The Monk and Robot books by Becky Chambers take place in a very solar punk setting where significant rewilding has taken place. The main character is a travelling tea monk (you don’t need to know what that is) who travels with what is called an ox-bike. Essentially the setup is an e-bike-driven lightweight campervan or possibly wagon. My impression from the book is that the front bike does not detach from the back.
I’ve done some literal back of the envelope calculations and I think it would be possible to make something like that in real life with our current technology. But I’ve not been able to find any prior art, except for the Wide path bicycle camper, which is more like a trailer than a campervan. My guess is you could improve on the if you made the bike built in, not least because it’s easier to stop without the damned bike falling over.
Have you ever heard of or seen anyone make something like this? Do you think it could work?
Ooooooh! That sounds awesome! The fact that it was bear proof in the books, as well as being light enough to be pulled by an e bike makes me think carbon fiber and/or aluminum. Makes me wanna do some design mockups with rough sizing and structural estimates. Not artistic enough to do any of the murals on the sides with the gods but it would be fun to try to do structural theorizing.
(Not an engineer, i just like thinking through problems like this)
I’m not too concerned about bears since they’re very uncommon where I live (Northern Europe), but I was thinking fibreglass or possibly some special plywood with aluminium frame. I actually did some calculations on the weight of a frame and it’s pretty ok even with steel bars, especially if they’re hollow.
