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The solar-powered bike-car thingy we've all been waiting for

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American


Okay, sure -- you could buy a Smart car, and it costs $13,000 just to drive it home, plus no matter how cute it is it's still burning gas and if you want to go to a gig with your guitar and your girlfriend, one of them is going to be uncomfortable. Or you could buy a Volt or a Leaf or, I don't know, an OrganoEcoloSocioEconoGreenoPod, and it's designed in Delft and assembled in Korea and by the time you've shipped it to your city you might just as well as spent your time engaging in a little relaxing mountaintop removal coal mining. Plus -- no matter how eco friendly it is, it's still just another stinkin' car.

Or you could do this. You want to see my next vehicle? I'm going to get a TruckIt, a tiny little recumbent-bicycle deal with an electric motor -- it's called a velomobile, if you want to know. It costs $5,500, recharges its battery with its own rooftop solar panels, can legally take you on the road,

on the sidewalk,* and on greenway trails, and has a 30-mile-per-charge range. Then you can either rely on those solar panels or you can take the little battery out and plug it in. And though it's designed to carry me and up to 800 pounds of payload (guitar, amp, and groupie?), I can retrofit a little jumpseat so I can just haul around the groupie if I need to. You can read all about it in this story by the News & Observer of Raleigh.


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And hokey smokes, it's made right here in the U.S.A., by Organic Transit, in a renovated furniture warehouse in downtown Durham, NC.

The thing -- and the Elf, its more carlike little sister -- is limited to 20 mph on pure electricity (to remain classified as a bicycle), but it can take you up and down hills with or without your pedaling. Every New Urbanist, transit focused downtown renovation should all but give these things away for free. If you live and work in a walkable downtown that lacks -- as so many do -- a grocery store, instead of needing a second car, all you've done is given purpose to your workout. "Going out for a ride, dear -- got that grocery list?"

So let's count the wins: it's solar powered, saving fuel and emissions; it's basically an enclosed bicycle, which means you're burning calories rather than oil plus enjoying your life while you're inside it; it's tiny, though you sit at about the same level as car drivers; it's street legal -- but also sidewalk(ish) and trail legal; it's built in a startup company helping its town by employing people in a rebuilding downtown.It doesn't throw candy to children as it drives, but I suppose you can do that.

The whole thing is just warming up, currently raising funds with the obligatory Kickstarter campaign for the first vehicles and so forth, but for a world where most of our trips are local, single-person jaunts to get groceries, run errands, or commute to work and back, the TruckIt and the Elf look like staggeringly good options. Like I said -- when our 2004 Corolla starts to give out, look for me in one of these.

* Thanks for notes -- sidewalk riding, though largely practiced (and apparently sometimes legally practiced), is often illegal. It's the subject of considerable debate in the commuting/green community, a debate in which I do not wish to engage.

Scott Huler was born in 1959 in Cleveland and raised in that city's eastern suburbs. He graduated from Washington University in 1981; he was made a member of Phi Beta Kappa because of the breadth of his studies, and that breadth has been a signature of his writing work. He has written on everything from the death penalty to bikini waxing, from NASCAR racing to the stealth bomber, for such newspapers as the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Los Angeles Times and such magazines as ESPN, Backpacker, and Fortune. His award-winning radio work has been heard on "All Things Considered" and "Day to Day" on National Public Radio and on "Marketplace" and "Splendid Table" on American Public Media. He has been a staff writer for the Philadelphia Daily News and the Raleigh News & Observer and a staff reporter and producer for Nashville Public Radio. He was the founding and managing editor of the Nashville City Paper. He has taught at such colleges as Berry College and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His books include Defining the Wind, about the Beaufort Scale of wind force, and No-Man's Lands, about retracing the journey of Odysseus. His most recent book, On the Grid, was his sixth. His work has been included in such compilations as Appalachian Adventure and in such anthologies as Literary Trails of the North Carolina Piedmont, The Appalachian Trail Reader and Speed: Stories of Survival from Behind the Wheel. For 2014-2015 Scott is a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT, which is funding his work on the Lawson Trek, an effort to retrace the journey of explorer John Lawson through the Carolinas in 1700-1701. He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, with his wife, the writer June Spence, and their two sons.

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