You’re likely to see just about any kind of machine at the Midwest Tandem Rally, held this year in Middleton, Wisconsin, next door to Madison. Old, new, steel, aluminum, titanium, and carbon fiber frames. Tandems, triplets, quads, quints. Upright bikes with two wheels, recumbents with two or three.
It’s part bike, part car, part solar power, part human power. And--thanks in part to a massively successful Kickstarter drive that ended this week--it’s headed to a street near you.
The Elf is what’s called a velomobile, a pedal-powered mini-car, typically in the design of a recumbent tricycle with a shell over it to protect you from the elements. While they’re fairly popular for commuting and biking with cargo in bike-obsessed parts of the world like Northern Europe, if you haven’t heard of them yet, don’t sweat it.
“The U.S. market is really unaware of this type of vehicle--of velomobiles--and we are kind of bringing it to the masses,” explains Alix Bowman, director of communications atOrganic Transit, the startup behind The Elf. The novelty--combined with the high price of gas, and need for more diverse solutions to environmentally friendly commuting--made the Elf a hit with the Kickstarter community who threw $225,789 at the product, more than twice its goal of $100,000...
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