I think people are giving this guy a lot of credit for having thought this thing through beyond coming up with a cool little model that doesn't even have moving parts to prove concept and some nifty renderings. Nothing about this smacks of a serious proposal by someone knowledgeable about bicycling..

The tire in this thing is actually doubling as the transmission, how can it be flexible enough to flex (which would definitely change its length), but rigid enough to transmit with any efficiency? Is that a pneumatic tube or a solid belt of some kind? He's certainly not giving any indication in the video or on his website that he's given any of this any thought.

Here's some fun facts about the timing here--he won a "creative award" with this concept at the IBDC in 2009 (they appear to give a lot of those--I believe it was 13 that year alone), the video was made in 2020, so in 11 years, he couldn't come up with a model with moving parts? Two years after the video, the article appears. So basically, in 13 years, he hasn't taken this concept any closer to actual implementation. Why would we assume he's done anything to address whether this is practical?