9 WTFs - Taipei Show 2014

Are you looking to combine your electric drill and pit bike fetish into one questionable activity? If that sounds good to you, DPX Systems might have exactly what you're looking for... if you're looking for an electric drill powered pit bike, that is. The pint sized "bike" doesn't depend on pedal power - there is actually nothing in the way cranks or pedals - but rather a cordless drill that is mounted over the back with a clever adjustable setup that can accommodate a number of different models. DPX System came up with a nifty cable operated trigger that controls the drill's speed, letting you choose to either screw slowly or screw fast, and the tiny bike is hopefully brought to a stop by the world's tiniest disc brakes. What else is there to say but to drill home the fact that this machine has bored a hole in current cycling technology.


Spiderman can climb up the side of a building with ease, so any arguments about the concept of having a giant spider-shaped lug across the top of a tire not making sense are completely invalid.


We asked the nice people at Joe's No-Flats if they knew or ever heard of Stan, but they said that name didn't ring a bell with them. Their No-Flat system was demonstrated by turning what looked to be roughly fifty screws (maybe that used the DeWalt off of the Drill Bike?) into a tire that, when looked at a little closer, turned out to be solid rather then setup with any of Joe's sealant.


Have you ever wanted to learn how to ride a unicycle but don't have the time to commit to such a serious endeavour? No, we haven't either, but one smart company was showing off a contraption that acted as a set of training wheels by allowing you to have to depend on balance up until a point when the wheeled base keeps the unicycle from shooting out from underneath you and taking out innocent bystanders while you fall directly onto your face. In case you thought that said company was looking out for your safety, they also had a strange little three wheeled machine that you can "pedal" around thanks to the wheels being attached by tiny offset cranks. In fact, the cranks are to about the same scale as the disc brake setup on the Drill Bike.


We have been trying to find a good hand in Taipei for quite awhile but have only experienced bad hands this week. That changed when we found Good.Hand.


What does a giant cardboard cutout of an anteater and a fake ant colony that could easily be mistaken for something else have to do with bikes? We're not sure, but apparently the ants that live in the colony like stems because there seems to be one nearly hidden about two thirds of the way up from the bottom. Maybe the worker ants brought the stem back home to appease the queen ant's wishes?



Can you put a name to any of the partly finished items pictured above?


This twenty inch wheeled, electric urban downhill bike is likely a look into the future of what we'll be seeing at the Red Bull Valparaiso Cerro Abajo event over the next few years. It's called evolution, and you can't stop it.


Electric bikes are everywhere at the show, with downhill bikes, freeride bikes, cross-country bikes, and even fat bikes getting the battery treatment. Most of these use a large battery and obvious motor setup that has them looking more like the offspring of an Errector Set, a department store bike, a bottle of cheap red wine, and maybe a faulty condom. The little power assist unit pictured above is much smaller and lighter, and actually pulls the chain through its body in order to provide drive. No word on if it is strong enough to allow riders to pull 200ft long power wheelies, but we suspect not. We'll hold off of testing one until it can do exactly that. All jokes aside, the little black box is actually a generator for the bike's lights.