Insane British one-wheeler
Madcap British inventor John Dingley has built the world’s most powerful electric one-wheel motorcycle. Dubbed the Mega Hub Motor Electric Unicycle, the bonkers bike uses a brushless motor mounted directly in the wheel’s hub, with no chain or belts needed.
The machine uses a 4bhp motor which is controlled by a speed controller previously seen on a speedboat. It’s a monocoque construction with an ally top tube which acts as both a seat for the rider and a home for the battery pack, which is made up of 20 LiPO cells. The torpedo-like tube is ended with a jet intake, while the unicycle’s self-balancing electronic gear has been squeezed into a Ural motorcycle headlamp casing from the 50s. Dingley, who, by day, is a senior anaesthetist at Morriston Hospital in Swansea, and has previously built an electric luge, has given the bike a steering system with hinged lower mounts to the wheel so when you turn the bars the wheel ‘leans’ over putting it on the curved part of the contact patch and enabling it to turn.