I mean, yes, all that’s true, but they were also doomed from the get-go just because the huge bearing creates so much more unnecessary friction. Did you see how poorly it coasted? That negates one of the biggest advantages of cycling over walking all by itself!
Engineering-wise, large diameter bearings with low friction are entirely possible. This just happens to be one of the worst implementations of a large bearing, in an application where it really, really matters to be low resistance.
My point is that low-friction bearings still wouldn’t have saved this design from impracticality, so focusing on just the bearing issue would be giving a free-pass to the rest of the design pitfalls of this monstrosity.
I mean, yes, all that’s true, but they were also doomed from the get-go just because the huge bearing creates so much more unnecessary friction. Did you see how poorly it coasted? That negates one of the biggest advantages of cycling over walking all by itself!
Engineering-wise, large diameter bearings with low friction are entirely possible. This just happens to be one of the worst implementations of a large bearing, in an application where it really, really matters to be low resistance.
My point is that low-friction bearings still wouldn’t have saved this design from impracticality, so focusing on just the bearing issue would be giving a free-pass to the rest of the design pitfalls of this monstrosity.