The word recumbent refers to the seated position. On a recumbent bike, you sit in a chair-shaped seat, and the pedals are out in front of you. This is actually a more ergonomic way to arrange a bicycle. Recumbents have better pedaling efficiency, much better comfort for extended riding, and better aerodynamics even without fairings. Recumbent riders sometimes refer to conventional "upright" bicycles as "wedgie bikes." Recumbents have been around for at least seventy years—some would say more than a hundred—experienced a revival in the 1970's and 80's, and are still gaining in popularity.
Recumbents do take a little getting used to, some types a little more than others. Some practice riding in a big parking lot is a good idea, before you start coping with cars, dogs, and trees. With a CLWB type like a Sun EZ-1 or a Bacchetta Café, people accustomed to upright bikes can usually just get on it and ride. LWB or high-pedals SWB might take you 10-15 minutes riding before you start to get comfortable. You should probably also try not to have a big audience for your dealer test rides.
Recumbents cost more than upright bikes, because they're low-production. Most recumbent bike brands are craft-built by small manufacturers, and priced accordingly. Probably on the order of a thousand upright bikes sell in the US for each recumbent that sells. The good news here is that since many recumbents are built one at a time by people who care, the results are often quite beautiful and inspiring.
Recumbent value models start at $500-$700, and you may find that you need to get into the $1000-$1100 range to get a really nice 'bent. A lot of people these days probably start with a Sun EZ-1 CLWB, which are widely available at Local Bike Shops, retail new for around $550, and are manufactured in Taiwan under license. Another relatively affordable entry-level possibility would be the ActionBent SWB and LWB bikes for under $700 new, also made in Taiwan, although you have to order those direct from ActionBent in Washington state.
Transporting LWB and CLWB recumbents by car can present a bit of a challenge, because they're longer. There are some good transport solutions available for various vehicle types, and with a little forethought transport doesn't have to be a big problem.
The compact long-wheelbase type (CLWB) is probably the easiest to jump on and ride away, if not the fastest (SWB/ASS) or most comfortable for touring (LWB/USS). The CLWB type is more about general configuration than a range of wheelbase lengths, unlike the other categories. Typical CLWB's have above-seat handlebar-type steering (ASS) medium-to-long wheelbase, and a relatively-upright seating/pedals position; so they present the minimum transition for folks accustomed to upright bikes. Typical CLWB's include the Sun EZ-1, Bacchetta Café, the discontinued-model Rans Tailwind, and the defunct Cannondale recumbent, BikeE, and Vision R30/R32 designs.
Recumbents were banned from UCI* international bike racing in 1934, after Francis Faure, a rider previously considered rather second-rank, broke the world hour record on a recumbent. This blunder by the UCI effectively stopped real engineering innovation in bicycle design for about forty years. See Winning Forbidden: The Real History of the Recumbent Bicycle for more about these events.
To this day, the UCI, the US Cycling Federation, and other governing organizations rely on a contrived set of geometric requirements, that limit the definition of bicycle for racing purposes to traditional upright designs, shutting out recumbents.
There's also IHPVA open bike racing, in the US and other countries, in which you can use whatever you want. IHPVA open bike racing is dominated by recumbents.
So we are stuck with the bizarre situation of two separate worlds of bike racing, with no true testing, by competition involving top riders, of the potential of uprights versus recumbents. Motivation for perpetuating this, now as in the 1930s, probably is mostly a matter of the established position and influence of conventional manufacturers and top riders.
With things as they are, anyone who aspires to the top of bike racing knows from an early age they have to restrict themselves to uprights. So the world's top cyclists spend their lives torturing themselves on bikes whose pattern was set in the nineteenth century, while the superior innovative efficient ergonomic recumbents are ridden by hobbyists on bike paths. Nice job, UCI. One can only hope that someday, someone with sufficient influence and courage will say "Enough!" and tear down the wall. And then we'll see.
Mainstream bike makers Trek and Cannondale have tried recumbent models at different times, with varying degrees of success. It remains to be seen how well this will work if it's done right.
Trek's 1999 SWB recumbent design, now defunct, with rear suspension and mid-drive, was poorly executed. There may even have been dispute within the company whether it should exist: it was reported seen at a trade show sitting in the back of the Trek booth with people's coats hung on it.
Cannondale's 2002 Easy Rider (called Bent I/II 2004-2006, dropped for 2007) was a little better, but it was a suspension mid-drive CLWB, over-engineered to the point that it retailed for US$2000. The CLWB configuration is often an entry-level or first-recumbent choice, and first-time buyers tend to be looking harder at price point. The US$550 Sun EZ-1 is much better positioned for this market, as was the BikeE CT.
It should be noted in this context that both Easy Racers/Sun and ActionBent are selling container-loads of value-price recumbents, mass produced in Taiwan, on the American market. The Sun bikes are sold through dozens of Local Bike Shops everywhere, and the ActionBent bikes directly to consumers. I believe this demonstrates that demand exists for mass-produced value-priced recumbent bikes.
Two recipes for a successful mainstream-manufacturer recumbent:
| Value-price CLWB | Try this first. Make sure the design is competent and highly functional in terms of handling, shifting, braking, and chain control, but use all available economies of scale and engineering tricks to get the price point down as far as possible. Forget about suspension and mid-drive, and use a conventional bike drivetrain, grip shifters, and V-brakes. Consider selling early production near cost to get the line going, with profit to come only with volume. Comparison benchmark: Sun EZ-1. |
|---|---|
| High-end performance SWB | You've got to build a great-riding recumbent to make this one fly, but you can pull out all the stops and retail north of $1200 for this niche. Keep the weight comparable with existing performance SWB recumbents. Go with 26/20 wheels, ASS, Shimano RapidFire shifters, dual mechanical disk brakes, nice gruppo in general. Suspension is not appropriate for this niche: performance oriented riders tend not to want the weight penalty. Comparison benchmark: Burley Hepcat. |
Get input and feedback from the recumbent world. Key people at major dealers like Wheel & Sprocket and AngleTech would be good for starters. Recumbent people are individualistic and opinionated; you'll need to get a lot of input before any consensus will emerge. Asking people at existing recumbent makers to cut their own throats by helping you would probably be a tad insensitive.
If trying to get design input from recumbent people starts to make you crazy—and it might—then study the existing recumbent market. Look at what's available, how many of them sell, and to whom. Which kinds of riders buy which bikes? If you call a recumbent maker and say "dude, how many did you sell last year?" they may not want to answer that question. So probably you'll have to get it indirectly from talking to dealers and riders.
Maybe you can recruit a few people from within the company to become recumbent enthusiasts themselves, and investigate the world of recumbents for you from the inside. If this is not going to be pointless, they have to be people not so emotionally invested in the whole USCF/Tour de France world as to have a closed mind. People from the accounting department, maybe.
How about sponsoring an IHPVA racing team? You could even start with other people's recumbents, tricked out by your own technical people.
Don't forget the existing recumbent market has been developing for 20+ years. Some models offered today are specialty niche designs with small customer bases. (Yes, the whole recumbent market is niche, but some recumbent classes are niche inside the niche.) Examples would include performance tadpole trikes, suspension recumbents, and the American high-racer style that's emerged in recent years, like the Rans Force 5.
Any engineering choice has advantages and disadvantages. Recumbents are at their best as road bikes. On an upright bike, when you need to run over an obstacle such as a rock or a branch, you can stand on the pedals, sort of jump and yank up on the bars, and "un-weight" the bike. You can't do that on a recumbent, or not nearly as well.
If my priority was riding serious single-track, of the steep or "stump-jumping" sort, I'd get a full-suspension upright mountain bike. On the other hand, most mountain bikes sold are never actually ridden anywhere except on pavement; if what you really need is a road bike, recumbents are better. (If you just want to ride around in town on knobbies while your bike projects that gnarly mountain-biker image, knock yourself out; I can't see anything wrong with it.)
If I was dead-set on riding a recumbent on moderate single-track, I might try the EZ Rider rear-suspension CLWB, from the 2004 Sun/EZ-1 line. Sun actually describes it as an on/off-road bike, and it ships with Kenda On/Off Road tires. The EZ Rider has 20-inch wheels front and rear, which helps with tire selection. CLWB's have more weight on the rear wheel; a suspension fork would be nice but is maybe not as important on a CLWB as on other recumbent types or on uprights. The 59.5-inch wheelbase of the EZ Rider might be an issue for single-track. Presumably this could also be tried with the Cannondale and Maxarya suspension CLWB recumbents.
There's also a type of compromise mountain-bike tire available, which has a relatively smooth center section with knobs at the sides which take hold in soft stuff (example: Kenda Kross Plus ATB). You might want to be cautious cornering hard on pavement when you first get them. This type also makes an interesting drive-wheel choice for a tadpole trike.
Larry Mendoza wrote me in February 2004 to say he rides single-track on a full-suspension SWB Rans Vivo (a model no longer offered) with knobby tires on the front and rear 20-inch wheels. That's great if it works for him, but it's not for me. If I'm riding single-track on a recumbent, I think I want a low bottom bracket.
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