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TEAGUE x Sizemore’s Denny Wins The Bike Design Project, Fuji Bikes to Bring it to Production

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SEA-TEAGUExSizemoreBicycles_DENNY

After winning the Oregon Manifest and Levi’s Bike Design Project, Denny is headed on for big things. Denny of course being the bike that was created by the collaboration between TEAGUE design and Sizemore Bicycle. During the competition, bike designs were unveiled at release parties in each of the competing cities – Chicago, New York, Portland, San Francisco, and TEAGUE x Sizemore’s Seattle. By being voted the best bike in the design competition, a “refined” version of Denny will be brought to production by Fuji Bicycle with an actual retail debut scheduled for 2015.

“We’re very impressed and proud of what the other firms achieved with their bikes, and thankful to have had the opportunity to work with Taylor Sizemore on our ‘Denny’ bike,” said Creative Director at TEAGUE, Roger Jackson. “The fact that this was a public vote means a lot to our team, so we’re super excited to reward those voters by working with Fuji to refine the ‘Denny’ and bring a great biking experience to market.”

The winning bike is what the Teague x Sizemore team considers an “all in” commuter platform for urban environments like Seattle. Built with a number of integrated features, Denny addresses the need for security, safety, and convenience through their design. How will all of these features translate to production? That remains to be seen, but for now check out the details after the break….

SEA-DENNY-The-handlebar-can-also-be-fully-removed-to-secure-the-frame-to-the-wheel-the-visual-of-a-handlebar-less-bike-also-acts-as-a-visual-deterant

SEA-DENNY-The-handlebar-is-an-integrated-u-lock-system-which-allows-for-that-quick-stop-security

 

If you ride in the city, you’re going to need a lock. Denny builds the lock right into the bike with a handlebar that performs the function in two different ways. Open the quick release stem and the handlebar is completely removed allowing it to be used as a large U-Lock, locking the front wheel and the frame to a rack. In a less sketchy part of town? Pop the end of the bar open without removing it from the stem and lock it to a post for quick stops.

Bokanev_Teague_-73

Bokanev_Teague_-54 SEA-DENNY-The-front-of-the-bike-frame-functions-as-a-carry-tray-with-a-flexible-netting-design-that-caters-even-for-the-morning-coffee-run

SEA-DENNY-The-fender-is-designed-to-remove-water-from-the-tire-by-disrupting-the-flow-with-rubber-bristles

To make the bike as convenient as possible, Denny uses a Di2 internal gear hub that is shifted automatically. Combine that with an electric assist motor with an easily removable battery for charging, and you a bike that will help you breeze through the city on your way to work or to do your errands. Not only do the minimalist fenders help shed water from the tires, they also act as a modern tire scraper and should help remove flat inducing objects before they work their way in. Of course no ultimate commuter would be complete without the ability to carry the office coffee order so an adjustable cargo net is part of the built in storage rack on the front of the bike. This is also where the battery for the electric assist is stored, underneath.

SEA-DENNY-the-Denny-bike-also-has-a-fully-integrated-smart-lighting-system-that-adapts-the-intensity-based-on-the-natural-light-conditions

Finally, Denny has the light system that commuters dream of. Powered by the battery for the electric assist, the system includes auto-on headlights based on natural light conditions, a brake/tail light, safety lights to light up the area around the bike, and turn signals that are activated by pushing the right or left brake levers forward.

“We’re thrilled with the amount of attention and enthusiasm ‘The Bike Design Project’ has gotten, and are excited to work with TEAGUE x Sizemore to send this bike to production, “ said Fuji’s Vice President of Marketing, Karen Bliss. “The Denny features exactly the kind of innovations we had hoped would come from these collaborations, and we anticipate its success on sales floors across the US introducing and reintroducing people to the joy, convenience, and simplicity of riding a bike.” 

It will be interesting to see how much of the complete design will make it to production, but for that you’ll have to wait until next year!

SEA_TeaguexSizemoreBicycle_7x5_72dpi
The TEAGUE x Sizemore team

oregonmanifest.com

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26 Comments
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AlanM
AlanM
9 years ago

Ladies and gentlemen, the $5,000 commuter rig you’ve been clamoring for has arrived!

bb
bb
9 years ago

No fenders (but enormous and enormously heavy ‘mounts’ for their little rubber brooms), turn signals that are visible to no one except the people already immediately to your left and right, a heavy, impractical, and insanely expensive electric assist motor, and a super wide, non-removable front rack.

Not to mention the bike becomes unrideable if someone decides to try to cut your handlebars – I mean lock.

scott
scott
9 years ago

Each bike comes with your choice of blaze orange beanie with Theory Rilland taupe cardigan or Danner Forest Heights Pittock boot and a flannel. Please specify size and choice with order.

Clancy
Clancy
9 years ago

I enjoy seeing fresh, new, innovative products/projects that Bike Rumor showcases. Always something different and interesting. What I simply don’t get is why, so often, someone has to throw up some snarky comment . This is a very cool bike with some well thought-out practical features. Obviously a LOT of hours and thought went into this. With a company like Fuji bringing it to market, hopefully it will come in at a reasonable price. My compliments to the design team and Fuji – here’s hoping you’ll do it right, which based on your past, I believe you will.

bb
bb
9 years ago

It’s clear a ton of work went into this, and I appreciate innovation and integration. But I think the Blackline or Evo would have been much more practical, much more accessible, and much better thought out winners.

I wonder how the voting would have stacked up had Prolly not thrown his hat in for the Sizemore.

kurti_sc
kurti_sc
9 years ago

here, here, Clancy.
i’m sometimes surprised people even give material to Bikerumor to review some times. the snarkiness gets old.
i’d be interested in the construction details of this bike, if any are available. how did they incorporate some of the functionality into manufacturability?

JH
JH
9 years ago

I agree that there are some thoughtful features: the cargo net and auto-on lights for instance. But a quick release handlebar sounds like an accident waiting to happen. And I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t like the sound of those brushes constantly rubbing against my tires, especially if a tire with any sort of knobs is needed.

Jesse Edwards
Jesse Edwards
9 years ago

Interesting for sure, but I think most avid commuters will agree that the fewer proprietary elements the better. Also, those fenders won’t do sh*t, and will probably wear out after a few 1000 kms.

Typenschild Delete
Typenschild Delete
9 years ago

There’s a difference between fresh and innovative vs. half-baked. This bike is an interesting start, and has some interesting ideas, but a looong way to go.

The features are NOT “well thought out”. They are mere concepts. As an example of their only halfway-though-out nature:

1. Bar sweep. I know very few people who are comfortable on perfectly straight bars.
2. Fenders brush thingies.
3. Brake lever angle adjustment and location near the stem. They appear integrated into the stem. That will be a fun problem to solve(or ignore) if they keep the removable bar-lock system.

They have some additional figuring to do depending on what sizes of frames they’ll be producing. In order to get the rear light to work, and to have enough clearance between handlebars and front load, they’ll need to seriously consider using smaller wheel sizes for the smaller frames.

I quite like the electric assist -that’s easy to integrate and uses existing technology.

AlanM
AlanM
9 years ago

I’ll fess up to having tossed out the first “snarky” comment and to the fact that I have bashed people’s snarky comments on BR before. So let me try and be a little more well thought out with this comment.

The problem I have with this bike is that if you go to the contests page and read what this was supposedly all it about, they are bikes for the “everyday rider” and “the two-wheeled revolution isn’t going to roll out on niche or specialty bikes.” I don’t know how this bike doesn’t fall into the niche or speciality bike area or how it really falls into the “everyday” rider category. As others have pointed out, it has some fun ideas, but some other ideas that aren’t well thought out. It uses a lot of proprietary pieces, which won’t be inexpensive to produce or replace. It also has some rather impractical pieces, like the “fenders.” Sure, some of this will change with an actual production model, but then is the production bike really going to be this bike that won?

Obviously, this was a design contest and you aren’t going to enter a design contest and go with boring or things that have already been done. But I would have liked to have seen a winner that really could have drawn in more everyday riders and found innovative ways to produce a reliable, obtainable bike for more commuters. Does it have some interesting ideas, absolutely. Does it seem to fit with the idea of the contest as I interpreted it, not really.

Just my two cents.

Slow Joe Crow
Slow Joe Crow
9 years ago

It’s certainly interesting looking but it still falls into a lot of the “designer” bike traps of features that look cool and seem clever but don’t work in practice. The integrated porteur rack and auto shifting hub seem OK as do the integrated lights. On the other hand the brooms don’t look like they will actually keep water from being flung off the wheels onto the rider, the weird rectangular handlebars don’t look comfortable and the brake levers are messy.
Overall I don’t see much here that would outperform a Novara Gotham or Schauff Toscana city bike with a good U-lock, and with a Novara at $1500 out the door with the optional front basket and a Kryptonite, REI would probably get my money since the Di2 shifting and funky components would push this to at least $3000.

Nicholas Clark
Nicholas Clark
9 years ago

26 inch wheels? 700 or at least 650…

Ben
Ben
9 years ago

Realistically it’s probably going to be heavy. Probably expensive. It will be more difficult to source the proprietary parts. The lock will probably be insufficient by itself. Perhaps the alternative to fenders will work as well. There is a chance the lighting is sufficient. All hail the innovation, perfect commuter bike.

buriedundersnow
buriedundersnow
9 years ago

Man, I thought all of the entries were cool in there own way. Got to hand it to all who participated. At least they were designing bikes and not another useless consumer product…….Congrats to the Denny team!

James S
James S
9 years ago

Good design is about balancing out conflicting goals and parameters. In this case, the electric assist will help with the hills, but will add to the cost and the weight of the bike. A lot of us San Francisco bike commuters live above the first floor, so heavy bikes are a real problem. The handlebar lock causes the control interface to be very difficult to change and not very ergonomic. A better solution is to include a U-lock with the bike and have an integrated U-lock carrier built into the rack.

Old Man
Old Man
9 years ago

I get there are a lot of you that don’t get or like this bike. Comments are just comments and not to be taken to seriously. But as an Old man with an Old lady (yes she is older and every bit a LADY) we are excited about this bike. We are out of shape…. hell with a lot of exercise we might get to out of shape but that’s our problem. We both see this bike as a way to get us there and it IS the type of bike that will get a lot of people there. So no I don’t see it as a niche item. I think they will have different variations, like with and without hill assist. The price will make all the difference. Just because we can spend 5k on some bikes doesn’t mean we will.

Champs
Champs
9 years ago

I am probably one of the world’s biggest fans of full-coverage fenders for protection and courtesy, but the broom idea looks good too.

Even brooms aren’t the equal of full coverage, they are probably better at coverage and more polite than some of the other mediocre “solutions” out there. I’d think about one on the front just for toe overlap on steep climbs. They look pretty easy for the “take the fenders off for summer” set too.

ginsu
ginsu
9 years ago

1st thought, if you need a handlebar to be an effective lock, it has to be solid steel! Not the kind of ride quality I’m looking for from a handlebar. Not to mention weight.

Also, as has been mentioned, the brooms are going to make a heck of a noise to be effective. Surprised they didn’t think of that, but it’s obvious the designers were more interested in how a featured ‘looked’ than how it actually worked. And I purposely use the term ‘designer’ because I know this bike has not been engineered. From an engineering standpoint it excels only in what I will kindly refer to as ‘feature exploration’.

Ben
Ben
9 years ago

Old Man, no reason to wait. Any bike on the market can get you and yours back in shape or get you to your destination. Get out there.

Adrian
9 years ago

Given this competition turned out to be “dream bikes for hipsters by hipsters if money and bike theft were not problems”, Denny was a deserving winner for its fresh take on some common problems (e.g. trying to design a U lock into the bike; the brush solution for the front wheel; the removeable battery). However, to be “an everyday bike that removes the barriers to becoming an everyday rider” a utility bike needs to be affordable, simple (stick to essentials), readily modified (e.g. preferred handlebar type) and reduce theft/damage risk. All of the Oregon Manifest bikes failed that challenge. Instead of existing bike enthusiasts simply voting, a price should have been required and the winner should have been the bike that got the most pre-orders – that would have prevented sticker prices of $3,000+. For details of what a genuinely useful utility bike needs and doesn’t need see: betterbybicycle.com/2014/08/designing-better-utility-bike-in.html

PR
PR
9 years ago

Seriously, “designers” need to stop vomiting out these travesties. Every few months there is another one of these portfolio-padders, insulting to both the beauty of the ancient double diamond as well as those of us who respect bikes as performance tools worthy of innovation through _engineering_.

The saving grace of these internet-hype vehicles is that the marketplace (and the sane riders) always win… so none of us will ever see one in the wild, I’ll wager.

TC
TC
9 years ago

This is a commuter bike, casual upright ridder, maybe messenger, maybe senior bike and not ever going to be a flat out exercise, racing, speed is the thing bike. You have to take your pick of what you like. Me, at my older age, still loves the agility and enjoyment of a very light weight, carbon, racing bike with electronically, but human, controlled shifting. Disc brakes are the one thing I want to see lighter and be added but are not necessary. We went to aerodynamic, and this bike takes us back too far for me to ever consider it.

OMG
OMG
9 years ago

Stop being so cynical. Have a look at something that some people have thought through. It looks awesome. Would I buy it (?) – No. Not for the price tag or the purpose. But still – i looks amazing and its well thought through. All those people on here BS’ing about how rubbish it is – I challenge you to design better! Bet you cant!

ronald clement
ronald clement
9 years ago

One thing I would like to see is to be able to raise the handlebars so I don’t have to sit leaning forward so much.
also where can I pre-order?

Shane
Shane
9 years ago

Where is the battery?

Robert David Strong
Robert David Strong
8 years ago

If this bike has a fair price, I will buy it asap! I love every single feature and can’t wait to find a dealer close by. Can anyone please tell me when I can pull my Visa card out and jump on this grenade? This bike is perfect in every way and I wouldn’t change anything. It would be really cool to have a fairly large selection of (Highliter) ….. Neon colors to choose from. What a terrific design! Your pal, Robert David Strong

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