Itera plastic bicycle
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The Itera Plastic Bicycle was an attempt in the early 1980’s in Sweden to reform and modernize the conventional bicycle design and production technology. Its basic idea was to replace metal by plastic fiber composite materials and take advantage of the modern production technology, based on automatized injection moulding technique. The project, however, was terminated 3 years after its introduction and was considered as a commercial failure.
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[edit] Composite Material
[edit] The New Bicycle Boom
The first wave of a large-scale bicycle interest, aka “bicycle craze”, started in 1885 with the introduction of the Rover Safety Bicycle and it lasted for some ten years. It paved the way for automobiles later on as it created a demand for faster means of transportation. It was the basis of the mass production technology of automobiles in the early 20th century. The bicycles eventually became more of a play thing in many industrialized countries. Sweden, however, was different. The bicycle remained as a major means of transportation in going to work and to school, even after World War II. However, bicycle sales were slowly decreasing.
1973-1974, there was the oil crisis. The rapidly increasing petrol prices gave birth to the second unprecedented bicycle boom.
[edit] History
In December 1977, the Volvo company in Gothenburg wanted to produce minicars and they hired people to investigate all possible conditions and designs.
In January 1978, a new design concept was proposed: the use plastic composite materials as an alternative in many parts of the car. One main advantage is the substantially lowered production costs. Meanwhile, a number of different products were considered to be made with this new material, and the bicycle was one of them.
In October 1978, a grant of SEK 54’000 was obtained from the Swedish National Board for Technical Development to finance the production of a prototype of the new bicycle.
In February 1980, a rideable all-plastic bicycle was demonstrated to the Board of the state-owned bank and a loan of SEK 6 million was granted.
In March 1980, a new company, the Itera Development Center AB was born. Its goal was to design, produce, and market composite material bicycles.
In September 1981, the first Itera bicycles were shown to bicycle retailers and to representatives of the press. Final preparations for starting the large-scale production were made and a nationwide advertising campaign was scheduled for Spring of 1982. The bikes were delivered in a cardboard box unassembled to save space in shipping. However, it should not be a problem as they were designed to be able to assemble with minimum number of tools provided in the box.
In Autumn 1981, a customer survey was conducted and well over 100’000 Swedes indicated that they were interested in this new product. As a result, the plastic bicycles were scheduled to launch in early Spring as that’s when bicycle sales were usually the most intense.
In February 1982, a series production started at Wilhelmina with massive press coverage and its expectations were high. However, after its launches, sales were going slowly and the news media soon lost interest. Moreover, the fact that not every box contained every part needed to assemble a complete bicycle frustrated many customers.
The following year was even worse, boxes of bicycles piled up in shops. Amongst these were quite a few returns, mostly with broken plastic. Where metal parts bend, the plastic parts would break. Getting replacements was not so simple as the parts were incompatible with regular bike standards. For instance, a broken plastic pedal would render the entire bike broken.
Various attempts were made to save the project, but they were all unsuccessful.
In 1983, 1000 Itera bicycles were purchased by the organizers of the national five-day orienteering contest. They were rented to participants who were also invited to buy them after the contest. All of the bicycles were sold on the spot. Even though it showed there was a market for the plastic bicycles, it was too late. Similar sales campaigns, such as lower prices, had been tried previously but they still failed.
Production was finally ended in 1985.
[edit] References
Jan Hult. The Itera Plastic Bicycle. Social Studies of Science, Vol. 22, No. 2, Symposium on 'Failed Innovations' (May, 1992), pp. 373-385
