A friend of mine sent in a link to this new electric bike concept from New Zealand - the YikeBike. Its a little expensive at the moment (though not compared to a high-end road bike or mountain bike I guess).

Road.cc has a review - Yike bike - is the future a folding, electric, penny farthing?.

Let's play a word association game: electric bike, penny farthing, folder, carbon fibre, Porsche… hard to build a mental image from that lot, but one day… that list will immediately make you think “Yike Bike”. Maybe.

What we have here is a folding electric bike that weighs less than 10Kg with a range of about 10Km and that is as easy to charge as a laptop and not that much bigger when folded, which the team behind it hope will one day be the transport of choice of the style-conscious buisnessman or urban commuter for the short hops from penthouse apartment to downtown office. And as for the “Yike” – well, that's what you say the first time your ride it, or at least the cleaned-up version.

This is a guest post from Robin Lovelace (lovelacerobin@yahoo.com), a graduate student at the University of York, UK. As part of his Environmental Science and Management MSc Robin was asked to pick a policy area and discuss how it could adapt to climate change. Due in part to the Oil Drum, he decided to include peak oil in the discussion, with a reluctant ‘OK’ from Professor Mike Ashmore. Robin is a qualified bicycle mechanic, writing part-time for Interclimate, starting an interdisciplinary PhD in energy research next year and wants to save the world.

This is a guest post from Community Action for Sustainable Transport Inc

Reducing the fuel excise and Federal investment in roads will not make travel affordable.

This is the message coming from a coalition of more than 20 transport and environmental groups who have signed off on an open letter to PM Kevin Rudd (see below), urging the Federal government to invest heavily in public transport to reduce the impacts of rising petrol prices.

“The Federal government’s urban transport priority must be to create a public transport system that takes people where they need to go, when they need to be there. More than anything else we need better alternatives to the car,” said Tristan Peach, spokesperson for Community Action for Sustainable Transport QLD (CAST).

This is the first in a series of posts co-authored with Phoenix and Matt Mushalik. In my previous post I took a high-level look at solutions for Australia. This post starts the process of iterating down from the high-level view. It assumes that we will not be able to instantly convert to sustainable solutions - we need to get there in steps. This article is co-authored with Phoenix, a qualified mechanical engineer who has been working in the infrastructure construction industry for over 28 years. He has held senior manangement positions with a number of organisations delivering projects to key energy providers. These projects have included oil refineries, power stations, LNG plants and gas processing facilities. He currently works as the National Manager – Power Generation for a major Australian construction group.

Action Plan

1.0 INTRODUCTION: THE IMPORTANCE OF TRANSPORT

Transport is critical to the functioning of our society. If Australia’s transportation stopped tomorrow, then most of us would be starving in the dark a few weeks later.

Yet this is exactly the scenario that is emerging. The vast majority of transport in Australia is fuelled by oil. Without oil, transport stops. And we are being warned from every direction that our oil supplies are no longer secure.

This scenario will be the most serious threat experienced by our society since the Second World War. This is the first in a series of discussions that look at ways to secure Australia’s oil based energy security into the future. Over the next few weeks we will look at short and long term goals for personal and industrial transport.