This plastic egg-shaped bicycle will soon be the best way to commute
Mar 10, 2015, 8:09 AM | Updated: Mar 13, 2015, 10:08 pm
All you have to do is get past the feeling that you've just been hatched by a giant hen. (ELF screengrab)
(ELF screengrab)
Soon we’ll all be pedaling to work in a big, plastic egg.
“I got a lot of funny looks. Sometimes I’ll see people with the kids in the back and they’ll be waving,” Lori Bush told CBS.
Of course they are!
It’s because you’re pedaling a big, plastic egg. It’s a three-wheeled, motor-assisted, recumbent bicycle. Two wheels in front, one wheel in back, with an egg-shaped capsule wrapped around it.
It’s electric, it’s light, and it’s fun – hence the name, the “E.L.F.”
But its inventor, Rob Codder, isn’t competing with other bicycles. He thinks he can compete with the automobile.
To prove it, he put reporter Vicente Arenas in the jump seat and they were quite a sight: Two men in an 8-foot egg.
“The ELF requires no insurance or gasoline and is pollution free. It does 20 miles per hour with straight pedal power. Add the motor and the ELF will do 35 mph.”
Between the plug-in charger and the solar panel on the roof, the electric motor can take you up to 14 miles, and if it’s sunny, even farther.
Which means this is a bike that doesn’t require you to be a masochistic tri-athlete to use it. You’re covered on rainy days and when you get to a hill, you just hit the electric motor. You don’t even have to wear a helmet.
At the same time, you do enough pedaling that you can probably cancel your gym membership.
All this for just $5,500. Customers seem delighted.
“I have only put about 5,000 miles on my car since I’ve had the ELF. Way less than half of what I used to,” Bush said.
All you have to do is get past the feeling that you’ve just been hatched by a giant hen.
