Saw this recently and am wondering what it is........

Suspension.

Yeah, Lauf suspension forks; not super common, but they have been around for a decade or so. Icelandic company.

Main selling point of them, is that they're the lightest suspension fork you can get for a gravel bike...some even put them on non-Lauf bikes. The con is that you don't have a lockout like a telescopic fork. Considering I do a bunch of climbing, with frequent outta-the-saddle efforts, I went with a rigid fork on my Lauf gravel bike.

What you have there is a wheel. And a tire. And spokes. A hub is there too. A brake rotor and caliper are also present.
Those are all smashed together and mounted to a fork.

Lauf suspension fork.

Apparently it works ok in spite of looking silly, so don’t lauf at it.

Tis better to have laufed and lost than never to have laufed at all.

I was actually thinking of getting one of these. Then I rented a Lauf bike for 24 hours. It really made me appreciate what I already have.

Yeah, and that's what makes the picture so interesting; it's curious to see a big, honkin', urban e-bike tire on there, because that suggests weight is not the driving issue...

Interesting. So those pieces are designed to flex in the vertical plane but not the horizontal plane. Clever.

Pretty much. Supposedly they really cut down on chatter/vibration really well and have good small-bump compliance. Kinda what I'd expect a spring fork to do well at. Some people use them in racing, as I guess there are some efficiency gains to be had on certain courses. Maybe it's my MTB/moto background, but I personally rather have a telescopic fork with dampening and adjustable compression/lockout.

My guess is that the fork just happens to be on that bike and there may not be any driving issue behind it. Or the big, honkin' commuter tires are overinflated, and the suspension fork is an attempt to dial some compliance back into the ride. I'm running 2.2" XC race tires on my rigid Lauf and can say that I don't really need any more compliance with this set up...and I can say these tires are verified to have less rolling resistance than commuter tires. Also really hard to puncture these outside of an MTBing scenario.

The leaf (lauf) spring design is great, but if they figured out dampening, it would really improve things.

I'd contend that weight is a driving issue while cornering...😁

I have a friend that has one of those for his gravel bike, said it works great in most scenarios, but for super heavy rocky stuff, he would rather have a fork with a more travel. All in all he is quite happy with it.

Care to elaborate?

I posted a review in this sub-forum on in 2018. It looks like I removed vital parts before terminating my account.

Briefly, I rented their bike for 24 hours and took it to my usual place. I (still) ride a custom steel bike with a 1st gen Enve CX rigid fork. At the time, I used Clement tires. I really liked the idea of the fork, so this wasn't simply expectation bias. The fork pogoed quite a bit, but the carbon frame, compared to my steel frame, was very harsh to the point that it beat me up so much on the downhill, I decided to take a paved road back to the starting point rather than climb out. Others suggested the problem was the (Maxis something) tires were over-inflated, so I hadn't done a fair comparison. (I wasn't really out to do a highly controlled experiment; putting the Lauf fork on my bike with my tires, etc, would have been much more revelatory.) But I was surprised not to like the fork, and the frame came as a complete shock. (I was neutral about the frame.) I probably deleted my original commentary because it turned out to be unintentionally controversial, and I didn't want to attract more attention.