Cutting edge stuff! Whatever your preference in alternative transport, this issue will show you something entirely new. Folding bike? Follow our lightweight Brompton project – 10.9kg in 1997 and 9.5kg today. Electric bike? We can offer a range of 35 miles from a Lithium-ion battery… Gears? Professor Pivot investigates a practical fully automatic gearbox… Recumbents? Giant’s new Revive Spirit is stashed with technology.
We’ve tested the future, and it seems to work reasonably well. Compare today’s technology with that of ten years ago, and nothing would be wildly different – just incrementally better in every way. The next ten years will be much the same. Folding bicycles will continue to get lighter, and electric bicycles will go further and faster. At the moment, it’s all rather expensive, but another lesson of history is that prices usually fall once technology gets established. On a final rather gloomier note – today’s transport environment is much worse than it was ten years ago.Will that trend continue?
