Tricycles, velomobiles and electric carts arise in automobile replacement solutions to better meet mobility needs, in town as in the countryside.
by Olivier Razemon
Four wheels, a pedals, an electric motor, a fairly high steering wheel, a plastic carcass that was stored with tape … Here is the “Véloto”, bicycle, which Hélène and Michel Jacquemain, who live in Castelnau-Pégayrols (Aveyron, 340 inhabitants), borrow to do their shopping in Millau, 20 kilometers from their home. The “beast”, as they call it, is made by a craftsman from Carcassonne. “We wanted a vehicle adapted to our trips. The bike, even electric, is insufficient on the roads of Aveyron, too slow and not powerful enough. The car, even comfortable, is far too heavy. Like a picker hammer there where tweezers would be enough, “explains Hélène Jacquemain, laughing.
At the other end of France, in Soissons (Aisne), Arnaud Sivert moves with one or the other of his two vehicles: “A lying bicycle, which has made 60,000 kilometers, and a bicycle “, sort of electric bicycle covered with an oblong plastic shell, 30,000 kilometers on the clock. “Between a classic bike and a bed, the energy consumed is divided by two!” Says this Geo Foundou, who himself tinkered with his rolling objects. To get to Laon, the department’s prefecture, he needs an hour and quarter, and he takes “three hours dragging a little” to join the capital.
In Paris, Patrick Tonnelier, former merchant in winter sports station, designed EV4 eight years ago, an engine quadricycle, without pedals, which bowed in the corners. A sort of electric mini-tank, a fifty meter long, which allows it to go everywhere “.
benevolence of motorists
All these followers of sweet mobility ensure a certain benevolence on the part of the motorists which they meet or who double them. “People film us, ask questions,” testifies Hélène Jacquemain.
it abounds. In cities and on country roads, we now see suitable bikes, carved tricycles, large scooters, pedal quadricycles, etc. The inventors, monomaniacs of their favorite object, rarely approved to be produced on a large scale, are not afraid to pass for sweet crazy.
All these non -identifiable rolling objects are part of the same category, that of “intermediate vehicles”, say the engineer Aurélien Bigo and the economist Frédéric Héran, who contributed to a number of the journal Urban Transports devoted to this subject , in September 2022. “The weight of vehicles, positioned between the bicycle and the car, does not exceed 600 kilos”, explains Aurélien Bigo. These objects, which also include bicycles and cars without a license, are called upon, according to them, to replace the classic car for everyday journeys. The models that manufacturers produce today “are no longer adapted to the real needs of users, because they are too large, too expensive, too fast, too consumer of resources”, notes the engineer. The SUVs, initially designed for dirt roads and crossings of the desert, clutter the streets of cities, to the point that several municipalities are thinking of regulating its use.
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