've formed based on things I've only seen on the internet. Having not been for a ride on this particular iteration, I will not post confident opinions about it on the internet.
The best (granted, of two...) version I've tried was semi-recumbent, with a standard geartrain and flevobike-style steering. The steering was a little weird at first, but I quickly figured out how to fully steer it hands free. Fully unloaded it was possible to tip it with hard front braking while turning, if you pitched your body weight into the effort. Loaded, it was absolutely nailed to the ground. You're just a mule winching a load down the road at that point. Sometimes it's fun to be a mule, piloting a weird bike-cart.
It turns out everyone flamewarring about stability on the internet forgot to get mad about drive wheel traction limits when pulling a load uphill. Which for me was a loading consideration rather than a problem. The underseat steering was brilliant for reasons I'd never thought about. But don't take my word for it, ride one and decide for yourself.
https://web.archive.org/web/20130309080557/http://hpm.catore...
jabl
For everyone complaining about tricycles, one thing I've seen here and there in Europe being used for inner city deliveries is what I learned is called "Velove Armadillo", a 4-wheeled cargo bike
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAaVXKBamd0
You can even hook up a trailer to it for even more cargo.
analog31
Three wheeled cars and trikes mostly moved to having the two wheels in front for stability when cornering. Same reason why 3 wheeled all terrain vehicles were taken off the market. Otherwise, cool idea.
CalRobert
I was so excited to try a cargo bike I made sure to rent a Cristiana bike on a holiday to Copenhagen with my pregnant wife. Then I crashed while turning with her as a passenger. She was displeased.
We now ride a two wheeled urban arrow. Three wheelers seem incredibly unstable except perhaps for ones with independently pivoting wheels like the babboe carve
tokai
While super unstable three wheelers are good for very heavy or large loads. Like moving a refrigerator. Start stop city traffic with +100kg load is easier on three than two wheels. Must say I never liked riding the Christiania bikes myself.
Steltek
It begs the question, are you carrying extreme loads, like refrigerators, on a daily basis? If not, then this is like buying an F-350 when you're mostly taking your kids to school. If so, then maybe none of these are the right design and you might want to look into something like a cargo trailer.
econ
The old ones in NL easily take 300kg. You just have to learn not to attempt sharp corners. A normal bike also allows you to jerk the steering wheel 90 degrees at high speed.
DocTomoe
See also: Reliant Robin.
Obligatory Top Gear link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQh56geU0X8
onlypassingthru
There's probably a good reason nobody has touched this design in 90+ years. As the last photo demonstrates, banging the back of your leg against a trailer hitch every time you turn would get annoying real quick.
torlok
Looks like something that can easily be solved by tweaking the curve. I also don't think you'll be doing such sharp turns often, and at that angle and speed you may as well get off.
onlypassingthru
On the contrary, it's a fundamental flaw in the design. The second to last photo shows the trailer directly over the pedal which will inevitably either push the rider's leg off or limit the turn radius.
rtkwe
It's pictured at the furthest back position for the pedals though which means your leg will mostly go forward of the pedals and not much back. I would trust people having actually ridden this to not have their legs slammed into the trailer vs how it looks on one render or photo.
Calwestjobs
Please do not mention spray from cars in front of you! XD
dpedu
While interesting, I feel like this would be difficult or at least feel extremely weird to ride. When you steer on a 2-wheeled bicycle, you countersteer, which is pushing the wheel left in order to go right, or vice-versa. But this has a steering wheel that I assume works like a car, you turn the wheel left to go left. It would feel weird riding a bicycle while having to remember to steer like a car.
thesuitonym
Probably less weird than you think. For one thing, it uses a steering wheel like a car, so that steering motion would feel more natural, and most people don't know they need to countersteer on a bike, they just do it without thinking. Even if it used handlebars, people ride trikes all the time without any real problems.
antfarm
Cube has a model called "Trike Hybrid" that has a similar, more practical design: https://www.cube.eu/de-de/e-bikes/transport/trike-hybrid
RajT88
I was under the impression these had been out for a while. Last May, when my wife and I went to France, these cargo bikes all over the place, especially in Paris.
lostlogin
With a front wheel design like this one?
matt-p
It's totally mad and impractical; I love it!
ljf
Off topic - the the colour scheme choices for the Cookie selection pop-up on that site are awful. I'll admit I'm colour blind, but I assume those are hard for others to see when the switches are on or off? Unless that was their plan?
hombre_fatal
That front bike section looks so cool. I guess it's so alien looking because the whole section turns instead of just the wheel which affords it more creative license than a traditional handlebar attached to a fork.
I bet it also feels alien to turn a steering wheel with your feet on bike pedals.
hackingonempty
A USA company has/had a patent on a pivoting bottom bracket bike transmission like this and has been making bikes for a while.
0xEF
I'm not sure where you grew up, but in the US we had a kid's toy called a Big Wheel which your feet had to turn with when you turned the handlebars. It was wildly awkward, terribly designed, but we got really good at it, anyway. The pedals would even scrape concrete on turns often enough to wear them down.
Tricycles are inherently unstable in turns, especially when not loaded down, because they cannot lean. And when carrying a load, the same rules of physics apply, resulting in a lot of torsional forces on the frame. There's a reason we see so few of those on the roads, amidst an explosion of various human-powered modes of transport.
Here's the original: http://youtube.com/watch?v=RuPwRQOUhl4
Here's the reimagined modern version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA7qGYNFuY0
In both cases, the rider effectively sits atop of where the handlebars would be on a traditional trike. You can see in the first video the lads have a hard time keeping all wheels on the ground.
One notable difference between the new model and the old is that they seem to have changed the geometry of the frame so that the driver doesn't lean into the turn (the turning wheel stays upright). They don't demonstrate it in motion very well, but that kind of turn action will tend to throw the rider "out" of the turn, making the trike fall over opposite of the direction of the turn. The old version tends to fall "into" the turn.
I can't think of many advantages to this design, other than the driving unit and cargo are modular. Even then, the rider would not be able to travel without the cargo portion.
Trikes are tricky, they don't go very fast, they don't turn well, and they're wider than most other pedal-powered vehicles, making them hard to use on existing cycle infrastructure.