Human Powered Vehicle (West Coast) Challenge

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.