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.
The Spectrum his only success ? Phu-lease. The only one you remember off the top of your head with zero research, you mean. Off the top of my head, the ZX80, 81 were roaring successes in their time, as were many generations of the Spectrum, QL and peripheral products. Then there are the digital watches - some of the first in the world, the miniature TV, the pocket calculators, for which, I think, Sir Clive wrote some of the trigonometrical algorithms himself. And that's without googling a sausage.
So he lives in a mansion, has a knighthood and is pleasured by a former Miss England. What do you do for a living ?
So, he's had some daft ideas (like this bike). No dafter than some other alternative energy/transport schemes I've seen, and he did have some good 'uns.
My Sinclair Scientific (built from a kit my Mum bought me) is still going strong, when I can remember how to write in RP, and somehow I doubt any of my inventions will entice a lapdancer half my age into my* bed.
*In the interests of accuracy I should note that I mean /our/ bed, which reduces the chance of congress with a lapdancer of any age to somewhere around zero anyway. But you get the idea.
"The Spectrum his only success ? Phu-lease. The only one you remember off the top of your head with zero research, you mean."
Ever read to the end of any articles?
"Off the top of my head, the ZX80, 81 were roaring successes in their time, as were many generations of the Spectrum, QL and peripheral products."
The ZX80 and ZX81 sold well but were regarded as flawed products. These days, with higher expectations and better consumer laws, Sinclair would have been bankrupt within weeks for shipping products of such quality. And let us not get into the bizarre technical shortcuts such as the video output mechanism which were pretty much obsolete even at that time, yet let Sinclair shave a few quid off the price in order to sell to eager punters.
As for the QL, while people may question the portrayal of its promotion and launch in "Micro Men", Sinclair overdelivered on the hype and underdelivered on the execution, again making shortsighted technical choices (68008 CPU instead of the 68000, Microdrives instead of floppies) that ended up as technical and strategic disasters.
"These days, with higher expectations and better consumer laws, Sinclair would have been bankrupt within weeks for shipping products of such quality."
As would 99% of anyone selling anything via mail order through magazine ads in those days. Doesn't make them any less relevant or successful.
You're right about the QL though. It was an unmitigated disaster from start to finish. Embarrassing. I seem to remember a PCB design flaw being discovered so late in the day that the only way to fix it was to hardwire in a resistor, which was dubbed a "Sinclair Mandatory Modification" and given a fancy factory label as if it was some sort of free upgrade.
One of my theses originally resided on a micro drive cartridge. As it was too long (there was no space for both the temporary file and the original file) I had to pull some funny stunts to rescue it. I had bought a QL trump card you see. So somehow I managed to extricate it by transferring to the floppies (720k no less, yowieeee!). When the floppies died I edited the boot file/s on a microdrive to boot up and make virtual discs in RAM, which I still think is pretty neat. The system gave me a "you're joking aren't you?" message. I can't remember exact phraseology. The floppies were replaced under guarantee.
I bought the Taskmaster multitasking bolt on, and exchanged email with David Batty from Sector Software a few years back. He's still doing clever things.
When Windows was able to address more than 540k I moved to an XT, and thought myself king, and the rest is history.
Silly Clive though. He had a chance, but skimped on the ingredients.
"Sinclair overdelivered on the hype and underdelivered on the execution, again making shortsighted technical choices"
So not like Windows Vista or OSX or pretty much any IT project that ever gets reported in the Reg?
Comparing the hype in the 80s with the hype these days, Sinclair was way behind the curve for hype and way ahead of the curve in actually delivering computers/etc.. that were slightly ground breaking.
OK, they may not have been 100% successful or reliable but they were generally more different than the rest than the difference between for example : OSX & Win7 or Vista & 7 etc...
It's part of the British way, we love the 'crackpot inventor' or eccentrics who invent truly innovative stuff in their garden sheds but only because we can have a damn good laugh at them.
Not that I'm condoning it, we've lost many thousands of opportunities from a lack of foresight and unwillingness to take risks on such people.
Clive has invented some amazing things but after the Spectrum and before the calculator his main achievement was knowing how to market shoddy badly designed crap. If you've ever had the misfortune to have to repair any of his 'hi-fi' stuff then you'll know exactly what I mean.
As for the missus, to paraphrase Mrs merton, 'So, what first attracted you to the multi-millionaire Clive Sinclair'
> the pocket calculators, for which, I think, Sir Clive wrote some of the trigonometrical
> algorithms himself.
Whoa - didn't know that. My Sinclair Scientific took 14 seconds to work out the sine of 90 degrees. It's still down in the basement somewhere.
I used to work with Clive, on King's Parade - nice guy, good luck to him. I suspect that I'd recognise some of the names here, if any of us actually had names...
"as were many generations of the Spectrum"
All two of them effectively. Speccy 16 and 48 were the same generation just with different memory. Speccy+ was the same with a different case. Speccy 128 was the first next generation as it had sufficient hardware differences to distinguish it.
After that the many models that followed with built in tape and disc drives were all Amstrad!
The Sinclair Research website now redirects to "www.sinclairzx.com" Wait a minute... ZX? I thought Uncle Clive had stopped using that particular combination of letters back in 1986? A careful inspection of the new website reveals that it is in fact owned by an Iain Sinclair, brother of Sir Clive, and industrial designer, whose main claim to fame seems to be a line of dinky LED torches. Has Sir Clive finally joined forces with his lesser-known brother? Or has he decided to retire, and transfer what's left of Sinclair Research to his brother? More to this than meets the eye...
In Germany there are plenty of bike nerds zooming around with "Liegeräder". And apart from looking silly and all that, they have one big advantage:
They're FAST! The aerodynamics are by far superior to a normal bike. And as you have a large seat to use as a counterpart for your legs, ergonomics of power transmission are much better, too.
It looks like a C5 with a roof.
Perhaps poor old Clive saw Citroën successfully bring back the C5, updated for the 21st century, and though he'd give it a whirl himself, muttering "I can do that" at the TV in the style of Yosser Hughes?
Most geriatrics spouting barmpot ideas like this end up being restrained to the bed by the staff nurse. I suppose in this case it's his wife who's likely to be wearing that uniform and toting the cuffs...
I think David Cameron should appoint Clive as the technology Tzar in charge of East London's proposed Silicockney Valey. The chap could ride a C5 around the narrow Whitechapel backstreets at night whilst wearing a long black cloak with scarlet lining, and shout "I'm the Duke of New York!" at passers-by.
Does that make sense?
Long before the digital stuff (calculators, watch, MK14, etc) hit the market, Sinclair was selling a range of radio and hi-fi stuff. I still have a handy little IC12 amplifier in the cupboard (needs a new PSU).
http://www.nvg.ntnu.no/sinclair/audio/amps.htm
I wonder how many people realise that the current well known electronics test equipment outfit Thurlby Thandar also had its origins in the Sinclair empire.
I remember upgrading my absolutely wonderful 16K ZX Spectrum to a 48K model. The upgrade process involved trying to prise the damn thing apart without snapping the case in half and having to actually solder the additional RAM on to the bloody circuit board!
Now that's what I call a proper PC upgrade. Not none of yer new fangled 72pin slot in nonsense.
And to think that some moaning minnies complain that upgrading a Macbook is difficult just because you have to remove a few torpix screws. Tsk!
The bike is crap by the way.
'most e-bikes are rated at 200-250 watts sustained and peak output - eg for hill climbing - over 500'
If this is true then most e-bikes are illegal to ride without a license, insurance, road tax, helmet, etc.
Motorised bikes are limited to 200W sustained (trikes upto 250W) to be classed as a bike and not a moped, and I think the author would find that most e-bikes are limited just below this level i.e. around 190W.
This thing looks like a sail, so will be major pain in strong wind and could easy get blown around or blown over, because it will likely be too light for it's profile! All the extra drag would require a lot more energy to move it than a normal bicycle or an unenclosed e-bike.
Worse still, the open sides will mean that you still have to wear full wet gear when it is raining, unless they plan to supply optional sheet doors!
As pointed out, where are the brake triggers?
I'm not sure how helpful a roll cage will be without some form of seat belt, given you could easy fall out and hurt yourself.
Lastly, where are the front, back and turning lights?
I'll keep my traditional design electric bike thanks, with that I can get on to cycle paths through those narrow entrances/exits designed to slow bicyclists down so they don't run straight into the road, this offering from Clive would never be able to get onto cycle paths, which incedentally are inherintly safer for cyclists than sharing roadspace with heavy vehicles that have blind spots and drivers that see cyclists as nothing more than annoyance in their way and on 'their' road.
On one hand, power to the guy if he's still tinkering in his shed at 70 ... far more constructive use of his time than holding down the couch in front of the teevee.
On the other, one would think that with his background and resources (i.e., money), he could avail himself of better designs by researching what has already been done (and quite successfully) by others, and then figuring out how to improve on them.
This article reminded me of a project done by a company in town, so I went online to see what became of it. This page -- http://versatile.web-log.nl/versatile/english_logs_old_logs/index.html -- includes it and also some really cool "bikemobiles" of more recent vintage (and better/ safer construction).
"On the other, one would think that with his background and resources (i.e., money), he could avail himself of better designs by researching what has already been done (and quite successfully) by others, and then figuring out how to improve on them."
Except that Sir Clive's approach is usually to try to do what's already been done, but cheaper. Consider the ZX80/81 and Spectrum. They didn't really feature anything new or innovative, they were just a lot cheaper than the competition. AFAIR the early Spectrum was £125 when most of the competition were more than twice as much.
The problem with this however is that most people consider 'bents to be downright weird. It doesn't matter how good they are, most people avoid them because they consider them weird. Add an electric motor and an odd looking cowl to the mix and the weirdometer goes off the scale. The end result is a tiny potential market.
The only way I think the market could be expanded is by making it appear "cool". You're going to need "cool" celebrities to use them in order for that to work and I suspect that the only way you could get that to work is actually by going against Sinclair's own credo and having a very high initial price. The type of celeb you need to attract for this to work is not the sort of person who would want to be seen on anything considered to be cheap.
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Rotten air resistance, will be blown over in a decent crosswind, a real pain in a headwind. No view to the back, no lights, no mirrors and has been pointed out, what do you do when you stop? How do you get your foot down. Seems also lack of storage for the usual stuff you cart to the office and when you get there it won't fit in the bike rack.
Maybe the person who put this idea ought to be made to commute with it in <insert generic city name>
It's more or less a faired recumbent - the sort of bike that can break speed records (with someone a good deal fitter than me pedalling). The problems you suspect are easily solved by recumbent riders.
The trouble is that it looks as though it was designed by someone who knew the general idea of a recumbent but not the detailed issues. Most, for example, have larger rear wheels and/or suspension.
"The Sinclair Research website now redirects to "www.sinclairzx.com"
It does indeed look like there's perhaps more to this than meets the eye. A bit of quick Googling reveals that the Sinclair Research site of a few days ago is still cached, but it now redirects to sinclairzx.com and there has been a (failed?) attempt to transfer the original site's contents to the sinclairzx.com domain.
e.g. there are references to URLs of the form http://www.sinclairzx.comcontact-us.php/ - can you spot what they missed, and how much testing they must have (NOT) done before going live?
ROTFLMAO. The video looks like it was shot on a mobile phone and edited by someone with their eyes closed!
Wobbly shooting and clips that only appear for a fraction of a second. I'm watching in the office so have no sound, I'm guessing it's just as bad.
What a great advert...
Seems more attitude than fact here.
It looks a bit like those streamlined mpg competition vehicles that get 500+ mpg.
Who knows but it could really improve the battery.
The opening offer of £600 is the cheapest recumbent bike by far.
A removable shell option would be useful for those a bit wet behind the ears.
The idea isn't half bad, but, like a lot of Sinclair's brainwaves, the execution is awful.
Its a recumbant bike. Nothing wrong with that idea, but the upright seating position means that the main advantages of a recumbant, streamlining and the ability to provide more effort to the pedals, are negated.
Its got a roof. Nothing wrong with that, but its profile means it will have horrific windage. I wouldn't want to ride that in traffic where high sided vehicles sweeping past will blow the thing all over the road. Or in anything other than a light breeze. Also the open sides and closed back mean that trying to go against a head-wind will be like trying to ride through a brick wall.
It has power assistance, but the power is severely lacking, particularly considering its high drag and weight (its over double the weight of my Dahon Espresso folder (13Kg).
The small wheels will also provide poor stability.
All in all, I would imagine this would be a frightful thing to ride around on (in?), with respect to comfort, performance and safety (you may have a roll cage, but it looks pretty flimsy and it will be blown all over the road. I also imagine that flying shards of that shell would be pretty nasty in any smash).
"Nowadays Sinclair is known as much for... or for his longtime relationship with (and recent marriage to) a former lapdancer 36 years his junior"....
Lewis, you say that like it's a BAD THING?? Bloody hell, if having a couple of good ideas in your life and capitalizing on them get you the money to have a fantastic sex partner in your older age isn't a passable definition of success, I don't know what is...
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There is no doubt that Sir Clive produced some very innovative products in his heyday. The digital watch, pocket calculator, ZX80, ZX81 and of course the ZX Spectrum (which I still remember fondly as my first computer). I certainly do not begrudge him his wealth or lap dancing life partner.
However a low powered electric recumbent in a plastic cowl that looks like it was designed in the early 70's shows just how much his game has slipped. There are people making hpv and hybrid vehicles including recumbent bikes and trikes of far higher quality, innovativeness and visual appeal. This is not innovation and for the creator of one of the most popular series of home computer of the 80's to be pushing this is sad and just a little embarrassing.
"These days, with higher expectations and better consumer laws, Sinclair would have been bankrupt within weeks for shipping products of such quality."
Really? You've never bought some own brand from a well known UK Stores Group then? Perhaps more than one such Retail Group?
Tiny wheels = fail
Seriously upright seat = fail
Ape-hanger handlebars = fail
Air-scoop retarding factor = fail
High side profile = fail
Open door policy = fail
Open floor policy = fail
Perspex-shard_pre- tensioning " rollover " frame = fail
Open chain to rear wheeel = fail
Disc brakes.
But I am prejudiced. I spent three weeks of my paper-round
earnings buying an IC10 round 1970 and never got it to actually work.
Happy jiggling, Sir Clive, but not with this little bunny's money.
Needs to be a lot lower, the rider needs to be angled back more. Needs TWICE the power at least.. Needs larger wider wheels and yes a rear third one, not everyone will want (be able to use) a recumbant. Needs to come with removable pvc doors, just thick clear plastic zipped around should do. Wiper? Mirrors? Luggage? Optional funky colours/ graphics. FFS that thing as is will be a disaster.
There that fixed it. Upgrade 2.0 whenever you like.
Personally I'd stick to a motorbike, but thats just me.
Kudos though to Sir Clive though for seeing to a lapdancer in his mansion on top of a large pile of money.
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