Hasta La Ideas

When last we checked in with chemical giant BASF, they’d developed injection-molded plastic automotive rims, looking firmly towards the future. Now the materials company is looking back to the past, and asking an interesting question: What would a certain primitive product design have looked like, had its inventor had access to modern-day materials? BASF’s resultant “Concept 1865 – Rethinking Materials” project seeks to answer that by looking at a vehicle that predates the automobile, and even the modern-day bicycle: the Penny Farthing.

As for the project’s title, 1865 was the year BASF was founded, and the velocipede would go into mass production just two years later.

As a tribute to this era of enthusiasm for technology and invention, BASF and the DING3000 design studio have developed a velocipede with today’s state-of-the-art technology—including 24 high-performance plastics, specialty foams, epoxy resin and polyurethane materials from BASF.

And this e-velocipede of the 21st century runs! Concept 1865, a ready-to-ride prototype with an electric drive, is made almost entirely of modern plastics from BASF. Only its brakes, axles, and motor are still made of metal. Everything else is lightweight construction.

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