Originally Posted by
smallboats
The seat post design is interesting and a clever approach to improving the ability to make a compactly folded bike. Being a standard 28.6mm round seat post allows a huge number of other seat posts to be used, including suspension posts.
Gonna disagree with you on the seat post design, that's a concession to a design feature that led to inadequate reach... there was a post on this exact concern not long ago.
The photos reveal a very prettily put together bike that has other design features that may have been fun to draw and conceive but that won't work in the real world. One photo shows the drive chain nearly right on top of a frame tube, that's gonna slap slap slap every bump. And those helical hinges (hard to drop that "cool" design decision when the name is "Helix") are dirt magnets. Imagine the fold after a wet ride and the sound that the grit is going to make as the hinges rotate together. Sure hope there's a way to open them up to clean/grease (and I wonder about the tolerances necessary to keep them tight after a couple hundred folds with sand in them. Last nitpick from a quick look is the circlip at the stem hinge, another engineering decision that will work, but there's better ways to finish off that shaft and hold it in place.
As a designer, it's easy to critique other's work, and there's no doubt a massive effort in that bicycle. But, and I'll reiterate it's just looking at the photos, the bicycle reeks of a lack of considered critique and some of its significant and foundational design features (helical fold) are not utile for the way that commuters/etc will use their bikes.