Bike commuting has been on the rise for years now, and we’ve been lucky enough to see some really great ebike concepts that not only get you where you’re going – they perform other feats of technology as well. The Gi FlyBike is a stylish little foldable bike that integrates with your phone to add all kinds of cool features to your commute.

Weighing in at just 37 pounds, the FlyBike is easier to lug around than some other similar bikes. It helps that it folds handily in half, and the folding mechanism lets you fold the bike or open it up in one smooth movement. Once folded, you can wheel it around behind you like a rolling suitcase.

The extra cool features of the FlyBike come with its smartphone integration. The app shows full navigation while you’re pedaling along, even highlighting the routes that are best for biking. The app will also automatically lock the bike when you wander at least 15 feet away from it. If you need to loan out your bike to a friend, you can send them a special unlock code that will allow them temporary use your FlyBike.

The bike charges your phone as you’re traveling, so there’s no need to worry that all that navigation assistance will leave you with a dead battery later in the day. The FlyBike’s integrated battery also gives you a boost when you need it, offering three levels of assistance for up to 40 miles of pedal-free travel. All of the bike’s electronic bits, including its integrated lights, are charged from a single charge point, a feature that the inventors say is unique to the FlyBike.

If you’re serious about biking to work and want all of the conveniences of a state-of-the-art folding ebike, it’ll cost you. The FlyBike, when it is eventually offered for retail purchase, will run $3,590 – or about the cost of a small used car. But obviously, the environmental and space-saving advantages of the bike will appeal to a lot of folks who otherwise would have to depend solely on public transport or sweat-inducing conventional bikes to get from one place to the next.

The post Phone-Synced eBike Goes From Full-Size to Folded in 3 Secs first appeared on Gajitz.

Folding bikes are old news by now, with clever new designs popping up every few weeks or so. But the Sada Bike is a little different in that its folded state is almost impossibly tiny. After folding it with one smooth motion, it’s about the size of an umbrella, small enough to fit into a backpack.

The whole “size of an umbrella” thing only applies to the frame, of course – the 26″ wheels come off and have to be transported separately. But since they’re hubless and essentially just circles of metal and rubber, they should be easy enough to carry up to your apartment or office.

Folding bikes typically experience performance issues because their parts have to be smaller and less powerful than traditional designs. The Sada addresses some of those concerns by using a full-size frame and wheels, but the tires may prove to be its achilles’ heel. Traditional bike tires distribute weight throughout the tires’ spokes, but on a spoke-free wheel the weight has to be carried in the outside of the wheel. That will unavoidably make the bike harder to propel forward.

The Sada Bike is meant to be a commuting cycle, so perhaps the wheel issue won’t be too bothersome considering the short distances the bike is meant to travel. The bike is still in the prototype stage currently, with the inventor looking for financial backing to put it into production. It’s a good-looking bike that we wouldn’t mind taking for a spin, wheel issue or no wheel issue.

The post Presto! Hubless Bike Folds Down to Fit Into Your Backpack first appeared on Gajitz.

What kid doesn’t dream about their bike taking flight as they race down the street on a hot summer day? British inventors Yanish Read and John Foden certainly did, and it led them to create the Paravelo, the world’s first working flying bicycle. Under the company name XPloreAir, the duo developed that product which can be used on the ground as a conventional bike or, with an attached trailer, to fly among the clouds.

The bike part of the design is really quite simple but elegant. It’s a lightweight folding bike that’s perfect for commuting, but not so much for long distances or for speed riding as its ground speed tops out at a lowly 15 MPH. It folds up small enough to stash in your hallway or coat closet, but if you want the added power of gliding through the air you’ll need a rather large space for the biofuel-powered, fan-toting trailer.

The trailer has an attached fabric wing that makes the bike fly sort of like a parawing. Although the inventors advise against buying and flying the Paravelo without proper training, no special license is required to take this bad boy up into the air. It can climb to the frankly terrifying altitude of 4,000 feet, where it can reach a speed of 25 MPH. The battery can keep you going for up to three hours.

Read and Foden suggest that the Paravelo could bring about a whole new type of urban getaway that they like to call “flamping.” It’s a mash-up of flying and camping, the idea being that you hook the trailer to your bike, take off into the air, and set down somewhere quiet and away from the city to enjoy a weekend of solitude. When the weekend is through, you simply pack up again and fly back into your real life, which will undoubtedly seem way more awesome now that you have a flying bike.

The post Flamping Time: Flying Bike Designed to Get Away From it All first appeared on Gajitz.

The Sandwichbike has a rather silly name, but it makes up for it with it sheer awesomeness. The bike consists mainly of two thin wooden panels, with the custom-made parts “sandwiched” between the panels. The whole thing is assembled by the user, and once it’s put together it rides just like a traditional welded-frame bike.

Building a bike yourself might conjure horrible memories of Christmas mornings spent cursing at impossible-to-read instruction manuals, but the Sandwichbike contains less than 50 parts. When you get it, it is entirely contained in a small, flat box – and as the creators say, “if you can make a sandwich, you can surely build a Sandwichbike.”

Amsterdam-based studio Bleijh is planning to sell the fixed-gear bike for the equivalent of just over $1000 US. The above video of a Sandwichbike being assembled shows just how simple it is to put the handful of parts together. And when you do, you’ve got one of the coolest bikes to ever hit the streets. Just don’t try off-roading with it.

The post Hold the Mustard: Flat-Pack Bike Easy as a Sandwich to Make first appeared on Gajitz.