shink3488
New Member
So, here's my experience of the A-Bike.
Summary: on paper, it's a fantastic portable bike, but in practice it has a fatally flawed design. It's going to break after a few months, and then you're going to be stuck with a useless bike. In practice, it's a scam.
Longer version (the "scam" description is at the end):
I've been a longtime user of folding bikes.
I lived in several big cities, so my patterns of usage changed. Most of the time though, I use a portable bike a a complement to the public transport. For this reason, I need it to be very light and compact, and capable of doing relatively short distances.
So far, my experiences with folding bikes have been:
- A 26" folding mountain bike (can't remember the brand/model); at this time I used to rely entirely on bike commuting, and not on public transport.
- A Dahon Ciao P3, with electring engine added; same conditions as before
- A Xootr scooter, which is obviously not a bike. From this point on, I was in a bigger city, mixing private and public transport
- A Strida 5.2
- An A-Bike 8" ("City" model)
- A piece of crap 16" folding bike, which I use now
On paper, the A-Bike 8" would be perfect for me, and I guess, for everybody which uses mostly public transport, and then does relatively short distances:
- it's very very compact, and it folder in a relatively short time
- it's very very very light, literally the lightest "usable" bike you can buy (with the exception of the A-Bike 6")
It has an obvious downside - the 8" wheels. This is why I meantion "usable" bike: pedaling on this bike is quite hard, and I can imagine that the 6" inches version is way too hard to make any cycling at all.
It's very important to understand the usage. Given that with this specific usage one does short distances, it's tolerable to have some downsides.
The downsides inherent in such a compact bike are:
- bumpy feeling: you can't get away with it, because the wheels are so small
- hard pedaling: same reason as before
- lack of comfort: if you're average height, you won't be able to extend your legs
Then there are the not inheret downsides.
It all boiles down to a single problem: this bike, from an engineering perspective, is nothing short of a piece of sh*t.
It is truly terrible. The ideas behind the bike are clever; the objective of making a compact and practically folding bike are accomplished. The problem is that it is, in a way, the opposite of a Strida: Stridas are premium bikes, engineered to be durable and resilient, while A-Bikes are cheaply produced, made to break in a few months.
Let me repeat: A-Bikes WILL break in a few months.
Before the main engineering problem, I'll describe the secondary problems:
- the breaks are terrible; they get unresponsive pretty quickly, and even when adjusted, they keep feeling unresponsive and "hard". This by itself, is already a very big engineering problem
- the bike as a whole is creaky and chep; it feels like you're standing on a loosely connected jumble of plastic parts.
- the encasing of the chain/chainrings is hard to open; it has at least a dozen different screws, and you need three or more different type of tools to open it
- the many screws of the encasing are going to rust with the time. Good luck with that
- the encasing is also going to be filled with dirt, and again, it's going to be a hard work to clean it
====================================================
= THE SCAM!
====================================================
Now, the interesting part. Why it's a scam?
The problem of the reviews that you can find on the web is that they're made by people who test the bike for a few hours, then write the article. This obviously misses one important point, that is, how a bike will perform in the long run.
The "A to B" website raises a point on their review: "The result of all this technology is a whacking 6.8:1 gear reduction, and a single 41-inch gear [...] The wheels, layshaft and bottom bracket use ball bearings throughout,but the bearings are a fairly loose push-fit in plastic housings which twist under load. Time will tell whether this light, simple system survives.".
The answer that I can now give is: it WON'T survive. After a few months of usage, my A-Bike started "skipping", until the point where pedalling yields no wheels rotation.
So there's the story.
- I write an email to the A-Bike support. Nobody replies.
- After a week I call them. There is a woman on the phone. She is dry and bothered, clearly uninstered in solving the problem. She tells me to open the encasing, and take a picture.
- I find it's hard to do that, so I take a video of the problem and send it.
- I get no reply. After I couple of weeks I call. The woman on the phone says she hasn't been opening the email for some time, so she will open it and give me a response. She's obviously lying; the email is also for sales purposes, so no way noboy doesn't open it frequenly.
- I receive a confirmation via email, saying a technican would review the case and reply.
- Nobody replied since then.
At this point the problem is: the A-Bike has a fatal flow, and even if they had a responsible support department, one should keep replacing the part every few months.
But also, they essentially don't offer any support, so once the bike breaks, you're on your own. Or, if you're very very insistent, you will have to spend weeks to get it fixed. Cyclically!
Summary: on paper, it's a fantastic portable bike, but in practice it has a fatally flawed design. It's going to break after a few months, and then you're going to be stuck with a useless bike. In practice, it's a scam.
Longer version (the "scam" description is at the end):
I've been a longtime user of folding bikes.
I lived in several big cities, so my patterns of usage changed. Most of the time though, I use a portable bike a a complement to the public transport. For this reason, I need it to be very light and compact, and capable of doing relatively short distances.
So far, my experiences with folding bikes have been:
- A 26" folding mountain bike (can't remember the brand/model); at this time I used to rely entirely on bike commuting, and not on public transport.
- A Dahon Ciao P3, with electring engine added; same conditions as before
- A Xootr scooter, which is obviously not a bike. From this point on, I was in a bigger city, mixing private and public transport
- A Strida 5.2
- An A-Bike 8" ("City" model)
- A piece of crap 16" folding bike, which I use now
On paper, the A-Bike 8" would be perfect for me, and I guess, for everybody which uses mostly public transport, and then does relatively short distances:
- it's very very compact, and it folder in a relatively short time
- it's very very very light, literally the lightest "usable" bike you can buy (with the exception of the A-Bike 6")
It has an obvious downside - the 8" wheels. This is why I meantion "usable" bike: pedaling on this bike is quite hard, and I can imagine that the 6" inches version is way too hard to make any cycling at all.
It's very important to understand the usage. Given that with this specific usage one does short distances, it's tolerable to have some downsides.
The downsides inherent in such a compact bike are:
- bumpy feeling: you can't get away with it, because the wheels are so small
- hard pedaling: same reason as before
- lack of comfort: if you're average height, you won't be able to extend your legs
Then there are the not inheret downsides.
It all boiles down to a single problem: this bike, from an engineering perspective, is nothing short of a piece of sh*t.
It is truly terrible. The ideas behind the bike are clever; the objective of making a compact and practically folding bike are accomplished. The problem is that it is, in a way, the opposite of a Strida: Stridas are premium bikes, engineered to be durable and resilient, while A-Bikes are cheaply produced, made to break in a few months.
Let me repeat: A-Bikes WILL break in a few months.
Before the main engineering problem, I'll describe the secondary problems:
- the breaks are terrible; they get unresponsive pretty quickly, and even when adjusted, they keep feeling unresponsive and "hard". This by itself, is already a very big engineering problem
- the bike as a whole is creaky and chep; it feels like you're standing on a loosely connected jumble of plastic parts.
- the encasing of the chain/chainrings is hard to open; it has at least a dozen different screws, and you need three or more different type of tools to open it
- the many screws of the encasing are going to rust with the time. Good luck with that
- the encasing is also going to be filled with dirt, and again, it's going to be a hard work to clean it
====================================================
= THE SCAM!
====================================================
Now, the interesting part. Why it's a scam?
The problem of the reviews that you can find on the web is that they're made by people who test the bike for a few hours, then write the article. This obviously misses one important point, that is, how a bike will perform in the long run.
The "A to B" website raises a point on their review: "The result of all this technology is a whacking 6.8:1 gear reduction, and a single 41-inch gear [...] The wheels, layshaft and bottom bracket use ball bearings throughout,but the bearings are a fairly loose push-fit in plastic housings which twist under load. Time will tell whether this light, simple system survives.".
The answer that I can now give is: it WON'T survive. After a few months of usage, my A-Bike started "skipping", until the point where pedalling yields no wheels rotation.
So there's the story.
- I write an email to the A-Bike support. Nobody replies.
- After a week I call them. There is a woman on the phone. She is dry and bothered, clearly uninstered in solving the problem. She tells me to open the encasing, and take a picture.
- I find it's hard to do that, so I take a video of the problem and send it.
- I get no reply. After I couple of weeks I call. The woman on the phone says she hasn't been opening the email for some time, so she will open it and give me a response. She's obviously lying; the email is also for sales purposes, so no way noboy doesn't open it frequenly.
- I receive a confirmation via email, saying a technican would review the case and reply.
- Nobody replied since then.
At this point the problem is: the A-Bike has a fatal flow, and even if they had a responsible support department, one should keep replacing the part every few months.
But also, they essentially don't offer any support, so once the bike breaks, you're on your own. Or, if you're very very insistent, you will have to spend weeks to get it fixed. Cyclically!
