https://vhelio.org/

I personally think it could be a great alternative to cars and bikes for those who need to take a whole family somewhere or a decent amount of stuff.

Only modifications I would make would be ride-by-wire and an extra set of pedals (so you can have two people pedalling without the annoyance of normal tandem bikes having to pedal at the same rate), and a more powerful motor (only 250W is legal in France, where this was designed, whereas 500W is legal here in Canada)

  • litchralee
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    1 year ago

    This seems to be in answer of a very narrow use-case. Supposing this seats four people, the same could be achieved with four ebikes with the benefit that each could go their own way at any point.

    Size-wise is not too concerning to me, being only 2 meters long by 0.85 meters wide. That’s about the width of a tricycle but longer, so it might still fit into bike lanes and many bike racks. The 80 kg curb weight is somewhat alarming though, due to the risk of this large machine impacting a pedestrian with its many metal surfaces.

    This is also remarkable for the use-case it doesn’t seem to enable: disabled mobility. Other designs for minicar-esque things have been deployed in the Netherlands that are smaller than this, to efficiently move a single individual with reduced mobility, while meshing with the rest of the public.

    In lieu of this machine, I would rather like to see laws loosened to allow a family of four to firmly couple their ebikes together single-file. This essentially becomes a bicycle train, with all the attendant efficiency gains. Cargo needs are still better served by cargo tricycles, like what UPS and DHL have deployed in urban areas worldwide.

    TL;DR: I’m not seeing the killer feature here