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Karbikes: The Future Of Urban Transport Is Pedal-Powered
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this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2025
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micromobility - Bikes, scooters, boards: Whatever floats your goat, this is micromobility
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Ebikes, bicycles, scooters, skateboards, longboards, eboards, motorcycles, skates, unicycles, heelies, or an office chair: Whatever floats your goat, this is all things micromobility!
"Transportation using lightweight vehicles such as bicycles or scooters, especially electric ones that may be borrowed as part of a self-service rental program in which people rent vehicles for short-term use within a town or city.
micromobility is seen as a potential solution to moving people more efficiently around cities"
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I'd love to be wrong but I don't think this format will ever find a market.
There doesn't seem to be any tangible benefits over an electric cargo bike.
Once you exceed a 250kg system weight your pedal power input isn't worth the extra weight of the drive train et cetera - you're better off with more battery so obviously you're just an electric car at that point.
The faring (and the extra width) creates a lot of wind resistance which, over a moderate distance really adds up and becomes a significant factor. You also need to wonder how many occasions this faring would make the vehicle usable when a rain coat wouldn't. For example, if weather is a spectrum between 1 (calm & sunny) and 10 (cyclonic), then 1-5 you don't need the faring and 8-10 it's probably not safe to drive and 6 is just rain-coat weather.
The only benefit I can really see is that it's more approachable for people that just don't do bikes. For example, my cargo bike has a seat on the back that my kids love to ride on but my partner just won't. It's not because it's uncomfortable but because she finds it embarrassing. I respect her feelings on the matter, and I think she would feel better about something like this.
So I have good news for you ;)
There are many countries where "having pedals" is the precondition for using the bike lanes. And then using the bike lanes gives you lots of advantage during heavy traffic in the cities.
There's your market.
Ewwww no. No no no no NO. Fuck no. I don't want to share my bike lane with these things! They're heavier than most motorcycles! That's dangerous as all hell. A rear-end collision is likely to be deadly. Americans might be used to Surron being able to slap a couple fake pedals on their motorcycles to skirt the law, but that's absolutely insane. The point of a bike lane is to reduce conflict between heavy vehicles and fragile road users, not to separate "pedal havers" from "pedal not havers".
Thankfully in France - where they're from - and presumably most of the EU, bicycles with too much power (here in Belgium it's "speed pedelecs" which are capped at 4kW /45 km/h) are banned from all cycle lanes except where authorized by explicit signage.
This doesn't really respond to my point though - a cargo bike is superior in every regard, and has pedals.
The ability to pedal enables exercise and gives you accurate longitudinal position control for parking. A servo generator as a forward-backward interface complicates nothing compared to a car-like interface. If it doesn't have that now, it will because it's an old invention and the natural solution for all pedal-electrics to evolve to.
Fairing in velomobiles reduces wind resistance a lot compared to unfaired recumbent trikes of the same size. I believe this with doors on has the same drag as a regular bicyclist. Doesn't even matter because electricity is cheap. Rain coat can't stop the weather from hurting my face.
Weather doesnt really hurt until you get to what, 70 mph?
And if youre going that fast, wear a proper helmet.
When it's cold enough, or just raining freezing cold water, biking hurts.
Doesn't increase width and height
I believe that's incorrect
So don't bother with pedals.
If the weather is bad enough to "hurt" I don't think you'd be riding around on one of these either.