11/23/16 7:24 AM

The subject article came to my attention the other day:
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/nov/17/folding-bike-helmet-wins-james-dyson-design-award?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Interesting?!.
I would be very curious to see how it fared in any of the standardized crash testing.
More likely, it may fall into the category of "better than nothing, if you are renting a low speed tourist bike".

Happy Thanksgiving holiday folks!

11/23/16 7:29 AM

The Guardian is blocked at work.

Is this the helmet?

Good on them for winning the Dyson award.

And Happy Thanksgiving too!

11/24/16 6:05 AM

That's actually a really interesting helmet design. The cell structure probably works as well as Styrofoam, and the fact that it's both folding and disposable makes it more likely that people will use it.

Because the cells are open at the surface, it's likely to be noisy, which could be a downside for users who lose their ability to hear vehicles around them, but that could probably be fixed with some kind of "shower cap" cover.

11/24/16 8:11 AM

Hmm....could it be an air filter plucked from a Dyson vacuum cleaner?!? ;-)

11/25/16 4:43 PM

...that we discussed this helmet a month or so ago?

11/25/16 5:42 PM

back in september... www.cyclingforum.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=153411

11/25/16 5:48 PM

No. Like thread stealing, redundancy is one of the proud traditions of the Forum.

But I'm still not convinced these will be any worse than the $150 beer coolers we wear. Time and data will tell.

11/25/16 9:10 PM

I wonder how the paper holds up when on top of a heavily sweating head?

11/26/16 6:00 AM

...treated to be waterproof. It's important to keep in mind that this is a disposable item, not something that you'll be using long-term. While it's handy to have this option, I find the disposable aspect to be somewhat of a turn-off. We don't need more disposable stuff in our already overly disposable society.

11/26/16 6:16 AM

On the other hand, paper is one of the most recyclable of all materials. So assuming this thing works, the disposable aspect is not any worse than our usual foam helmet, which needs to be disposed off into the land fill after any crash.

11/27/16 9:30 AM

quote:

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foam helmet, which needs to be disposed off into the land fill

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11/27/16 10:58 AM

I would think all those channels would be pretty good for air flow to help cooling?

11/27/16 2:25 PM

And yet you mock the environmentally friendly non-pneumatic tire option, which will be of greater appeal and actually be available for sale to commuters.

11/27/16 4:38 PM

...about the environmental friendliness of their tires, but until I see somewhere that they can actually be recycled, I'll remain skeptical. Traditional tires and tubes are nowhere near as bad as they claim, either.

11/28/16 1:59 PM

They also noted a consideration that the tires will last longer, i.e. adding up to less consumable waste.

What do you think of an umbrella holder for your commuter bike?

11/29/16 9:55 AM

quote:

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I would think all those channels would be pretty good for air flow to help cooling?

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quote:

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And yet you mock the environmentally friendly non-pneumatic tire option

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11/29/16 11:00 AM

I have a real hard time understanding how....

The website provides the details. The tires do last longer. There are those like myself that use more tubes than tires, which make the air-less tire all the more appealing for applications like commuting.

11/29/16 6:48 PM

If that's a major issue they're not hard to patch. Plus there now are tubeless tires which I'm told ride as well or better than tubed clinchers.

Do the solid tires not wear or deform?

Ride some of those solid tires and then tell us why you would rather have them than a tubeless tire. How is the ride and cornering?

They may be great, I dunno, but I'm not holding my breath.

11/30/16 7:03 AM

I guess I missed the new tire discussion some time back. Can someone give me a link?

11/30/16 8:07 AM

Sorry Dan. Didn't mean to "steal" a thread. Guess I wasn't watching back in Sep, before he thread slipped out of sight.

11/30/16 8:10 AM

JS, you're assuming that their claims about longevity are factual. Given the abundance of misleading and patently false statements about clinchers and tubes on their site, what makes you think that there is any basis for their longevity claims?

Since switching from tubulars to clinchers 5 years ago, I've tossed one road tube. I've worn out exactly one Conti 4000S rear tire, at over 7000 miles. The current rear tire, which was swapped from the front to the rear at the same mileage, has lasted a couple thousand more miles and likely has at least a few hundred more left in the tread. At this point, I'm more concerned about the tread rotting than wearing out. This is hardly the ecological disaster that Nexo claims.

I'll give them credit for having a noble goal, but hyperbole and outright lies don't make a product great and I doubt that these guys will be any more successful than the many others who have tried in the past. Their FAQ is pretty illuminating and even comical. I especially like questions 5 and 6:
http://www.nexotire.com/global-faq

According to their wear test information, their test surface was 400 grit sandpaper , which is typically used for wet-sanding paint and polishing metal surfaces. It's nothing whatsoever like a road surface. Their braking tests don't compare their tires to pneumatic tires, so they're largely meaningless.

Go ahead and buy some, ride them, then tell us what they're actually like. I suspect that you'll find that they either wear quickly, have lousy traction, ride poorly or all three. I can't think of a single material that can provide optimal, or even acceptable, performance in all three categories. Additionally, a single-component tire is likely to be quite temperature sensitive, providing a squishy ride on hot days and feeling like a buckboard in the cold. Unlike pneumatic tires, there's no way to compensate for this with a single-material tire. Another consideration is that the tire's rolling characteristics will change as it wears and get thinner, though how that will affect it's performance is hard to predict.

I daresay that a more feasible approach for you would be to put Stan's or Orange Seal in your tires to handle small punctures from thorns, wire and such, and learn to patch tubes if/when you experience larger cuts.

11/30/16 12:04 PM

I'm not assuming anything. And likewise, I am not being soooooo dismissive, either. You have a right to be skeptical. I understand such.

However, unlike the paper helmet, there are folks willing to put their time $ and money to bring a new product to market. And one that will target a big market (the same as the paper helmet folks). It's called conviction.

The same conviction that once upon a time here there were folks who dismissed disc brakes and electronic shifting. The same would be true of clincher tires if the Internet existed then. I'm sure the 1st & 2nd or whatever earlier generations of those products, including airless tires, sucked big time.

Over time though there have been many refinements and incremental improvements. I see such incremental improvement (potential!) with the nexotire. It appears to be a vast improvement over a solid rubber tire.

Not flatting while commuting to work is a big deal for many, including me - point of emphasis. The needle seems to be stuck here with the discussion centered road bikes and performance based (recreation) riding.

We'll see in time, when the product actually gets used, if it really is a big deal or not.

-JS

P.S. Those who live in the sticks, surely you do not go through tubes much. For urban dwellers like myself that is not true. I only patch a tire once and do so in batch after saving a bunch. Sure you can patch them multiple times, but a tube is still susceptible to eventually wear and tear where the rubber meets the valve.

11/30/16 7:46 PM

...but it doesn't guarantee a good product. There are myriad examples of individuals and companies who brought really bad ideas to market, with absolute conviction that they were revolutionary, or at least superior to the products they sought to displace.

I would be more impressed if they had a conviction to the truth, which they obviously don't. At least they seem to be somewhat honest about the 20% increase in rolling resistance compared to some unnamed pneumatic tire. I'd be surprised if the real world numbers weren't actually worse, but unless someone actually publishes a test, I'll never know.

You may not have seen it, but if you go to the company's site now, you'll see that the product they're pushing and that the "test" data is based on is a solid tire.
http://nexotires.com/Home/Features

The installation videos show what a "joy" these things are to install. You'll have to excuse me for thinking that a tire held on by a bunch of plastic clips seems pretty sketchy. Yeah, I know, it's aimed at the commuter market, but that may mean that sudden evasive maneuvers and panic stops are a relatively common occurrence. I wonder how well they'll hold up to that.

12/1/16 3:21 PM

Except it is not a solid tire:

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You may not have seen it, but if you go to the company's site now, you'll see that the product they're pushing and that the "test" data is based on is a solid tire.
http://nexotires.com/Home/Features

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The link you provided above, the 1st paragraph states: "The NEXO bike tires are made of NEXELL®, a compounded macromolecular material. More than half of their interior is filled with N2, a stable gas , realizing the light-weight ideal for solid tires while maintaining the main physical performance of NEXELL material."

It then lists a weight of: 710g - which by my math is not that much more of a weight increase/penalty over a same width tire + tube.

12/1/16 7:58 PM

One of the arguments I use against wearing a cycling helmet when riding casually is that they really aren't designed that well to begin with, that the standard to which bike helmet is "certified" is pretty mediocre, so it's interesting to hear the person who designed the paper bike helmet say, "I actually had the opportunity to crash test it when I was studying at Imperial College in London, they happen to have the crash apparatus. It looks like a big guillotine, you drop a weight on what you're testing and there's a bunch of sensors to tell you how it's holding up...

[The helmet does] better than the bottom-of-the-line ones. I probably shouldn't say this but the regulations are not that stringent. Which is not really great but I don't see too many issues with it CPSC regulations."