Original Mochet Velomobile
Imagine your favorite electric bike transformed into an automobile. How could such a thing happen? It makes no sense! Okay, let’s slow down a bit. Let’s start with a recumbent bike – you know, one of those machines where you sit close to the ground and recline, or lean back, to pedal. Now, instead of a two-wheeled recumbent bike, let’s picture one with three wheels – like a tricycle. Now let’s enclose this tricycle in a body, one which looks more like an ultra-light airplane fuselage rather than your typical automobile. If you have stayed with me through this visualization exercise, what you now have in your mind’s eye is a vehicle called a velomobile.
According to Wikipedia, the origin of the velomobile was a small 4-wheeled pedal car build by Charles Mochet for his son a few years prior to World War I. Other people starting building these little pedal cars too, and they were popular for a while, but their popularity declined in the 1930’s as people preferred the inexpensive gasoline-powered cars which were becoming more available and affordable.
Leap ahead a few decades to the oil crisis of 1978, which inspired Carl Georg Rasmussen, a Danish engineer and pilot, to design and build the first practical velomobile. It was called Leitra (Leight individual transport in German means Leicht Transport), a “tadpole” recumbent trike with a full fiberglass fairing. It was road-tested in the 1980’s in several rallies such as Trondheim-Oslo and Paris-Brest-Paris.
Leitra Velomobile electric assisted
Leitra is a danish company and also the name of the velomobile it makes.
Ever since then, velomobiles have remained popular in Denmark and other countries throughout Scandinavia. The shell of the velomobile provides protection from the cold, wet Scandinavian winters, and the streamlined fairing, or shell, reduces wind resistance compared to an unenclosed bike or trike, and allows the velomobile to scoot along smartly over the flat Scandinavian landscape
Now velomobiles are being imported into the US in increasing numbers, largely due to the popularity of the Leitra and other early imports. The streamlined fairing, or shell, adds weight to the vehicle at the same time that it allows higher speeds. For that reason, most velomobiles come with hydraulic brakes, either standard or as an option, to handle the additional braking load compared with conventional bikes.
While the enclosed design does effectively counter wind resistance, it does not provide the rider with any advantage while pedaling uphill. Just the opposite is true, as the rider must carry his weight, the weight of the trike, and the weight of the fairing, all at the same time. This has inspired some velomobile owners to add an electric drive system,such as the BionX kit, to their machines in order to extend the speed and climbing ability beyond what they can provide with leg power alone. These electric velomobiles are in effect, small automobiles, self-powered and self-enclosed, and often capable of cruising nearly at expressway speeds.
Go One BionX powered Velomobile
The cost of a velomobile is not cheap. The reason is that the basic platform is a high-quality recumbent tricycle which alone would cost over $2,000. Add to this the cost of fabricating the fiberglass shell and of the attaching hardware, and the considerable cost of labor, as each machine is basically hand-made, and it is easy to understand that a complete machine will cost you between $6,000 – $8,000, with electrically powered models correspondingly higher.
Right now the market for velomobiles is tiny compared with that for autos or conventional electric bikes. For now, they are not regulated and owners have the freedom to decide how to equip their velomobiles, and, within the limits of existing local traffic laws, to ride their machines wherever and however they choose.
