Look, there by the side of the road -- it's a bike -- no, it's a scooter. No, not exactly. It's Ahn Sang-Gyeun's award-winning "Freewill" -- a bicycle-scooter hybrid that transforms itself from one people-powered vehicle to another with a simple 90-degree rotation of the frame.
Actually, the Freewill hasn't hit the streets yet, but if all goes according to plans, it could move from prototype to production line as early as year's end, according to Ahn, a graduate student in industrial design at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Ahn's design was the grand-prize winner in the Sixth International Bicycle Design Competition, sponsored by the Department of Industrial Technology, Ministry of Economic Affairs of the Republic of China, and organized by the Taiwan Bicycle Industry R&D Center.
Endorsed by the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design, the competition received 1,131 entries from 58 countries. Earlier this year, Ahn learned that his design was among the top 24 designs being considered for the grand prize. Designers who advanced to that level of the competition received an invitation to the April 11 awards ceremony -- along with roundtrip airfare to Taiwan and hotel accommodations -- and were informed that winners would be announced at the ceremony.
"I was very excited to learn I had won grand prize," said Ahn, who came to the United States to study from Seoul, South Korea. "My wife was very happy, too," he said, explaining that she was the one who had urged him to develop a design for the competition.
Ahn said he rides a bike to class, but had never designed one before. As a designer, "I am interested in cultural differences -- using the same object for different purposes. In my country, the bicycle is used mainly for transportation; here, it is used for exercise." He said he got the idea for a "convertible" after noticing the proliferation of foot-powered scooters on campus sidewalks and streets the past couple of years. As a cash-strapped graduate student, "I thought, how about designing just one model, so people could buy one instead of two? It's too expensive to have both. So, I thought, why not?"
The one-speed hybrid features a front T-bar construction, similar to most scooters. When the base is flipped to function as a scooter platform, the pedals and seat retract, and a rear wheel flips into place.
Ahn would like to have his own Freewill someday, but figures that could take a while. If his design goes into production, the scooter-bike will be marketed first in Southeast Asian markets, he said. If successful there, it could be manufactured in the United States sometime down the road.
In the meantime, Ahn converted his winning design into an even more practical vehicle. "I took the $15,000 prize money I earned in the competition and bought a car," he said. Following graduation in August, he'll use it to transport himself and his wife to Alabama, where he has accepted an appointment on the industrial design faculty at Auburn University.
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