AZUB MINI - folding prototypes experience

Hello everyone. I’m the lucky owner of one of these (the yellow one) and my wife’s is the pink one. I’ll try to answer some of the questions, that were asked. For a very in-depth discussion of the bike, you can read here. I’ve only got 1500 – 2000km on the bike so far, but I am VERY happy with it. To answer the questions about fold or separation — I haven’t had to take it apart yet since we transported them only once so far, and they fit in our van with the seats removed. I’m in the middle of building another bike, so my plans to take the mini apart and see how small I can make it are on the back burner, as we say. As regards the stiffness of the frame, it is *impossible* for me to detect that this is a folding or separable bike. I don’t even remember that it is a folder. When riding, it is completely solid, with not a single squeak or groan. I have ridden folding bikes before and the noises from the hinge made it impossible for me to own one. I’m happy to report this frame and hinge seems to avoid that problem.

I will also say that this is the best handling recumbent I’ve ever ridden. It’s super solid at high speed and very stable at low speeds as well. Full suspension is very addictive and makes it easy to spend 12, 14, 15 hours per day riding, so you can cover a lot of ground even if you are going slowly and stopping to do whatever you want along the way.

The weight will depend on your setup, of course. As configured, these weigh 47-48 pounds (approx 21,7 kg). This only bothers me when I have to lift the bike. Riding it, I don’t notice much, although of course one would on long climbs. We tend to pack pretty light, so I suspect my fully-loaded weight is pretty comparable to other fully-loaded cyclists who start with a 12-14 kg bike. However, with the Rohloff setup, we have a gear-inch range of 16-86 gear inches, similar to what we have on our touring trikes. That’s using a 15-tooth sprocket and the 45 tooth chainring on front. On a hilly tour, I might bring a slightly larger sprocket as a spare, or just wait for my legs to get stronger. I can ride the mini at <5 km/h so going slow is no problem. I can spin the bike up to about 45km/hr but when I am touring, any time I’m going 30 km/hr or more, I’m going to coast, because I’m not in a hurry.

If I were touring only better, paved roads, I might choose another bike from the collection to shave weight, but if I were to travel anywhere with a mix of pavement, gravel, let alone trail, or travel to further from civilization, there is only one bike I would consider: the Mini.