Interbike 2011 is about to get underway, and I’ll be there asking questions like “When will we actually see these at dealers?” and “How drunk were you when you designed this?” What with Eurobike just ending and Interbike just beginning, we’re all focused on seeing the latest stuff.
With that in mind, here’s a preview of some products we might be seeing–not at this year’s Interbike, but a few years from now. Think of this as the bike version of seeing the new Nike McFly. Some of what you’re about to see may never come to be, but some will, and all of it’s interesting. Finding this information is possible thanks to my extraordinary powers of prognostication, but also thanks to publicly available patent information anyone can access any time.
Integrated Shifting and Suspension Systems
I don’t know if Specialized will ever produce products using this patent, but they’ve had these plans to integrate shifting and suspension since 2006. As a guy who still dislikes anti-lock brakes, I tend to hope this stays on the shelf, but who knows. Maybe they could do something incredible with this.
Vibration Damping System for a Seatpost
There are plenty of weird things out there in Patent Land that aren’t yet attached to a company with the resources to see them into production, and this could be one of those, but I get the feeling we’ll see this actually hit the market at some point.
Trek Suspension Fork
Difficult to say exactly why Trek would have filed a patent application for a suspension fork in February of 2010. If it’s an attempt to make inexpensive forks for entry level bikes, you’d still think they’d just license something–and they sure wouldn’t put Jose Gonzalez and Greg Buhl, the guys behind anything serious going on with suspension designs at Trek, behind this project.
Trek’s Concentric Rear Derailleur
No, I don’t think Trek is muscling in on Shimano and SRAM’s turf, but this suggests the boys in Wisconsin are dedicated to their Active Braking Pivot frame design.
Craig Calfee Suspension Frame Design
Though it sure seems to pay homage to the classic Moots circa Kent Eriksen YBB design, Calfee’s design for a soft-tail looks distinct, cleanly done, and really intriguing, and it’s certainly possible we’ll see bikes using this design soon.
Shimano Suspension Fork
It’s certainly possible this fork will never see the light or day, or worse–that it’s intended for a hybrid. Shimano already shows fork patents that seem suited to light duty use, but this thing looks a little sophisticated for a trip to the grocery store. In addition to this patent, the same drawings appear in a second patent that details a process for transferring air between two different chambers using a lever, which gets really interesting, once you’ve seen the third patent, filed in April of 2008, that seems to show a dual remote system for managing both travel and damping (Fig. 2 below), or their external reservoir electronically controlled fork damping system.
Bizarre Dual Shock Suspension Design
Okay, so we probably won’t ever see this thing, and maybe it’s for the better, but part of me sure hopes it surfaces somewhere, somehow. Probably won’t be at a show, though. Interbike has become so incredibly expensive for the exhibitors these days that you never see insane, goofy shit like this anymore, and that’s truly sad. Here’s to you, dual-shock, elevated combo-chainstay-linkage design.
My Own Suspension Design
Maybe you’ll see it one day. I’m working on having a prototype built now. Feel free to submit questions about it using the question submission thing up at the top of the page, there on the right.
Electronically Cooled Fox Suspension
An excerpt from this patent application, filed in 2009, suggests the use of a “thermoelectric generator” that would use a magnet passing coiling wires during movement of the shock to activate a cooling device. Another, even wilder, possible embodiment introduces something called “piezo electric crystals” that would generate electricity when under compression. In all cases, these “TEGs” or thermoelectric generators, have the ability to literally move heat around, and that alone is pretty insane. By the time the application starts suggesting the TEGs can “based on the Peltier Effect and correspondingly constructed from thin ceramic wafers having alternate P and N doped bismuth telluride sandwiched between them,” I’m willing to just give Fox the benefit of the doubt and believe this crazy bastards are really serious about making suspension systems. I mean holy shit, guys.
The examples go on, and now that you know where to look, please feel free to roam around all up in the patent club. I haven’t even mentioned some really interesting suspension designs. Good, bad, or ugly, these patents are all proof that we belong to an incredibly creative and innovative industry.