Bike Hugger 

Ecocab

The ecocab is an electric assist pedicab / rolling bill board.

excellent, thanks for the link.

Now, has anybody taken a ride in one?  Or better yet, has anyone actually driven one?

I was driving one last summer and will be this year too. The pedicab I drove had exactly the same body as you show on image but no drum brakes. The “drum” at the front is 250W electric motor without gears powered by two 17Amh batteries each 12V connected together to give 24V.

It has double really heavy brembo disc brakes (I assume from motorbike). As for bicycle parts It has got standard 21 gears and two chains with differential.

Top speed with people and only electric on 12km/h, but if you give it a go, you can go up to 30km/h but not for long. My record is downhill on the hilly road outside the town 48km/h but was scared to death and never more.

It has perfect turning circle, pretty much like bicycle and because of its weight you can lift the top while standing in the driver position and move it from side to side even in very tight streets.

It has got some disadvantages: no reverse gear (if you want to reverse, you need to immitate Fred Flinstone) the weight of the whole booldy thing (alone it weights 250kg, add to this your weight and 2 blocks at the back and imagine even slightest hill). Yes, the biggest disadvantage is the hills because without electric you will brake chain or your legs before you climb one.

Apart from that it is highly addictive and I just cant stop… Tomorrow I am taking one to bicycle meeting just for fun to drive it on the snow :)

I strongly suggest you get out there and ask just to test drive it. If someone wants that from me I am glad to let them enjoy the thing :)

Btw. I am from Slovakia and yes, they are much popular in the Europe mostly by businessman trying to cross the strongly conjested city.

PS: sorry for such long comment

I am not sure if the canadian company is related soemhow to the german compani who is doing the Berlin Velotaxi:

VeloTaxi

They all look very similar - I saw them when we visited Amsterdam, but didn’t get any photos. They looked just like the ones Mark saw in Japan.

These are the Veloform Velotaxi, more familiarly know in America as BicyTaxi.  We started running these in NYC and spread around in some national markets which you can follow on the bicytaxi.com site.

They are actually dual hydraullic disc brakes (not drum) with a small 250w electric motor (upgradable to 350w—still under the 1hp limit for consumer products).  These bikes were the subject of some legislative debate in NYC as to whether they should be allowed on the road.

Feel free to email me about the time I spent working as a mechanic for a fleet of 40+ of these.

twopinkwheels at gmail dot com

That’s awesome.  If I head to NYC this year, I’m definitely looking you guys up.  I would love to do a video podcast of the taxis in use.