Clarkey

I seem to remember that he felt even the original rubber cone setup had been compromised by others, hence the after-market 'Smootha Ride' kit he developed later which was closer to his original intent. It seems that his ideas often suffered when others got involved - I had a Pashley APB for a while and liked it well enough. Intrigued with the concept I then bought a 1965 Moulton Deluxe for £40 and was shocked to discover that, even in a fairly poor state of repair, the ride was vastly better. I sold the APB straight away, got another F frame and have been happy ever since! I expect that the Pashley-Moulton TSR's are much better now though.

Weren't both hydrolastic and hydragas also developed by Moulton though? It is likely that he thought them improvements and even used hydrolastic on the New Series Moulton.

I think the future belongs to kits and bikes that can provide durability and close on 100% reliability. In my opinion a multimeter should not be an essential tool for an electric bike rider, although I appreciate the sentiment of that other thread.

I agree completely. The freedom from legislation that Pedelecs currently enjoy is not to be taken lightly.

They are pulsejet powered bikes made by a slightly crazed American called Robert Maddox. He builds them as collectors pieces and they are, indeed, beautifully done but they also actually work. The pulsejets are fuelled by propane and produce about 60-120lb of thrust. The bikes get up to about 75mph - rather him than me! They also produce unbelievable amounts of noise and glow cherry red when running flat out. They work in the same manner as the engine of the V1 'doodlebug'. There are several videos around on youtube of the bikes running.

How about one of these for an IC bike? http://blog.oregonlive.com/commuting/2009/06/large_jetbike.jpg Or maybe this one? http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/autopia/images/2008/05/20/jet_bike03.jpg

Yes, the 'new' standard Brompton saddle is very good. It is also well suited for riding in jeans which is not always the case. I just put a Brooks B17 on my old Moulton but although it looks great I bitterly regret not just buying a Brompton saddle to match my everyday commuter.

i have not tried an R2 but my R1 was great straight out of the box. I think I ended up with it slightly more nose down than my more usual saddles. It is still on my mountain bike because I found it spectacularly good for off-road.

I used to really enjoy riding a tandem solo, very comfy. You could always whip out the stoker seatpost and put on a long rack a la extracycle or a yuba mundo.

Are the Chinese being any more aggressive than the west? We haven't always been perfect gentlemen whilst securing our natural resources have we?

I think the Tikit might be a very interesting candidate for electrification - especially with the front pannier rack which you can leave loaded as you wheel the bike around. Ideal for a battery/controller in a bag, methinks.

The 8 speed fully auto 'cyber nexus' groupset is still available (though not in the UK). At least one blogger is almost disturbingly enthusiastic about the performance of it. The 3 speed auto-d is also still available although the 4 speed version appears to have been discontinued - it was available on Pashley Moultons for a while and I know of one owner who rated it very highly.

Looks good. The only 'big name' longtail I know of is the Kona 'Ute' but there is no electric option - yet.

I think it has all the ingredients to be fully auto - to quote one of the articles: "What is in particular interesting about Shimano STEPS is the fact it is a fully integrated system. Some examples: the Nexus 8-speed gear hub is coupled with the torque sensor. With that it gets SEIS, which stands for Shimano Electronic Intelligent System for electronic shifting, specially developed for e-bikes. It is operated through buttons controlling a motor unit attached to the gear hub, allowing for fast and smooth shifting" As has been noted, the shift effort on a standard Alfine setup is extremely low - I can't see how they could justify the complication of adding a shift motor solely to allow pushbutton operation. The claim that the torque sensor is linked to the hub also seems to indicate that they will use that information to set automatic shift points.

I was on the verge of ordering an Alien or Sunlova kit but this changes everything for me. All my experiences with Shimano equipment have been overwhelmingly positive and I can't imagine that this will be launched half-baked. Sure, Shimano have had some sales flops like 'coasting' but they always worked and the knowledge they have now gained will integrate nicely with this pedelec system. If this is going to offer a fully automatic 8 speed hub and electric assistance, all centrally controlled, it is going to be a very attractive proposition IMHO.