A St. Albert designer is headed to Taiwan this week thanks to a sleek sports-car of a bike he helped design.
St. Albert native Andrew Lesniak is one of four University of Alberta industrial design students headed to Taipei, Taiwan as part of the International Bicycle Design Competition.
Billed as the world’s only global bike design contest, the contest features entries from about 45 countries.
The U of A team’s design has beaten some 590 entries to finish in the top 10, earning the team a free workshop in Taipei, a spot at the 2013 Taipei Cycle Show, and a shot at some 500,000 Taiwanese new dollars (about $17,100 Canadian) in prize money.
Teammate Paul Czarnietzki said he found out about the win last month on his birthday.
“I checked (my email) and I was like, holy crap! Sweet!” he recalled.
Lesniak, Czarnietzki, Justin Chan and Mina Lee formed Team Tricicolo last year to create a final project for their industrial design degree.
The team’s client, a professor at the university, had asked them to build a better recumbent tricycle – a three-wheeled, sit-down bike known for its comfort, stability and utter lack of style.
“He loved the recumbent tricycle, but he never wanted to be seen riding it,” Czarnietzki said. “I think his exact words were, ‘Man, they look like crap.’”
Recumbent tricycles have a very bland, engineered look, Czarnietzki explained – they look like a bunch of pipes bashed together – but are great for people with back problems.
“It was really apparent from the beginning that our client wanted a sports car,” he continued.
Drawing on the smooth curves and bold colours of Ferrari and Lamborghini, they ditched the rigid aluminium pipes of the traditional trike and went for a curvaceous red, white and black carbon-fibre number that vaguely resembles a high-heeled shoe.
Trikes don’t have the best balance in the turns, Lesniak said, and one of their teammates actually rolled one on their first test drive. That inspired them to add a swooping roll cage and skid plates to their design to protect riders from minor mishaps.
The bike also features integrated LED headlights, which could be pedal powered, an iPhone dock, which could act as a speedometer or GPS, and an internally geared wheel hub to give it the power to get up hills.
The team has dubbed its bike the Gran Turismo, a reference to a type of high-performance luxury car meant for long drives.
“This is something you can actually go on an adventure” with, Czarnietzki said. “I would love to see people riding between Banff and Jasper on something like this.”
Lesniak said he and Chan stumbled upon the design contest while they were working on the bike.
“We joked around the idea of entering it,” he said, but Chan took it seriously and encouraged his teammates to give it a shot.
It’s been a bit of a whirlwind since then, Czarnietzki said. He was pumped when he learned of their trip to Taipei, during which they’ll fine-tune their concept with the help of professionals, but crushed when he learned they’d have to pay their own way to get there. Fortunately, his boss at Edmonton’s United Cycle agreed to sponsor the team and cover their plane tickets.
The bike only exists as a concept right now.
“This is a little bit out of the scope of making it in my basement,” Czarnietzki said, and they’d need corporate backing before they could build a prototype. He guessed that it might cost $7,000 if built, or a bit more than a high-end trike.
The team put about 400 hours into this project, Lesniak said, but didn’t expect it would actually win.
“I never expected this to take off like this.”
And their instructor only gave it a B-plus, Czarnietzki added.
“Goes to show you what teachers know!” he joked.
