Clive Sinclair unveils 'X-1' battery pedalo bubble-bike Famous home-computing pioneer, unsuccessful electric kart promoter and balding sugar-daddy Clive Sinclair has announced his latest product: a sit-down electric-assisted bicycle fitted with an egg-shaped plastic enclosed body. The Sinclair X-1. Credit: Sinclair Research Yes! It's the battery-assisted bubble chopper! The …
I very much remember the BBC Program "Micro Men". I've been waiting for about 2 years for it to appear on DVD because I loved that trip down memory lane so much, but they don't seem interested in releasing it on DVD.
(If they are not going to release it on DVD then they can at least let us legally download it, as we pay bloody good money for the BBC and the BBC funded Micro Men, then why the hell can't we access what we have already paid to have created for us!) ... same goes for the other shows broadcast along with "Micro Men" like "Synth Britannia"
Yet they would seek to label and demonise us as pirates (and some would seek to punish us) if we try to download it, even though its already paid for by us!
Keep an eye on the BBC channels with the cobwebs on 'em. It was broadcast a few months ago and given their predeliction for stuffing these highly-important digital channels with endless repeats dragged out of the Ark, I'm sure it'll crop up again and if you keep your DVD recorder ready, a DVD copy shall be yours.
Back in the day, a letter* to the Beeb asking about repeat times would produce a "no plans" form response. But it would also produce a follow-up letter some time later (often quite a long time later, when you'd forgotten all about it) saying: "due to demand.....<bollocks, bollocks, bollocks>.....is to be repeated, starting on <date> at <time>".
I wonder if that trick still works? Not holding my breath here though, that seems waaaaaay too public service oriented for the Beeb to have kept it up.
*An obsolete communications medium involving paper, crayons, little gummed pockets to put the paper in and small but extrinsically valuable labels to stick on them.
The shadow in the render shows a big hole under your feet. You put a foot down when you stop, just like any other LWB recumbent, at least that seems to be the idea. As a recumbent rider I can see the shell getting in the way when you want to put your foot further to the side though.Also expect the shell to be somewhat noisy.
On a separate note the pricing looks wildly optimistic to me unless they've been doing some serious corner cutting.
Clive sinclair is known for leaving no corner uncut. no matter how much it undermines the functioanlity of the basic idea.
Given this basic idea was/is/will always be a non starter thats some achievement.
Who cares its an over priced, useless piece of dangerous crap.
It's what sir clive wants us to have.
The big question now is what will sir clives up coming celeb fragrace be called?
the smell of failure
ignominious (with reverse polish pheremones no doubt)
this guy was an irrelevant twat in the 80's and time has done him no favours.
A mate of mine used this:
http://www.recumbents.com/wisil/whpsc2004/images/wednesday/PL.CoyoteBG.L.jpg
the Rotator Coyote, as his daily ride, until it was murdered by an arsehole in a pickup. Owner Dean Pederson is the one on the right, with the bottle of BEER in his hand. He was the first rider aged over 50 to exceed 55 mph at the World Human-Powered Speed Championships in 2004.
However, Sir Clive's previous forays into personal transportation do not fill me with confidence about this one.
I am so sick of journalists (and others) making snide, personal remarks about people. Why write something like "unsuccessful electric kart promoter and balding sugar-daddy"? What is the point? And why mention "his longtime relationship with (and recent marriage to) a former lapdancer 36 years his junior"?
Why?
Does it make you feel superior and better about yourself?
I fear that like me the article writer is a bit jealous over the last bit.... she really does appear to be quite a special lady. :)
This does seem a design created to make the C5 seem logical by comparison. Any crosswind and this X-1 is going to be all over the shop. And with no doors and a hole in the floor its not exactly weather tight is it... weird.
That doesn't make me feel better about myself. It makes me respect this guy a great deal. Even makes me a little jealous. Good job, that guy!
Maybe your false rage and upset would be less hurtful to you if you stopped being so damned judgemental. Just because you happen to see that amorous relationship as somehow negative doesn't mean others share your point of view. When you take it not as a snide attack but instead as something completely awesome the entire tone changes.
I don’t read this article as “rich guy bangs young gold digger and fails at life.” I read this as “dude did cool things early on in his life. Made a mint. Parlayed that money into convincing a woman to look past his age and (hopefully) established a truly amorous and caring relationship with someone very much his junior. Dude still does crazy – but cool – things involving technology regardless of any ridicule other people may fling at him.”
Or, TL;DR: This guy does what he wants, when he wants and doesn’t give a flip what you or anyone else thinks about him. He is far more awesome than either you or I will ever be. Commenter on El Reg got nerdrage over playful tone of article and called in the whaaaambulance.
Maybe you don't remember Sinclair Radionics Ltd or Cambridge Consultants Ltd or his stint as editor of Practical Wireless where he would 'design' circuits, which were published but did not always work
So comments you don't appreciate go more to the character behind the name and could be used as a determination to do business with him or not.
I agree his choice in wives is personal, and comments in this regard are signs of jealously.
I would guess there is more than a bit of jealosy here.
A cute girl lots younger (but still legal I assume), more money than sense... got it made if you ask me :)
This vehicle looks odd, but frankly no worse than some of the more bizarre moped things around these days.
Unlike the C5 this will be seen from a lorry or car as well - so at least some advance in safety (as long as the driver of the lorry isn't too busy laughing to avoid you).
I can't see me queueing up for one at that price, but I can imagine that some will - after all a C5 doesn't fetch too bad a price these days :)
Hmm.. You seem to have missed the ZX Microdrive and the ZX Interface 1 when they were on sale in Boots and W.H.Smiths in 1984 then... I hope that you weren't too disappointed. :-)
As for the bike. Well, journos (and nay-sayers) always like to knock the different. As someone else said, it's basically a recumbent bike with some weather protection and a small electric motor. Just because it doesn't look like a "safety bicycle" doesn't mean that it is intrinsically bad. They said the same thing about the "safety bicycle" in the 1880s because it didn't look like a penny-farthing and that "it would never catch on."
*Would have put an Uncle Clive icon on the post but the Reg doesn't have one yet, either saintly or devilish.*
The shape reminds me of a C5 with less wheels and a plastic lid. And for those not used to recumbent bicycles, you need a leap of faith to get it moving.
Have you ever wondered why people sitting in a C5 look like pillocks? Having sat in one many years ago, it's because sitting in one makes you feel like a pillock.
Good:
Large bubble shell means the recumbent cyclist is more visible to other road users (eg artics) without resorting to pennants on whip aerials.
Room to stash your shopping in the dry?
Bad:
Those handlebars look very awkward
Large bubble possibly less aerodynamic than uncovered cyclist
I'm seriously impressed that Sir Clive's intrepid team has managed to produce a pug-ugly recumbent design, something I hitherto thought was impossible. But that's been his modus operandi as long as I can remember - good idea in principle, seriously bad aesthetics and flimsy, unreliable construction. That fact that "suede covered handlebars" are one of the 12 most important selling points pretty much says it all...
Why couldn't they have stuck an electric drivetrain on something like http://bicycledesign.net/2009/01/we-have-a-winner/ ? As it is, they've got something that looks less cool than a golf buggy with pedals.
Of all the Sinclair inventions since the ZX Spectrum, about the only one I've thought "what a good idea" is the A-bike and even that has some pretty serious aesthetic and practical deficiencies such as the miniscule wheels.
The C5 tanked when it came out for good reason and I see nothing about this glorified C5 which suggests its fate will be any different.
So it's a 'bent with a battery. Good so far. Then he goes and spoils it by fitting stupidly small wheels (bad for stability and for dealling with potholes) and the added weight of a bodyshell. It's hard to tell from the pictures, but it doesn't look too well built either.
Sir Clive always struck me as one of those inventors with no ideas. Yes he did some Pioneering work on the pocket calculator. His ZX 80, 81 and Spectrum were neat but flawed. Since then the neatness has receded and the flaws have mushroomed. He's always been one to build down to a price rather than up to a standard, which has probably contributed to the flaws. It also doesn't help when your products feel cheap and tacky no matter what the price.
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