For somebody who’s self-professed not to be an engineer by profession, with a background in design and technology, Bailey’s personal interest in cars and vehicles paired with an environmental consciousness caused a rethinking of our transport system, where currently many people in single-occupancy vehicles opt to drive routes instead of using public transport, and what the solution might be.

“There are three reasons why people don’t ride bicycles,” Bailey explained, citing research that the Department for Transport has conducted in this area, which are safety, perceived, or real; weather issues; and the distance to cover.

Bailey began thinking about an alternative in his twenties, but as he illustrated throughout our conversation, “micro vehicles” as he termed it, are not brand-new ideas – and turning an idea into a proof-of-concept and then a production-ready vehicle is where a lot of ideas fall flat.

“If you search the Internet you’ll find lots of beautiful renderings which are impractical to manufacture or impractical to use, but look fantastic,” shared Bailey. “We were very keen from the outset that it should be practical to use and feasible to manufacture at an affordable price.”

The ‘we’ refers to Bailey and his Design Engineer, Geoff Bird, with whom he credited with the engineering expertise, and a quintessential part of the process: “Geoff has done a lot of work in making the vehicle stable.”

Introducing the cyclev

Acknowledging that a lot of micro vehicles never get off the ground for reasons related to the design, the cost, or a combination, the big question for Bailey was where to begin. He dedicated several years to working in the light vehicle sector.

“I started researching around the options for light vehicles,” he said. “A bicycle is a simple vehicle, but it’s restricted by weather protection and safety and range … I thought there must be something in the middle that can be an alternative to bridge the gap between a two wheeler and a car.”

WeatherVelo’s cyclev was born – a four-wheeler vehicle that enables the user to pedal along. There’s also an electric motor, enabling the user to ride it as an electric vehicle (EV) without pedalling if they so choose. Purchasing a prototype three-wheeler vehicle and the rights to it from Robert Ladja, a Slovakian inventor, provided Bailey and Bird with a foundation on which to build out the cyclev.

Previous experience meant Bailey avoided the e-bike category, where e-bikes are legally limited to 15.5mph – by increasing the design speed and electric power brought into a vehicle category, the cyclev is brought into the category of a light motorcycle and able to achieve speeds of 28mph and compete with urban traffic.

“That [regulation] was from the outset,” Bailey explained. “Here’s a funny anecdote: it’s legally a three-wheeled vehicle, but it has four wheels … We had to add a fourth wheel for stability but rather than putting it out to full width, like a car, we’ve kept the wheels together.”

Thanks to this decision, the vehicle has stability, but it also yields other advantages, like reducing the weight, cost, and complexity compared with a conventional four-wheeler, because it doesn’t require a differential. A differential is a system that allows the wheels to turn at different speeds, especially important for when a car is going around corners.

Other notable features of the cyclev that show how the team had to adapt to problems that arose during the design, include an anti-roll device and polyurethane road springs in the front suspension to reduce roll that happens in cornering. In the rear of the vehicle is an automotive coil-over unit for rider comfort.

Design challenges

There were four major technical issues Bailey identified that came along with designing the cyclev as a light vehicle, namely the ride quality; sourcing suitable parts; the tyres; and the bodywork material.

“We hoped to use a lot of parts from off the shelf, so we could bring in ready-made parts and keep the costs down,” Bailey added, “what we found was that, because this vehicle is more than a bicycle but less than a car, the bicycle parts weren’t robust enough and the car parts were far too heavy. Geoff designed a lot of parts from scratch, but always with the thought process of how to do so economically.”

In short, the parts have been designed to be cost-effective, to keep the costs of tooling and production down, and crucially, when WeatherVelo decides to scale up production in the near future, they aren’t prohibited from doing so by expense.

On the topic of bodywork material, and indeed an example of how sustainable practices aren’t inherently ingrained in the vehicle production process, the bodywork material of lightweight and low-volume vehicles today commonly uses composites of fibreglass or carbon fibre – but these aren’t environmentally friendly. WeatherVelo tested natural fibres to replace these but settled on using a resin made up of recycled water bottles.

As Bailey put it: “Environmental awareness means we need to be conscious of what we’re doing. Cars are made with steel press bodies, so they’re easily recycled, but to make a steel press is enormously expensive … you can’t do that as a startup and you have to find other solutions.”

In a design process and philosophy document, bylined by Bird, the text read: “Too often, startups in the sector try to combine cutting-edge manufacturing technologies with a novel vehicle form and end up with a product that is no lighter but prohibitively expensive to develop, manufacture, and tool. This presents a significant risk to investors.”

Looking to the future

Currently, WeatherVelo is finishing the engineering prototype, which is expected to undergo roadworthiness inspection in early spring this year – with plans to make parts for two pre-production prototypes later in 2025.

The highlights for Bailey have been seeing the idea come to life in CAD (Computer Aided Design); receiving manufactured parts; and testing the vehicle on a disused runway.

“There are a huge number of people who could potentially use a vehicle like this … second-car households and people who use their cars for these journeys [that] it could replace,” said Bailey, stressing his personal belief in cyclev and the future of light vehicles. I personally hope to see a cyclev out on the road sometime soon.

This article originally appeared in the January/February 2025 issue of Startups Magazine. Click here to subscribe