itsjustame - great response.

I am happy with my Strida, prefer it to my Brompton actually and will sell the latter probably soon.

The Strida is also a great bike that suffers in the same way that you say - judgement by standpoint of other bikes. Judged for what it is and the function it provides - it is a great "bike" - or perhaps more properly, "human amplifier" as its inventor Mark Strida calls it. Also to your point - the distributor, areaware, gives great service. Diana there is very responsive. She has sent me two separate parts gratis.

Actually biking in general (not just folding biking) suffers the problem you cite - "priority to familiarity over function". People don't understand how I bike to work. That's because they think of biking as something that you only do wearing spandex, a helmet, going fast and in traffic with cars, in warm weather only. If you just relax your assumptions, you can accomplish anything you want to.