[Closed] CYCLING in 2025!!!

WTF???!!!

needs some ideas as to what cycling will be like in 2025

It's only 15 or so years away, what was cycling like 15 years ago?
Pretty much like it is now [give or take]

I predict we'll all be riding hover bikes and wearing shiny silver suits like they do on Hole-In-The-Wall.

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everyone will be riding singlespeeds as gears will become defunct 😉

I doubt much change. Two things that may happen is better drivetrains - hub gears / belt drive and better protective kit - airbag helmets and jackets, reactive gell armour

internal gears all round

Hopefully pretty much the same but more common.

The changes I think that are most likely (but really, who knows...)

- Carbon fibre bikes and components will become much more common
- Geared hubs will become lighter and cheaper
- Electronic suspension for mtbs (as Cannondale have demo'd recently) will become more common
- Lights (proper off-road ones) will be very bright, very light and much cheaper.

Mind controlled gear shifting.

😉

Total immersion virtual reality riding allowing you to pretend you're a riding god launching off 100 foot hucks with no fear of actually hurting yourself.

Meanwhile I'll be on the deserted trails 😉

Built in speakers
Built in screen - bluetooths with your phone and displays GPS data
Dyanamos as standard - recharge your gadgets onboard through induction charging
Electric assist will be normal - v lightweight motors + 1/2/3 battery packs depending on what your up to that day.
Built in lock/alarm/GPS tracker
You'll have no problem taking them on any train/bus/taxi! (that's the most unrealistic one 🙁 )

more integrated transport systems aka the French hub system

new materials other than carbon fibre

car free new housing developments

belt drive

air/electric changers

demise of suspension bikes as they become more and more expensive

bike parks in multi story car parks

We'll all have been run over by flying cars by then.

I think there's lots of development yet to be seen in the way of folding bikes.

Maintenance-free drivetrains will become the norm.

I also agree with a post above that we'll start to see a number of car-free housing developments in the near future.

And mountainbikes will one day be hoverbikes, with suspension travel and action set on the fly by adjusting the downward force of the hover technology. Possibly even be set by a forward terrain scanner that constantly reads and anticipates what you're about to hit and adapts the suspension to accomodate.

Ironically, depite the doubtless popularity these machines will enjoy, they'll have been rendered redundant as by this time any riding beyond the controlled confines of trail centres will be punishable by death, while the trail centres in question will have been 'managed' into consisting of nothing more than 8 foot wide ribbons of perfectly polished, mirror smooth trails circling pointlessly around forests filled with reactive foam trees and speed cameras, if in fact speed isn't remotely restricted by satellite tracking.

Health and safety will have outlawed by then due to the dangers involved in having to control anything yourself and the results of risk assessment will have closed all trails due to multiple insurance claims against council/land owner/FC or whatever, the nanny state will be upon us

A brief history of the future:

- Late 2010; the UK Economy properly shits itself (no nancy boy recession this time), the (now Tory) Government lets RBS bite it this time as a warning to the city boys, an extra 4M unemployed, lots of people see salary and overtime cuts. Cycling starts to look appealing again to cash strapped Brits looking to minimise petrol/diesel spending in order to pay their mortgage.
- 2012; the Olympics nouse up London even more as thousands of fair weather sports fans descend on the capital clogging roads, tubes and busses. Then some arse will set off a Bomb. Once again the knock on effect post games will be more people back on bikes in the capital keen not to get blown up in a tunnel…
- 2015; new Iraqi oil fields finally come on line properly, Yank/UK controlled middle east oil means cheap petrol for westerners again and Car use/Carbon output for the west rises again…
- 2017; the various OPEC nations being a touch narked about the Iraqi oil driven dive in oil prices put some proper money behind Iraqi insurgents, the rapid rise in deaths, force the US and UK to send in a sizable peace keeping force, oil prices rise a touch, but we’re back in Iraq, Government spend on Defence is forced up rapidly…
- 2019; prime minister Cameron (He actually manages a 3rd term too) faced with rising defence costs and a slowly recovering economy/jobs market, does what nobody expects and decides to implement a series of new environmentally driven taxes, Road tax is scrapped and replaced with an annual mileage tax for all road vehicles, and polluting businesses are taxed more heavily for their carbon and other outputs. Unfortunately he fails to make more Government Funding available for companies developing environmentally friendly/pollution reducing technologies, inadvertently helping the Norwegian and Swedish economies where Green technology development subsidies and manufacturing tax breaks mean a boom in both development and manufacturing jobs for these countries. Higher costs for UK motorists coupled with a slight cost of living increase mean more people start cycling to work…
- 2021; having missed out on the green technology boom Cameron decides to plough money into bringing the UK’s new Nuclear power stations on line earlier, convinced that doing so will create jobs and reduce the UK’s reliance on Russian Gas. The ramp up in spending does not improve the speed of construction it merely ramps up employment in the sector, a good chunk of the money winding up going to French construction and Nuclear power companies and only creating a 1% increase in UK based employment. Yet more people take up cycling as the UK economy slides.
- 2023; In March Cameron announces a Summer election, 2 weeks later an LSE report reveals that the UK’s deficit is almost the same as when the Tory’s took over. Both major parties take their eye off the ball and in a massive upset the Lib-dem’s get in nosing it past Labour.
- 2024; the new Government bring a number of new bills in aimed at environmental impact, improving the nations health and aiding economic recovery; including Tax breaks for companies that support home working, Car pools and cycling to reduce Car commuting mileage, Subsidies to match the Norwegian and Swedish schemes for green industries. Most importantly the government announces a plan to upgrade existing cycle lanes, fund new ones and bring in better guidelines for the planning and construction of town and city cycle lanes.
- 2025; more people encouraged by their employers are cycling to work and working from home. A study shows that the first year of the governments “sustainable business travel bill” has resulted in a 5% reduction in rush hour traffic and a 3% increase in journeys by bicycle. However upgrades on existing cycle lanes have not happened as quickly as promised and although funding has been allocated for new lanes, guidance for their layout is still not agreed and as a result cycle routes in the UK are still extremely poor. Interestingly Pashley (one of the few remaining UK based cycle manufacturers) have successfully claimed a Government “Environmental business subsidy”, citing the environmental benefits of cycling, they have ramped up production with the money and have started marketing affordable commuter bikes direct to companies through their own take on the C2W scheme, while this has helped increase cycling uptake and improved Pashley’s profits it has brought an investigation by the OFT into their Direct marketing tie in with a Government scheme, several other new and existing bicycle companies have followed suit and applied for Environmental business subsidies.

So 15 years of pretty much the same old shit…

Bikes themselves are pretty much the same except most people are now using 11 speed on MTBs and 13 speed cassettes are now available on high end road groups, and Shimano have discontinued Alfine and Nexus/Nexave geared Hubs (in 2017) due to relatively poor sales and high production costs. Oh and SRAM will go bust in 2020…

The must have bike colour for 2025 is…. Battleship grey.

Wheels will get bigger and bigger 😀

cookea -> you're gonna get in trouble for publishing outline govenrment plans on t'internerd! Where did you find the laptop, in Boris' pannier 😆

well i did ask the question but HR started it, thanks, i am of to my lab to exploit your ideas..fire up the hoover board

Cheers

"Sir Clive Sinclair"

thanks
Cove123

cookeaa - Member
A brief history of the future:...

Good luck with your hoover board! I'm afraid Dyson probably has one in the lab already though.

Hoverboards though...Hmmm
Roll along the ground on a wheel for free.
Or use 10x the energy hovering 1 foot off the ground.
Never quite understood the point in that...

I don't think technology will have changed much, that's kind of irrelevant really. I think the main change will be a much bigger uptake of cycling by the general public, a marketing of commuting bikes by a few major companies in a way that reaches the non-cycling population, and a turn away from cars. When fuel prices start to soar due to the inevitable depletion of the oil fields, and car manufacturers drop production due to lowering demand, then things will really start to pick up.

Society has potential!

look at technologies that are being developed right now, like Di2, and rohloff hubs, and imagine them lighter, and stronger. hey presto (presta?)
cycling in 2025

Compulsory.

London will look a bit like Beijing did 15 years ago (unless it's underwater).

Hoverboards though...Hmmm
Roll along the ground on a wheel for free.
Or use 10x the energy hovering 1 foot off the ground.
Never quite understood the point in that...

You don't see the point of hoverboards? Sorry, doesn't compute. What about hoverbikes and hovercars?

That's the only thing that's good about the future - hovereverything.

Oh, and to further answer the OP, the few bikes that do still have wheels (only popular among the beardy niche mongers on STW) in 2025 will, due to advances in frame geometry and tyre compounds, be capable of cornering like the light cycles in Tron.

in 2025 i would be able to afford a 2010 bike!!!

And in addition, those beardy STW niche mongers still insistent on using primitive wheels will be using 'negative suspension' whereby the forks and shock work the opposite way, actually [i]extending[/i] on impact, in order to magnify every undulation in the terrain.

Mmmm that is pure riding right there 🙂 ommmmmmmm [i]feel at one with the terrain glasshopper[/i]
I imagine they will have gone even purer by having not 1 gear, but 0 gear.
HobbyHorseChic will be all the rage in that London.

Cycling won't have changed much. Probably loads more electric bikes on the roads.

What will change is the perception of cycling will be more positive as lots more people will be doing it. Cycling infrastructure will be better, which will include cycle lanes and cycle parking / storage.

Mmmm that is pure riding right there ommmmmmmm feel at one with the terrain glasshopper
I imagine they will have gone even purer by having not 1 gear, but 0 gear.
HobbyHorseChic will be all the rage in that London.

Either that or they'll run cranksets that actually apply the brakes which [i]would[/i] render the bike immobile upon pedalling input but for the fact that:

a) their brake calipers dont have pads but powered wheels which apply drive to the discs which take power from the rotation of the headset (which is situated at the bottom of the seatpost rather than at the headtube - the headtube actually featuring a splined interface bewteen frame and steerer thus preventing any form of steering which simply detracts from the riding experience anyway)

b) their expensive niche wheels allow the rims to freely rotate independantly of the hubs so brakes and drivetrains have zero effect on the bike's speed and direction of travel

mdb - Member
Cycling won't have changed much. Probably loads more electric bikes on the roads.

What will change is the perception of cycling will be more positive as lots more people will be doing it. Cycling infrastructure will be better, which will include cycle lanes and cycle parking / storage.

cookea -> you're gonna get in trouble for publishing outline govenrment plans on t'internerd! Where did you find the laptop, in Boris' pannier

No I can see in to the future…

The point I was making (or waffling and failing to make) is that cycling uptake is driven more by economics than anything else. The open ended what will cycling be like in 15 years question isn’t too specific really, I was thinking in terms of who and how many people will be riding bikes, and more specifically why?

I reckon if we are as a society pushed out of our cars by economic circumstance (cost of petrol, basic cost of living, higher taxes) then cycling will benefit, more people riding more money spent on refining the products and bringing down it’s price to the consumer…

The technology of bicycles is quite a dull subject really, over the last 15 years we’ve gained what? An extra cog or two on the back, a couple more inches of bounce, some disc brakes and not a lot else really, the next 15 years will be largely the same. Change is incremental and slow, only the Hype moves fast, a truly new technology for bikes generally only turns up once a decade or so…

Coloured carbon fibre would make nice bling.

nanomachines in the tyres will heat the wet sloppy slush in front into hard baked mud.
summer conditions all year round 🙂

manwells sells the rockhopper/stumpjumper 😉

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hate to be the bearer of bad news...

Seat posts will go up and down at the flick of a switch so I won't have to stop and lower the thing before the downhill bits. I've got short legs.

What tyres for riding in 2025?

teagirl, happy christmas! the seats that go up and down at the flick of a switch are already here!!

Ahem, I think you’re forgetting a tiny little thing called [b]PASSING THROUGH THE GALACTIC CENTER DEC 2012 CAUSING MAGNETIC POLE SWITCH!!!!!![/b]

In case you are wondering that means massive world wide electro-magnetic pulse rendering[b] ALL ELECTRONIC DEVICES INERT![/b]

Over night bikes will be worth millions of pounds as the only reliable means of transport. Most car drivers will be dead or too scared to drive again. How we will laugh at those roadies that just shelled out for fancy electric shifters. Shimano will be the new Microsoft, Sram the new apple, both dominating the world financial markets and suppressing any retro carbon based vehicle development.

The overnight collapse of the service industries and motivated by the new found freedoms and closeness to nature a cycling lifestyle brings will see society develop in a more gregarious agricultural direction. By 2025 the UK will be entirely populated by people with beards, I'll leave you to decide what that means for bikes.

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Taking granny done the shops.......

Lightlane is a pretty cool futuristic idea. Whether it will catch on is another matter:

http://www.lightlanebike.com/design_01.html