Friday, July 26, 2013

Peugeot AE21

A mention recently on Bicycle design of the AE2 electric city bike, which will be launched later this year.  
There are more photographs on the Peugeot design Lab web site and some of my sketches.





In the first design I had the bag in the frame but it wasn't really a practical solution.


Same concept but with the bag in the U of the frame.


An idea for a very simple tubular frame incorporating a lock and pump as well as the bag.
The first sketch where I created a container for the bag. The style is also much more sculptural.


Wednesday, July 3, 2013

100 editions of the Tour de France, 1914


1914 Peugeot ridden by Philippe Thys BEL
Thys wins his second of three Tours and again Peugeot are triumphant, with a totally dominant display which saw them take the top three places overall plus 5th, 6th, 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th.
The stage from Le Harve to Cherbourg passes through Pont-Audemer, a familiar town to all Lavallois-Honfleur riders
It's hardly surprising that they were dominant, with a team consisting of 4 riders who had won, or would win, the Tour and another 4 podium finishers. But that's not the full story since Peugeot were up against a formidable field with the peloton containing 11 riders who would finish the careers having won the Tour.

This was the last Tour before the Great War and in fact the same day the riders set out from Saint Cloud on the outskirts of Paris, Serbian secret agent Gavrilo Princip assassinated Austro-Hungary's Archduke Ferdinand. The Tour was to finish exactly a week before the Nazis declared war on France and invaded Belgium. Many of the Tour riders would be lost in the war.

Peugeot AE21

After a lot of hard work, the production version of the Peugeot eDL122 bike is final out. When the first, non electric, version was released at the Geneva motor show we hoped it would make it to production but there was still a lot to learn about the production process and the making of a bicycle without just using tubes. The DL122 was launched alongside the new 208 and was designed with the same philosophy of compactness, agility and practicality.
A year or so on and Marc BeaugĂ© takes the first preproduction bike on a tour of some of europes best cities.