Wang Xi, a senior student at Beijing Technology and Business University, has made an electric bicycle that requires the cyclist to lie down while riding. It’s a design that aims to increase the bicycle’s speed.

    The bicycle, which is two meters in length and slightly more than 10 centimeters in height from the ground, is equipped with all necessary parts, including voltmeter, startup switch, brakes and speedometer. Its bodywork is made of aluminium alloy and the seat is made of foam plastic.

    The cyclist has to be in a reclining position in order to ride this bicycle, and a device supports his or her head so that the road can be seen. The bicycle is equiped with a one-meter-high notice and lights to warn drivers.

    Since he was a child, Wang has always liked inventing things. After entering college, he got the idea to refit his bicycle so that it would go much faster. He started to create his own electric bicycle in the Spring Festival holiday. He thought of ways to reduce wind resistance and energy consumption, and he bought light-weight aluminium alloy from a market selling construction materials and cut them into different sizes, then did all the drilling and splicing work by himself. The tyres are the same as those of racing cars and the motor was custom-made by a manufacturer in Zhejiang Province.

    Wang’s bicycle uses a high-energy battery and can reach 40 miles an hour. Experts at the University of Science and Technology Beijing and Beijing Institute of Technolgy spoke highly of the energy-saving features of Wang’s invention. But they thought there was still some way to go before it could be manufactured for the masses, and cited such required measures as protection against bad weather.

    (Zhao Jie)