One of the biggest gripes I've heard about biking as transportation is that you often arrive at your destination in a sweaty mess. Well I've found a solution to your problem. It's called Derringer. These motorized bicycles are going to be hotter than Vespas. They've strategically partnered with Starck to create a design savvy bicycle that gives you that extra umph. I tried racing a guy on one of these up in Marin on my road bike and they're fast. The SF Bike Coalition recently announced that commuting by bike is up something crazy 22%. I have a feeling that number might increase now that getting places faster and avoiding traffic is going to be even easier and more stylish.
Back in May I went to the 2007 MakerFaire in San Mateo and had the opportunity to meet Rick Woodberry of CommuterCars, the creator of the Tango. It's an electric car that is all around a great solution to urban commuting. It's extremely thin but packs a punnch - it goes from 0 to 60 in 4 seconds. This is an interesting phenomenon, unfortunately it retails for $108,000 although Rick is working on getting it mass manufactured.
US car culture is facing a huge problem. A big portion of the problem revolves around our dependency of the automobile. Parking in cities, congested highways, gridlock in urban areas and urban sprawl. These are all complicated issues that will not be easily resolved. Yes these problems might start to solve themselves as we depelete our oil reserves and get stranded out in suburbia. Until then we need vehicles that will help transition us into time when cities are planned a bit more strategically and we are using more renewable sources of energy.
Surprisingly a big part of this transition is finding compromises. That means not abandoning what Americans love so much about their cars; things like being free and going fast. The Tango is a great compromise. Not only is it small and electric but it's fast and sexy.
Think for a brief second how America would change if all of our cars instantaneously vaporized. It would be a huge inconvenience, a lot of people would be stranded; but with some major restructuring of our transportation infrastructure we'd no doubt compensate. Now ask yourself what would happen if all of our oil disappeared: no transportation, no energy, no heat, no electricity, no fertilizer, no food, to plastics - life would be paralyzed.
At least that is the impression you get from watching "A Crude Awakening" and "The End of Suburbia." The end of oil won't be abrupt, but it is coming at a faster pace than we realize, especially consider our lack of preparedness. Peak oil is the economic principle that oil supply will plateau and then begin to dwindle at an increasing pace. It's not a theory, it's a fact; fossil fuels will run out in the near future. There is speculation that there will be several severe repercussions that will drastically affect how we live. Oil is not just related to transportation, it affects agriculture, the economic success of city & suburban life, political relationships, the production of most goods & products and energy as a whole. Both movies are depressing and drive home the same point, we're squandering our resources. We're reaching the end of an oil dependent American empire and haven't considered how we'll transition into an age fueled by a new kind of energy. The depletion of oil means we will be forced to devise new means of producing energy and implement them in a relatively short time span. Authors like Richard Heinberg "Power Down: Options For A Post Carbon World" and Michael Ruppert "Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire At the End of the Age of Oil" discuss ideas like the Project For the New American Century as well as new urbanism, where cities are devised to be more sustainable and completely walkable. They raise interesting questions like how will we support a huge population without the means to use gas to power farming equipment enabling us to mass produce food and transport it around the country? Do you realize how many products are petroleum based and will suburbs become the new slums? They consider the validity of alternative means of energy like ethanol, hydrogen, nuclear and solar, but are highly skeptical. Despite their negativity, they raise some good questions; questions I think we have started to answer with new solar and battery technology.
In the same way the Inconvenient Truth helped to reiterate underlying faults in our ways of life, these documentaries spell out the fact that the oil wells are drying up and we're ill prepared. To think that there is a very real possibility that our grandchildren will never fly on an airplane is certainly a wake up call. So what can we do, start by becoming less dependent on oil. Learn to live and act locally to become self sufficient and adopt practices that are considerably less dependent on oil. Below is a KQED short on promising new nano solar technology that helps give us all an inkling of hope as we go up in flames.
One of the biggest gripes I've heard about biking as transportation is that you often arrive at your destination in a sweaty mess. Well I've found a solution to your problem. It's called Derringer. These motorized bicycles are going to be hotter than Vespas.
