Phil Thorn, the brother of Clem, was the inspiration for the YouBike™.

On the 26th of September 2008 Phil contracted Pneumococcal Meningitis and fell into a coma.  Phil recovered, but the almost fatal attack left him deaf, blind, and paralysed in his lower body.

Phil was transferred to a rehabilitation hospital where he underwent physiotherapy treatment for his legs and feet, he attended the hospital gym daily, however he would spend a lot of time in bed if family, friends, and staff did not take him out in his wheelchair.

While visiting Phil in hospital, Clem thought of  the idea of a bed-mounted, portable fold-away cycling machine that could help Phil.  The first basic ideas were designed on scrap paper and Clem got an engineering friend to build the first prototype which was named the ‘Phil Bike’. When Clem took the bike down to the rehabilitation hospital for Phil to try out, Phil was delighted.

Clem realised that the YouBike™ could help many people and that to be a product for the marketplace it needed a new name and came up with the name of YouBike™ as it is a bike all about ‘you’.

Over the next 4 years, Clem designed and built several versions of the YouBike™. Weltec Connect became involved in 2012 and borrowed the final bike that Clem had built. They put together the YouBike modeled from Clem’s versions and finished it off to be a marketable and stylish design while also ensuring that it was light enough to be portable.