New York Engineering Grad Brings Hybrid Technology to Bike Design

 

Feeling the need for speed?  If you're riding Maxwell von Stein's bicycle, you can get to your destination in a flash, without having to work up a sweat. 

             

The engineering student's fly-wheel bicycle employs the same energy alternating principles as a hybrid car.

 

But rather than a battery, it uses a fly-wheel to transfer and store kinetic energy, which gives the bike a boost in speed. 

             

Von Stein came up with the idea while commutting to classes at the Cooper Union.

 

To build the technology, he began with a 15 pound, cast iron fly-wheel taken from a car engine. 

 

He mounted the fly-wheel in the center of the bike frame, and attached it to the rear wheel through a continuously variable transmission.

 

[Maxwell von Stein, Inventor of the Fly-wheel Bicycle]:              

"That transmission controls how energy is distributed between the bike and the fly-wheel. When you want to slow down you shift the transmission, it's a twist shift on the right handle bar. By shifting that ratio, you increase the speed of the flywheel and decrease the speed of the bike. Now the flywheel is spinning really quickly, you've got energy stored there and when you need to accelerate you shift the transmission in the opposite direction for a boost in speed." 

             

Von Stein says he likes to think of the process as charging the flywheel and boosting the bike. 

             

While his self-described "contraption" has made biking easier, von Stein says his goal isn't to re-invent the bicycle. 

 

He is hoping to use the two-wheel experiment as a basis for developing a fly-wheel kinetic energy system for cars.

              

He believes the system is a good alternative to battery-operated hybrid systems.             

 

Several European car companies are already experimenting with fly-wheel technology, and von Stein estimates that cars with regenerative braking systems could hit the market by 2013.              

 

He hopes to be part of that revolution and is in search of a job with a company that will hire him to develop the system.

 

In the meantime, von Stein plans to devote his energy to charging around New York City on two wheels.