CARS CAUSE PROBLEMS – They cost a fortune to run with their diesel and petrol engines. They produce poisonous emissions and greenhouse gases and consume massive amounts of limited resources. BICYCLES ARE MUCH BETTER – Both for you and the environment. Unfortunately, few use them for personal transport. The challenge is how to get more people to use cycles instead of cars.
Traditional bicycles have been available for over a hundred years but lack weather protection and high-speed capability and offer zero crash protection. Electric assisted bicycles, or pedelecs, remove the burden from pedalling up steep hills or in strong headwind. But they do not remedy the problem of lack of weather protection, nor do they offer any crash protection. Streamlined velomobiles, cycles with a streamlined body, are much faster, have at least some weather and crash protection but lack the ‘creature comfort’ a modern car offers.
The Frikar is a new electric-assisted bike constructed within a sustainable envelope with the following qualities:
- Easy for occupants to enter and leave the vehicle
- Having lower air drag than a racing bike
- Excellent ride comfort independent of road conditions
- Complete weather protection including roof and windscreen
- First-class cornering stability
- Small parking space
- Room for bringing a child within the cabin
- Human-powered propulsion using no gears or chains
- Subtle electric-assist keeping the bike classified as a cycle within EU
- Improved safety compared to existing velomobiles and bikes.
- Easy to mass produce and can be shipped the ‘IKEA‘ way; with some easy end-user assembly required
- By itself, each of these targets is not something special, but the sum results in a unique vehicle.