It seems like it was just yesterday, but in reality months have passed.
One winter morning, Dave Rosen of NuVinci stopped by Bike Friday to show us the latest incarnation of Fallbrook Industries’ Continuous Variable Transmission hub.
To put it mildly, he faced a building full of skeptics. Yeah, many have heard of NuVinci before. Nice idea, but …
To his credit, Dave left us a bike outfitted with NuVinci. Don’t ask me why, but it was leaned up right in front of my desk.
I watched it come and go, and come and go, and come and go.
And each time someone came back from a ride, almost unanimously, I heard: I want that on my next bike.
When Co-Founder Alan Scholz and head designer Rob English rode it, and came back converted, they went to the drawing board. In a flash, we had our first two Bike Fridays outfitted with a NuVinci 360 hub.
We built an Infinity tikit with NuVinci, and an Infinity New World Tourist with NuVinci. We had them ready for the spring show in Seattle, and pretty much handed them over to NuVinci for them to show.
They have spent the past year showing our bikes, from consumer bike shows, to Press Camps and Dealer Camps, to the Oshkosh Airshow. At Interbike, they put us on a pedestal. Well, at least up on the wall.
What I saw, were a lot of folks with cranked necks, looking up at us.
2 Responses
Hi, are you planning to offer the NuVinci as an option for the ordinary consumer? Why did all the people who trialled it like the NuVinci so much? is it not too heavy?
Thanks in advance, Doug Austin
NuVinci is available on the tikit, New World Tourist and Pocket Llama. Simply talk to a Bike Consutant.
The NuVinci hub weighs about 5 pounds, but most people who ride it find that its advantages far outweigh, literally in this instance, its weight.
When you are riding, the weight is displaced so you can’t feel. It might come into play with a tikit if you are folding and lifting a lot. However, I rode the NuVinci in New York and had no trouble lifting it to get into the subways, etc.