by Lloyd Alter, Toronto
Cars & Transportation (bikes)

Max von Stein’s flywheel bicycle is everywhere these days. The engineering student first demonstrated it at the Cooper Union year-end show. ArchPaper described it:
Engineering student Maxwell von Stein applied the principles of a hybrid car to the bicycle to harness the kinetic energy typically lost when braking. With a variable transmission and a flywheel mounted to the bike’s frame, von Stein’s bike allows the rider to pick up speed faster after stopping than with a battery.
There are a few questions that I would love to know the answer to;
-is the energy saved by having regenerative braking with the flywheel greater than the energy expended by pushing around an extra fifteen pounds?
-flywheels have a big moment of inertia. How easy is it to turn the bike? Doesn’t it want to keep going straight?
Flywheels also exhibit precession, ” a change in the orientation of the rotation axis of a rotating body.” It’s the wobble you see in spinning tops. Does it create a problem?
Neat idea.
(Source: www.treehugger.com )