Read here is Alex Animashaun's story, the inventor of Tuck Bike, the folding bike with folding wheels.
In 2016, Alex was working in Nairobi, Kenya at a car startup. When he got back to his hometown London, UK to see his friends and family, he was impressed of seeing all those small-wheeled folding bikes flocking around the city. They just looked silly and he wondered to himself why he could not make a full-sized bike that can be folded small.
Obviously he realized pretty soon that if you got big wheels you can't fold up the bike very small, because the wheel is the last indivisible item on a bike, and therefore is the limit. So then he wondered: "What if you could really fold the wheel?" Impossible! ... or perhaps not.
Alex did not give up his intuition and, back to Kenya, he started designing and making prototypes and running tests.
He probably did not realize he had just embarked himself on a multi-year journey of trying to reinvent the wheel.
Alex moved then to Oakland, California with his wife and fully intended to get a regular job and tinker on the side. He interviewed at several places and experienced America's racism in his own struggles. "Strangely aggressive interviews that questioned whether I had really had done the things I claimed", Alex says.
"They showed incredulous disbelief that I could have done the things I had done. Or interviewers that asked for examples of creativity and when having a wheel fold before their eyes in a way never seen by anyone on the planet, still claimed that I wasn't creative enough". Alex decided that he didn't want anyone to hold that power over him. He didn't want to code-switch and hide his blackness in order to survive in an office. So he started Tuck Bike, his "baby", and he now wears shorts and Crocs to go to work.
But let's get back to bikes! Many trials and errors has been made along the road. But, in the end, Alex Animashaun has folded the bicycle wheel!
Other small wheeled bikes say they "feel just like a normal bike", well Tuck is a normal bike. It just happens that the wheels fold. It's cool to say.
Alex remembers that riding the first prototype felt heavy and wonky... an ugly experience but... it worked!
So he sat back working on the toughest problems first and then, in the back of his head, for the other problems like, how to fold the tyre, or how do you fit a folding wheel into a bicycle, ... he had a felling that in some way he would be able to solve them later down on the line.
So now, Tuck Bike is a fully working bike that you can fold (and unfold) in around 2 minutes and it rides great!
So, if you are at home and you don't have room for a full-size bicycle, by riding a tuck bike you can slide it under a desk or take it with you on a train or in the tube. Or you can just throw it in the trunk of your car without having to fold off the seats down.
The Tuck Bike is a full-sized bike, without the compromises of a small size bike!
At Tuck Bike they are creating a world first for bicycles.
"It's going to knock your socks off and put sugar in your tea."
"It's rad."
"It's radical."
"It's fun."
"We can't wait to share it with you."
they say on their website.
So, stay tuned here on EurekaBike for news from Tuck Bike and be ready to know when this bike will be available for sale.
If you are interesed in this bike you can also have a look to the dedicate Tuck Bike brand page on EurekaBike.
Source: tuckbike.com