Ah yes. The bike I always wanted, but never had.
CassetteFuturism
this is a space for Cassette Futurism -- retro images, media, design and technology from the 70s and 80s
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Same. I wanted one of these so badly. Saw it in a paper ad shortly after seeing BMX Bandits at the movies. Peak 80's right there.
Looking on bright side, if you’d got it, all your pocket money would have had to go on D-cell batteries.
a little bummed this wasn't actually an electric bike but just a bicycle with some electric bits glued on
yes, although rechargeable battery technology was not as far along back then as it is today, the first electric car was actually built before the first gasoline one (in the early 19th century!!)
they became more commercially viable in the 1890s but then the fossil fuel industry took off and crushed it... sigh...
I don’t think battery tech that was really practical for anything other than low speed, around town travel was actually practical until lithium ion batteries- those early electric cars and trucks only went short distances at a few miles an hour, where as gasoline cars were comparatively light and started going very fast/far very early.
Had we not had any alternative to electric, I have no doubt tech would have advanced faster in that area, but combustion was just so much more practical in so many ways that it was the better option at the time. It’s still true for a lot of use cases today- we need significant improvements to energy storage to make many classes of vehicle practical in all-electric (planes, freight trucks, trains, ships, heavy machinery, anything remote, anything that can’t have hours of downtime charging) to name a few.
They had lithium ion batteries in 1985. You could get lithium ion backed DRAM for the ZX-81, "keeps data for 10 years". Nothing like enough power to move a bicycle or anything.
It looks like a slightly more grown-up version of the "Street Wolf", which was a kids BMX with a pretend gps/map/computer console on it, and a real "plays annoying sounds" feature inside.
Of course, I'm only calling it annoying in retrospect. At the time I was envious of the cool kid down the road, whose computerised-scanner and siren sound machine was essential in defending our street from bad guys.
Power pack = 6 D batteries I bet.