Evolve Trikes … interesting concept, but they are sure having problems getting into production and to market. Years and years seem to be passing by and still they are waiting for things to come together. It just doesn’t seem to be happening. Yep, they seem to be having trouble evolving to market.
Since it’s inception they have made some changes in its design. The main boast is that it folds faster and smaller than any other trike.
When I look at the design construction of trikes I am always concerned about how ell they are made and whether or not they are likely to fail. Mind you I am not an engineer, but I do have well over 50 years experience at welding and fabricating. In welding my “specialty” was repair welding. That means I worked on a whole lot of things that failed and required repair. In making the repair it was usually easy and obvious to see why the item failed. And in repairing it I always made it much stronger so that it didn’t fail again. Looking at many trikes I see areas of concern in many of them. They just look weak and apt to fail. Many folding trikes concern me for this reason. This one not only is no exception, but it is even more of a concern as it just looks weak. Any trike can have a failure, but some seem to have far more than others. Again, looking at the way they are constructed I can see why. A simple basic rule is that the more complex something is the more likely it will have issues over something with less complexity.
HERE is an article about this trike. And HERE is BROL’s article.
Here it is disassembled and folded up into a suitcase. The video below shows how it is done.
I don’t know what the weight limit is for the Evolve trike, but I think that it would be best for those who weigh very little. A heavy rider would stress those areas which are already suspect of failure.
I personally don’t think I would buy one of these trikes as it just has the appearance that problems would develop due to failure in one or more parts of the frame.
The folding hinge is quite often a concern and this one is no exception. When I look at something like this the thought that comes to mind is “designed to fail” due to being underbuilt. Mind you, this is far from the only tadpole trike which in my opinion looks underbuilt.
Another factor is wear and sloppiness developing in these areas. Things get loose and movement takes place where there should be no movement.
I know that the Evolve people are not going to like what I have said here and perhaps some of you may not either. I have to say what I think about these things. I hope I am wrong and this trike would hold up well. But my gut feeling is otherwise. I like the concept. I am just concerned about the quality of the build. Manufacturers underbuilding products brought a lot of repair work my way over the years. I would not want a trike that requires repair and reinforcing it to make it stronger. That would be my concern here. This may be okay for someone who rides very little and needs a small folding trike, but I could not recommend it for anyone who does serious riding. I don’t care how good of a warranty it may come with and how good the company may be in taking care of customers … when you are many miles from home and have a major failure leaving you stranded it is not fun. Nope, I will stick with my non folding Catrike which I am confident in … that it won’t fail me. I like to …
KEEP ON TRIKN’
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