The addition of an auxiliary motor to a workbike represents an old wish. We might note that the both the Ford Motor and Harley-Davidson Motorcycle Companies emmerged from bicycle technology. The very first Ford motorcar from the late 19th century bore the name "Quadricycle", shod with four, spoked, bicycle wheels. Adding a motor, even a fashionable electric one or one of some unknown futuristic exotic technology, is to repeat an evolutionary path first successfully crossed over a hundred years ago. If we truely need an auto-mobile for passive transport, there exist many finely-crafted, highly-evolved products (e.g., cars, trucks, motorcycles, et.al.). Auxiliary, artifical power sources on an HPV shine when they serve the same function of mercy as does a crutch or wheelchair -- or morphine. They restore freedom and dignity to the infirm who otherwise have lost self-mobility. Mentally, spritually and physically healthy human beings do not need crutches in order to thrive. Please seriously concider the following thoughts penned by Ivan Illich in the early 1970's. He reflects on the profound miracle of a simple bicycle; "The energy crisis cannot be overwhelmed by more energy inputs. It can only be dissolved, along with the illusion that well-being depends on the number of energy slaves a man has at his command." <snip> "DEGREES OF SELF-POWERED MOBILITY "A century ago, the ball-bearing was invented. It reduced the coefficient of friction by a factor of a thousand. By applying a well-calibrated ball-bearing between two Neolithic millstones, a man could now grind in a day what took his ancestors a week. The ball-bearing also made possible the bicycle, allowing the wheel---probably the last of the great Neolithic inventions---finally to become useful for self-powered mobility. "Man, unaided by any tool, gets around quite efficiently. He carries one gram of his weight over a kilometer in ten minutes by expending 0.75 calories. Man on his feet is thermodynamically more efficient than any motorized vehicle and most animals. For his weight, he performs more work in locomotion than rats or oxen, less than horses or sturgeon. At this rate of efficiency man settled the world and made its history. At this rate peasant societies spend less than 5 per cent and nomads less than 8 per cent of their respective social time budgets outside the home or the encampment. "Man on a bicycle can go three or four times faster than the pedestrian, but uses five times less energy in the process. He carries one gram of his weight over a kilometer of flat road at an expense of only 0.15 calories. The bicycle is the perfect transducer to match man's metabolic energy to the impedance of locomotion. Equipped with this tool, man outstrips the efficiency of not only all machines but all other animals as well." To enjoy reading the fascinating full text of "Energy and Equity" please refer to the following URL: http://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/~ira/illich/texts/energy_and_equity/energy_and_equity.html Cheers, John Snyder
