Trending: Is it a bike? Is it a car? It’s both and it’s pretty awesome
Posted June 27, 2016 1:48 pm.
Last Updated June 27, 2016 1:57 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
This could throw a real wrench into the ongoing battle between cars and bicycles in Toronto.
A Swedish design engineer has created a bicycle-car called the PodRide that could pave the way for more convenient and safer year-round commuting in harsh winter climates like Toronto.
The PodRide has four studded winter tires, a full waterproof body and a heated windshield.
It’s also environmentally friendly, featuring a low emission electrical motor that can hit top speeds of 25 km/h.
“I have driven it to work every day for a year now and it has proven to be a very practical and comfortable little vehicle,” designer Mikael Kjellman said on crowd-funding site Indiegogo.com.
“Bicycle-Cars are practical, good for your health, cheap to run, good for the environment and fun to drive.”
Kjellman has raised nearly $70,000, hoping to develop a simple IKEA-like kit that would allow people to create their own PodRides at home.
His video pitch has been viewed almost 4.2 million times on YouTube.
Several commenters brought up the potential for theft, but Kjellman replied those queries, saying the final design will include a security feature to lock the PodRide.
Kjellman also admits that trying to determine whether the PodRide would be legal in various parts of the world has proven to be a “highly challenging task,” noting that “legislation can be vague, ambiguous, silent, and/or cryptic. Multiply this by the number of states and countries and you start to get an idea of the challenge.”
