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Hybrid Motorcycle Car: EcomobileMotorcycle car hybrid the Ecomobile looking to become the next big thing in personal transportation.
Dan Whitfield has seen the future of personal transportation, and it looks like a stubby missile on two wheels and goes like one, too, depending on your tolerance for drawing attention from police cruisers.
It's called an Ecomobile, or Eco, and it's basically a motorcycle enclosed in a hard shell that makes it suitable for riding year-round, in any kind of weather short of Buffalo in January.
And since the shell is made of Kevlar carbon fiber -- yes, Kevlar's the stuff bullet-proof vests are made of -- and is three times stronger than a car's, it may appeal to those who see a motorcycle as nothing more than a rolling coffin with tailpipes.
"I see it as a much more humane motorcycle," says Whitfield, 59, an instructor at York Technical Institute who is also the sole U.S. service agent for Eco.
"If you're driving a normal motorcycle and you strike a deer at night, you're in trouble. (With) this vehicle, if you strike another vehicle, your survivability chances are 200 percent better than on a motorcycle."
As we know, though, history is replete with all sorts of gizmos heralded as the future of personal transportation that never caught on.
Just a few years ago, the Segway, a self-balancing, electric-powered
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31/1/2005 | Viewed 12,848 time(s)
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