New Peloton patent shows revamped Tread+ could be on the way

A new Peloton patent application hints at the possibility of a newly revised Peloton Tread+ arriving in the near future.

Back in May 2021, Peloton was forced to voluntarily recall its $4,295 connected treadmill after mechanical problems resulted in the death of a child and numerous injuries in other users. The company has been hoping to resolve that problem ever since with a fresh overhaul of the design, and receive full approval from US Consumer Product Safety Commission to relaunch the product. The crux of the risk factors stemmed mostly from the back of the treadmill, where children and animals risked getting pulled up under the belt when in operation.

The new patent follows up another patent application last year, spotted by Bob Treemore on Twitter. The new design features a double-guard system with both a small rigid guard and a larger flexible one under the belt that could prevent objects getting pulled under, or small fingers getting stuck in any gaps under the belt. Here’s how the patent application describes it:

Thus, the flexible guard may be configured to prevent objects from moving under the treadmill, without providing a pinch point, or other small gap between the guard and the surface or belt, in which a user’s body part could become trapped. The inner wall or rigid guard may form a small gap, which could be a possible pinch point, but the rigid guard is placed or positioned under the treadmill at the back of the channel, and thus at a position that is generally inaccessible or unreachable to a user. Therefore, the guard assembly can facilitate the blocking or prevention of objects moving under the treadmill (via the moving surface or belt), without exposing small gaps between components to users of the treadmill, among other benefits.

The patent also notes that the rear guard could trigger a mechanical function to turn off or slow down the treadmill in certain conditions.

Of course, this application doesn’t mean that the CPSC has approved this design or reviewed it, so Tread fans could still have to wait a bit longer before seeing a revised model available.

Last October, Peloton announced that the company was extending the deadline to return the Tread+ for a full refund until November 2023.