Specialized and Google have teamed up to create a completion in which bikes were turned into some other useful product. The winning entry was a bike that could be ridden to a water source and filled with dirty water. This water would be filtered during the bike trip back using excess power from the pedals. More water could be filtered by disengaging a clutch and pedaling the bike while stationary. The YouTube video entry for this is shown below.
I feel that this is one of the best products I saw in the competition. There were a few other products such as the one submitted by MIT that I thought were cool. The MIT project linked many bikes together and actually produced enough power to run simulations on their supercomputer. While this is a cool idea I do not feel that there is any real market for a product like this. The water filtration bike however has a huge market. People in developing countries could use a product like this for transportation as well as water filtration. It will simplify the trip to the water source while cleaning out harmful bacteria from their drinking water. This product will have to be revised to become very inexpensive and easy to operate to be successful. The water filter would have to be very heavy duty because the water sources in developing counties are extremely dirty and can carry large amounts of sediment. There should be a way to open the storage tank to remove sediment on a regular basis. This idea could work if these challenges are met and the product can be offered at a price that is acceptable to the people in these villages.
