Best bicycle locks can be opened as well and leave you in a fix. A trio of Chilean engineers however claim that they have come up with means of thwarting any determined thieves from stealing your bike and have claimed that their bike is the world’s first ‘unstealable bike’.
The design is known as Yerka and at first glance looks like an average bike, however, the bottom tube of the frame can be split into two parts thus allowing the user to wrap the bike around a pole. As per the creators, the frame can be dismantled and reconnected to create a lock in mere 10 seconds.
Once the bike’s seat tube forms the aforesaid lock, the only way to steal a bike is by cutting through it thus destroying it in the process. The Yerka has been created by Cristóbal Cabello, 22, Andrés Roi Eggers, 23 and Juan José Monsalve, 24 who dropped out of university for marketing their idea.
The design was first announced back in November, however, last week the team said that they had put in their first order for the production of 300 Yerkas. An investment of $100,000 from a state enterprise sure did help with the project, the majority of the funds were raised by making use of crowdfunding site Indiegogo.
Juan José Monsalve said, “The three of us have always been bike enthusiasts since kids, we love to use them as transportation or as a simple way to have fun. Sadly, Andrés had two of his bikes stolen in a short period of time. A few years ago we took an engineering design class at Adolfo Ibáñez University here in Chile and were asked to solve a problem to an actual commute. Using Andrés’ experience as a starting point we started to throw ideas to the table trying to solve this problem, and finally came up with something very similar to what we have today.”
The designers are currently working on an app that will allow users to open the bike using their smartphones.
