A few years ago, Julian Casablancas started perhaps one of the stranger side-projects we’ve stumbled across of late. It’s apparently been a while in the making, with The Strokes front-man having filed a patent for the ultimate lazy-person’s machine: a folding, pedal-less, electric bicycle, some years ago. The idea behind the invention stems from a number of problems Casablancas has encountered, including (but not limited to) those of storage and unwanted energy expenditure (causing highly undesirable sweat). As the background of the invention states:
“Often times the distance one must travel is seemingly too short or too inconvenient to ride a bus or subway or to drive a car, but too long to walk…. Although riding a bicycle for transportation can alleviate the above drawbacks, bicycles typically are bulky and inconvenient for portability and storage. This inconvenience of portability and storage often results in bicycles being left outside, leaving them susceptible to theft.”
As for the part about not having pedals? “Current folding bicycles typically have pedals, thus requiring the user to exert a substantial amount of energy to ride. Exerting the amount of energy necessary to ride a bicycle often results in the user sweating upon arrival at his or her destination. Because riding a bicycle causes the rider to sweat, the user often must dress down and change into appropriate clothing upon arriving at his or her destination. This is yet another drawback of current folding bicycles.”
He may have the patent along with a number of images of how the bike would work (can we really call it a bike?), but getting the production of the machine off the ground has taken a lot longer than the singer had anticipated. Speaking to Rolling Stone, Casablancas said that it was “kind of breaking my heart with how long it’s taking….The only people who want to do this are these German engineer guys. They have this thing called Free Cross, it’s like an exercise machine. And this is the exact opposite… This is just a lazy man’s thing so you can kind of be transported without spending any energy.”
Want to see some other baffling side-projects and business ventures? We’ve got a whole list of ’em.