Air-filled bicycle seats

Clever innovation or just hot air? A new design of pneumatic bicycle seat aims to solve the problem of numbness and discomfort once and for all.

A lot of rubbish is talked about bicycle seats and it’s usually because someone is trying to pedal a revolutionary new design. Although there’s much to be said for choosing a design that suits your own riding style, being comfortable on a bike has much to do with technique. The reason it’s unusual to hear an experienced cyclist complain about the comfort of their bicycle seat might be that they are using a clever design well-suited to their own posterior or it might be that they’ve become adept at shifting their weight every so often to prevent discomfort.

It’s hard to know whether a new design of inflatable bicycle seat is a novelty item that will appeal to novice cyclists or something with a real practical benefit, but it seems the public will decide. The Kuhl Ride bicycle seat currently appears on crowd-funding website Kickstarter and will go into mass production if it receives enough support.
According to its designer, the Kuhl Ride’s air bladder is designed to function with the perforated seat cover as it sets up a venturi-effect airflow while the bike is in motion. The thickness of the bladder sidewalls offers precisely amount of for support and flex for whatever pressure is chosen by the rider via a thumb-actuated pump, which allows the rider to increase or decrease the seat’s firmness and flex, on the fly, without taking his eyes off the road. The Kuhl Ride is designed in three configurations: “The Racer”, “The Cruiser” and “The Weekender”. The price is $250.