I like taking the occasional bike ride out into the country to relax and unwind from a long, hard week at work. However, I’ve had to forego impromptu bike trips and postpone because I found that the tires were out of air and that my pump or spare tires were nowhere to be found.
But then, came the PumpTire.
The PumpTire is a revolutionary design by Benjamin Krempel that’s currently up for funding on Kickstarter. The tire actually employs a mechanism that pumps your bike tires as you pedal and move along, ensuring that you will never have a flat tire or ever have to manually pump some air into your tires – if all goes well, that is.
The PumpTire is fitted with a valve and a special inner tube that work hand-in-hand to determine if your tires are full or if they could still use a pump or two of air. As you can see from the video clip, Krempel already has a working prototype of the PumpTire, and just needs funds to ramp up production.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMmZnzG9QqIKrempel has listed the goal for his project as $250,000 (USD). The project has managed to raise around $9,000 as of now, so it seems that the group is still a long way off from reaching their goal. If you want to help out, you can make a pledge on PumpTire’s Kickstarter page. A $75 pledge will get you a pair of PumpTires, along with innertubes and pressure control valves, assuming the project reaches its funding goal.
