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Comment by zwieback | Hacker News Reader

I'm a year-round non-e-bike commuter in Oregon. I love e-bikes but until you can ride without getting soaked it'll be successful only part of the year in most of the US. We need something between the e-bike and golf-cart style EVs to fill the gap, some kind of sophisticated fairing or a 3 wheel format that isn't super dorky.

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i live in a place that's not quite as rainy as oregon, but the combination of proper full-coverage fenders and bike paths where i'm not getting splashed by cars means there's only a couple days a year where i'm going to get "soaked" and am going to choose not to ride.

biking in the rain mostly sucks because of splashback from the road. once you've eliminated that, it's no worse than walking in the rain.

I don't think ebikes are replacing walking trips though, but car trips. The requirement to anticipate, prepare for, and endure the weather (including cold, snow, rain) makes bikes much less appealing to people who already own cars, which is almost everyone in the US.

I think the main reasons bikes aren't popular are: safety (perceived) weather cargo capacity effort requirement

Enthusiasts don't mind the latter and reluctant cyclists will still find sufficient deterrents even if it's eliminated. So I don't think ebikes are really going to move the needle in terms of ridership, regardless of what their buyers tell themselves at time of purchase.

> until you can ride without getting soaked it'll be successful only part of the year in most of the US

I'm in Austin, TX and get soaked for a different reason - sweat. We get about 3 months of 100 degree days. I'd love a golf-cart EV with good A/C.

You sweat a lot less (if at all) on an ebike though.

Right. A lot of times you see 3 wheel vehicles instead of 4 for regulatory reasons. That’s silly.

I agree it’d be super awesome to get car-like protection from rain and wind, better stability than a bike, but maintaining the very low mass (and therefore low inertia and low pedestrian risk) & low cost & low footprint & high efficiency of bikes.

I see these around the city: https://www.estrima.com/en/models/biro-winter/

approximately 360kg, so def not as light as a bike, but not incredibly heavy either. 100km range.

Too heavy to allow driving in the bike lane, IMHO. Needs to be a weight, speed, and footprint limit. But the number of wheels shouldn’t matter, regulation-wise.

So something like an electric recumbent e-bike, with four wheels.

Closest thing I could find was " City Commuting Recumbent Quad " , 2nd from the bottom of this page: https://www.trikexplor.com/pages/trikexplor-recumbent-quad

I still think they are a bit big but with smaller diameter wheels, removal of pedals for full electric kart experience (but otherwise speed limited as per usual e-bike) maaaybe they could be made small enough and lightweight enough to play with.

Yes, this seems to do it! Kind of needs more enclosure, but it’s only 50kg and seems to meet the other requirements. Work bikes can be up to 150kg (not counting rider/payload) which sounds like a good upper limit on empty weight, so something like this should be doable, even able to add a small extra seat and be fully enclosed (with heated seats?).

https://www.motrike.com/product-item/city-commuting-recumben...

Something like this, but regulated as a bike for the US would be great for me! I'm legally blind so I can't drive a full size vehicle—I'll likely get an ebike soon so I can have greater mobility than walking or bus allows. However, I live in a rainy area so having something covered and which I could use to transport my daughter would be ideal. I've found one vendor in the area that sells an ebike, but they lack a lot of convenience and safety features. The covered options I've seen don't have lockable storage so you can't leave any valuables inside without risk of theft.

Something like this pulling a bike trailer for your daughter is very close: https://www.motrike.com/product-item/city-commuting-recumben...

EDIT: this is even closer: https://www.better.bike/models

There seem to always be a ton of three wheel "car" companies close to making their vehicles a reality (Elio, anyone?). I hope that one of them succeeds eventually. I'd love to own one someday.

Have you looked at the Organic Transit ELF or Better Bikes PEBL?

the first one who makes a thin stylish variant will be rich

Something with like these with lockable doors and some kind of integration for a child's car seat for would be nice!

Yeah, those look pretty cool. Not sure if they could go on every bike path but would cover almost all use cases.

an electric auto rickshaw (tuk tuk) maybe?

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