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Almost every new company wades through dark days when its captains are required to dive into the deep end of the start-up pool. But this is ridiculous.
It's almost 10 p.m. and raining as Judah Schiller leaps into chilly, chest-deep waters near a seaplane dock on San Francisco Bay. Ultimate founder dedication.
This was a few weeks ago, when Schiller was busy working out the gearing kinks on his Schiller X1, a $6,495 bike-on-pontoons that goes on sale Friday via the company's website. The bike needed a tow, and Schiller obliged.
"We're aiming to make nothing but the best water bike ever invented, and that means refining things until they're perfect," says Schiller, a former advertising executive and avid cyclist who felt that his ilk needed access to the two-thirds of the planet that is covered by water.
A few years ago, he contacted an engineer in Italy who fabricated a rudimentary pontoon-based platform onto which he affixed a standard Bianchi bicycle. Schiller made waves with his new toy — YouTube features videos of him pedaling across San Francisco Bay and New York's Hudson River — but wasn't satisfied.
"I felt that if you could make a water bicycle that was technologically advanced as well as easy to use and store, I might have something," he says.
Schiller contacted his now co-founder and chief technology officer, engineer Marcus Hays, who had worked with former Chrysler chairman Lee Iacocca on electric-powered vehicles. The two set about refining every aspect of the Italian-built prototype in their respective Bay Area homes in Mill Valley and Petaluma.
The original water bike's steel frame was replaced by one in custom-made carbon fiber (an option on the X1; the standard frame will be in aircraft-grade aluminum). A steel chain was swapped for twin carbon belt. Energy from the pedals is transferred almost directly to the twin propellers, which are controlled by the handle bars, thereby eliminating the need for a drag-inducing rudder.
Best of all, there's no learning curve. "If you can ride a bike, you can ride the Schiller X1 anywhere there's water," says Schiller, adding that the bike can reach 8 knots or more depending on its rider. "When you're done, you can deflate the pontoons and pack it all into a bag that fits in an apartment closet."
Hopping on Schiller's working prototype in the rain recently, it's clear the bike's wide stance will instill confidence in all but the roughest seas. There's a sense of floating on air, while at the same time being almost shockingly at one with the water.
"I had the X1 out at the beach locally, about a mile offshore, and ended up biking with dolphins," Schiller says, shaking his head, as if realizing the absurdity of the phrase itself. "There are a lot of experiences to be had on a water bike. Not to mention a great workout."
Schiller isn't far from the first to think about biking across bodies of water, and the market today is peppered with companies with names such as Hydrobike and Sea Cycle, most of which cost far less than the X1.
But it's also clear which market Schiller is gunning for, namely, the high-end cycling crowd that's willing to spend from $5,000 to $15,000 on two-wheeled works of art. Though he's no fool; Schiller is already in early talks with a range of hotels about supplying them with scaled-back X1s.
"When people go on vacation, they want to get out on the water, and they want to work out, and you can do both with our product," he says, noting that the appeal for hotels is that the X1 costs far less than noisy and potentially accident-inducing motorized watercraft. "We definitely think there's a market out there for a quiet and elegant way to get around on water, which is what most of this planet is anyway."
Site: USAtoday
