Not a car or bicycle, but a blend — an ELF vehicle

[AsahinaKimi]

RESTON, Va. (AP) — Mark Stewart turns quite a few heads as he zips through the streets on his neon green ELF bike. With each pedal, his feet take turns sticking out from the bottom while a gentle motor hums in the background.

What he's driving looks like a cross between a bicycle and a car, the closest thing yet to Fred Flintstone's footmobile, only with solar panels and a futuristic shape.

It's a "green" option for today's commuters.

Stewart, a 65-year-old family therapist and school psychologist from Cambridge, Mass., took the summer off in order to drive his new ELF bike more than 1,200 miles on trails and roads using the East Coast Greenway, a bike and pedestrian trail that runs from Canada to Key West.

http://www.sfgate.com/news/us/article/Not-a-car-or-bicycle-but-a-blend-an-ELF-4697728.php

[kestrel91316]

1. Very cute and a great idea - but it wouldn't last 5 minutes on the streets of Lost Angeles, where

the Get-Out-Of-My-Way-I'm-In-A-Hurry crowd rules the road.

Damn. Because one of these would be PERFECT for me.

[LWolf]

7. There is no reasonable transportation in L.A..

Public transportation can't compare to other comparably sized cities. Driving your own vehicle of any kind is a traffic nightmare.

I spent 38 of my 53 years in L.A. county. Eight years out, I think of making a trip back to visit old friends, and quake at the prospect of taking on the streets and freeways again.

[Yavin4]

11. LA traffic is like that final sequence in Mad Max

Only LA traffic is worse.

[Revanchist]

13. I wouldn't want to ride in in the Hampton Roads of Virginia either

With such a large military population a great deal of the drivers aren't from here and still drive the way they did back home. These streets can be scary and their aren't many bike friendly areas either.

[deafskeptic]

18. Amen :P I've been there too.

My dad bought an apt to use for vacations in VA beach. We had to go thru the Hampton Roads bridge tunnel on our way to VA Beach. That was fun - NOT. It was literally a crawl thru the tunnel as so many people like to summer in the area. The thought of going thru the traffic there again is enough to make me sweat.

The boardwalk was one of the few good bike friendly areas in VA beach.

[Liberal_in_LA]

16. yep. not for la

[Tikki]

19. Except for the freeway crawl at times, I have found the L A freeways easy to drive.

Tikki

[zappaman]

2. I could never drive that to work in LA

But when I move to Hawaii?

[Xithras]

3. "go anywhere a bicycle can go"

That won't last long. The first time some pedestrian on a paved jogging path gets thumped by one of these...and that WILL happen...every city in America will pass a law banning battery-assist vehicles from pedestrian and bike paths.

[AsahinaKimi]

4. That would include a lot of Veteran Wheel chairs...

I wonder how many Veterans have hit a pedestrian? Not many, I bet.

[LWolf]

5. I'm wondering how it does

on hills. There are quite a few ups and downs on my way to and from work.

Hills, and in the dark, and on ice...but I'm intrigued.

[AsahinaKimi]

6. living in San Francisco..

We have many steep hills here.. and I wonder whether or not the motor would just burn out going up some of them.

[LWolf]

8. That's funny.

I don't live in CA anymore, but SF popped into my head when I typed about "ups and downs," because that's a city with enough to be an issue, that's for sure.

[displacedtexan]

12. Yes, we have hills that could kill.

But the Fred Flintstone Mobile is adorable! There are little tricycle trucks like it in Italy.

[LWolf]

14. It is.

And FF was the first thing I thought of, before practical concerns.

[Xithras]

9. I'd be more worried about the quality of the brakes going DOWN.

About 15 years ago I was visiting a friend who lives in the Russian Hill area when we heard a huge crash outside. Turned out that some poor sap had lost his brakes and made it about halfway down the hill before losing control and slamming into a parked car. It wasn't a pretty sight, but the car managed to keep the driver alive. I'd hate to think what the same crash would have looked like in a plastic bubbled bicycle.

[Fumesucker]

10. I have an electric assisted bike

There are units that would climb SF streets without burning out, mine probably wouldn't make it but there are heavier duty units than what I have. A couple of the hills I have to navigate approach that level of steepness but they're rather short.

You have to balance top speed with hill climbing, a unit that climbs hills very well for the most part is not going to also have a high top speed and vice versa.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1207230

[Liberal_in_LA]

15. beautiful look

[MineralMan]

17. Great idea for places where its suitable.

That's not everywhere, but a lot of places would work fine for it.

Personally, I'd like to see a model that had a 50cc four-stroke engine in it instead of the electric motor. 5 hp, a multi-speed transmission, and more range and capability. It would get at least 100 mpg in that configuration, and modern small engines are low pollution, even though a 50cc four-stroke makes very little pollution in the first place. Properly muffled, they're also almost silent.

Make the thing with both options, and it would sell like hotcakes. There's no need to avoid tiny internal combustion engines for vehicles like these.