Human Powered Vehicle (West Coast) Challenge
by Warren McLaren, Sydney 
on 04.26.07
When a bike costs around $10,000 USD you’d want it to go fast, and that’s what some of the bikes at the recent Human Powered Vehicle Challenge aimed to do. Held recently at NASA’s Ames Research Center, California, 26 teams of college engineering students squeezed their strong legged compadres into weird looking wheeled contraptions for a series of time trials and sprints, all vying for the princely prize of $500! The model we show is from Portland State University and is their first entry in the comp. According to Wired’s correspondent, Jenna Wortham, who also took the pics the team worked on the frame structure so it would be extra stable and capable of taking tight corners at high speeds without capsizing. She thought it looked like an iPod on wheels, but Portland put all smirking aside by coming through with a third placing overall. Though we are unsure what speeds they attained. The East Coast Challenge is on 11-13 May 2007 in Orlando, Florida. More pics at ::Wired.
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it's a pity they all look so dorky - I'd love to see this kind of technology become popular but I can't imagine it happening until someone comes up with a viable fairing that also looks good.
I love the technology by the way, I ride an ICE Q and i'm happy to do it whatever the weather, but I don't think that goes for most people used to driving a nice warm car.
I don't mean to brag at all, but University of Missouri-Rolla finally took first place on the West Coast!
I am a geological engineering student at UMR (soon to be Missouri University of Science & Technology) and have several friends on the Human Powered Vehicle Team.
I am on the UMR Solar Car Team.
http://news.umr.edu/news/2007/HPVwestcoastresults.html
There also is a good write up and some more good pics over at bikeportland.org:
http://bikeportland.org/2007/04/24/psu-students-compete-with-the-vike-trike/
There were couple of very good documentaries about these on Discovery Channel lately
i think until a company can and will make ( as henry ford did ) a vehicle for the masses "meaning cheap enough for the regular person to afford " and a vehicle that doesn't look childish , very odd , people will not buy and use a human powered car . adult pedal powered cars could be made realistic looking ( the more realistic and adult like the more people will accept a pedal car to replace their gas cars .
the kid electric ride in toy cars and trucks is an example if they can make a nice body thats light weight and realistic like the ford mustang body for an electric kid toy (like in wal mart.etc. ) why cant someone mold a body like that but larger for a adult pedal car ( which will look more real and be accepted and have more dignity with when using it . the pedicar of the 1970's was a good start the only thing was they should have made the body sportier and set the body on top of the frame making the body height taller . for some info. on the pedicar go to http://www.geocities.com/aircooledvair/pedicar.html
if this car as i said was built again , made sportier , raised the car height up taller for better visability . , keep the price affordable , many people would be willing to change over to a human powered pedal car . until then people wont accept a pedal car as easy for human transportation .