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Twike

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Re: Twike

#191

Post by medstrom »

bipson wrote: post #19
quicon wrote: post #10

There is a similar four wheeled HEHV being produced in Norway: https://www.podbike.com

Wow, the hoops you have to jump through to find a price! 5k or 5.5k, depending on variant. Although to be practicable (not a hobby), you will have to add quite a few "extras". But not that bad actually! Makes me wonder how it is built.

5k?! That's seriously low. Other velomobiles (going by velomobiel.nl) aren't even ebikes and still go for at least 8k (or 6.6k without VAT to be fair).

That's an exciting development, hopefully it's not vaporware.

Re: Twike

#192

Post by 1-more »

bipson wrote: post #19
quicon wrote: post #10

There is a similar four wheeled HEHV being produced in Norway: https://www.podbike.com

Wow, the hoops you have to jump through to find a price! 5k or 5.5k, depending on variant. Although to be practicable (not a hobby), you will have to add quite a few "extras". But not that bad actually! Makes me wonder how it is built.

It has a serial hybrid drivetrain: you charge the battery with your pedals. This is inefficient, naturally, but they claim it's far easier to make, which I tend to believe. But the idea of all of my hard-won watts getting wasted by the second law of thermodynamics is just too much to bear. If I'm dropping 5K on a bike it had better have a drivetrain that just sings when you step on it.

Re: Twike

#193

Post by medstrom »

nabilhat wrote: post #172
quicon wrote: post #10

There is a similar four wheeled HEHV being produced in Norway: https://www.podbike.com

Velomobiles are a fascinating example of a domain which keeps getting reinvented over and over! The 'glass ceiling' cab has been a feature that keeps showing up on independently developed velomobiles, despite the prior experiences of models like the Go-One and Twike. If the interior is reflective or a light color that doesn't absorb sunlight, it reflects back in the screen, creating glare. If the interior is dark eno…

Just a layman, but it seems like you could solve the heat and condensation by adjusting ventilation.

Re: Twike

#194

Post by fnord77 »

has the same problem as bicycles - if a pickup truck collides with you, you're going to be a grease stain on the road.

Re: Twike

#195

Post by jay_kyburz »

bipson wrote: post #29
jay_kyburz wrote: post #9

These are awesome, but they are too small (and too slow) for the road and too big for the bike path or sidewalk. I ride a scooter to work everyday. (Inokim Ox). Its legal on the sidewalk where I live. I really think scooters are the future.

Thank god they swiftly banned scooters from the sidewalk in Austria. And enforced reasonable speed limits as well. Right after Lyft, Lime and whatnot started to literally litter the sidewalks of Vienna with their (almost free) electric scooters (mind you, these sidewalks are almost always full of people), you were constantly almost run over by some Schmuck with headphones on and an arrogant look on their face, scream…

I'm going to get a monocle and a top hat and ride with my nose in the air to enhance my arrogant look!

Re: Twike

#196

Post by refurb »

el_nahual wrote: post #159
refurb wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a funny take as I live in a developing country and owning a car is seen as the mark of a successful person. No more waiting for public transport. No more getting soaked walking or riding a bike in the rain. Convenience, comfort, time efficient. To say a sedan would be designed today is a ridiculous take. Nobody forced cars on people, they wanted them.

Of course they are seen as the mark of a succesful person...because they are the mark of a successful person. Cars are expensive! And yes, they are convenient, comfortable and can be time efficient, but with extraordinary negative externalities. The issue isn't "cars are inconvenient"--the issue is "cars have enormous (and compounding) negative externalities that need to be regulated away, and investment needs to be…

That’s why I’m happy about the move to electric cars. Remove the externalities and democratize access to transportation. Why should just rich people have access to cars?

Re: Twike

#197

Post by tpm »

brudgers wrote: post #187
tpm wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europeans haven't built high speed rail from London to Baku mostly because they (we) can't agree that's in their best interest and then invest accordingly. The Swiss did vote for and consequently built things like the Gotthard Base Tunnel. The Chinese are also building a lot of rail infrastructure and are of a similar size to the US. But then they have higher population density. But it's probably more a question of p…

It is a question of economics. Because it is engineering and cost benefit analysis is part of engineering. The US geography makes high speed rail at the Federal level economically infeasible. Air transport reaches everyone including Alaska and Hawaii and Puerto Rico.

It's actually more complicated than that I think. Chinese geography is also not without complications. Europe has its own share of mountains etc., but also a huge rail coverage (even though in need of updates to make it faster and with higher capacity for persons).

Now air transport can reach everyone, but is also especially climate unfriendly. Maybe in the future there will be electric or hydrogen airplanes, but if there is an option to use rail or plane mass transit, rail will always have lower energy demands. But historically the US has low energy (and fuel) taxes, and that will favor the planes. EU on the other hand is now talking about taxing aircraft fuels and if that happens and the taxes are sufficiently high, trains will be more attractive, even if currently travelling long distances by rail in the EU is a huge PITA.

Re: Twike

#199

Post by gumby »

everdrive wrote: post #139
gumby wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming that “equivocating” was a typo: I’m not defending the automobile as some paragon. I’m pointing out the lack of historical perspective, without which it’s hard to evaluate both the impact/value of the automobile and the impact/value of alternatives. A post hoc ergo propter hoc argument rarely leads to insight, much less useful decision. The animal waste was a huge public health and economic issue, one almost…

Definitely not a typo -- I understood "equivocating" to mean "switching between two meanings of a word." Do I have that wrong? Either way, I hear you on the historical argumentation here: a lot of the complaints people have today may have some validity, but are often wholly ahistorical: they are blind to just how much progress we have made in many areas, and how hard fought that progress is.

"Equivocate" does mean that a single speaker/writer/entity uses multiple meanings of a term, but the point is that use is to deceive or make a false argument.

Two people can't equivocate (unless they are working together). In this case sudosysgen and I are using the terms the same way and arguing a point.

And yes, I am arguing that even though I myself live the public/personal transport life being advocated in this thread, I am well aware of the institutional (car companies, traffic departments, etc), social (personal desires and habits) and structural (physical layout) barriers to transforming the transit system in that regard, even if we exclude the constraint "in the lifetime of anyone today". It's hard to make concrete, actionable decisions on the basis of utopianism.

Re: Twike

#200

Post by jascii »

medstrom wrote: post #189
jascii wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For all practical purposes bicycles and motorcycles are invisible to drivers. FortNine has an amusing video on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x94PGgYKHQ0 My personal experience, after years as a courier on both upright, recumbent, and motorcycles is that I am more "visible" on a recumbent then the other options because I'm "weird" enough to make it into a drivers consciousness... None of this is ofcourse scienti…

It's strange that this is a meme, because my experience is the opposite: as a motorist, bicycles are the most visible things around. As a cyclist, I see cars react to me every time I'm close enough to them that it's relevant. They're clearly aware of me. My theory is that cyclists become invisible in areas where the roads force them to mix with cars. Where I live, they rarely mix, so when they do, it's an unusual eve…

In areas with separated bike lanes traffic mixing usually happens in slower speed areas. This greatly reduces the chance that a small vehicle like a bicycle gets lost in the saccades.
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