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and many other things take on thing too

http://www.electric-bikes.com/bikes/folders.html

With newer Lithium Ion batteries, the penalty has gotten a lot better. But the Giant LaFree I rode specifically weighed in at around 75lbs. 45-50 more than a regular bike.

Here is a recent list of some of the elec bike offerings and kits. Addon kit weights range from ~28-50 lbs.

I like elec bikes. But have never really seen a net gain over just pedaling.

As to speed, it will be do 40 MPH on the track except when at a station.

Yeah, monorail is far superior to LRT.

A lot of research has been put into Personal Rapid Transit, which is expected to cost an order of magnitude less than monorail to build per mile, because it's so much smaller and lighter.

This page and this page show the cost comparison.

Read more about PRT studies and research here and here.

In fact, the ENV is a fuel-cell powered motorbike, and it's coming to a store near you in 2006. It's expected to sell for $6000 to $8000, and runs for four hours with a top speed of 80 km/hour.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/08/08 02_050802_fuelcellcycle.html

Now let's go shopping for an equivalent electric motorcycle: http://www.electric-bikes.com/motorcys.htm

Hmm, see anything there with 320 km of range? They all seem to die after a maximum of 20-50 miles (32 to 80 km).

Of couse, no one I know has hydrogen to fill the ENV with, but I understand that you can buy a hydrogen generator that will fill the tank for 25 cents. Maybe these new-fangled fool cells aren't as far off as you think.

I've been seeing the inventor and his "Taxi 2000" (now SkyWeb) display at the Minnesota State Fair for years. I always wondered why this system wasn't adopted due to its obvious place as a transportation analogue to the internet (i.e., a packet switching-like transportation system).

Instead, the State of Minnesota built a single "circuit" transportation corridor in the form of light rail and to date has invested $715M for only 12 miles of track! (...and this corridor is one of the least congested and traveled corridors making such a huge, inefficient investment all the more curious).

If this Personal Rapid Transit website cost estimates are to be believed, then that same $715M in cost would have resulted in 47.6 miles of track (using their high estimate of $15M per mile) which would've provided significantly more transportation relief in Minneapolis/St. Paul than a singular corridor deployment of a light rail system.

Kind of reminds me of stories my Dad told me about when the City of Minneapolis & St. Paul allegedly dumped streetcars in favor of buses see Conspiracy on this page. Even as a young man he was puzzled by the fact that the "circuits" of the streetcars were already built so the perceived efficiency of the "packet switching" buses seemed like a waste. The reasons for tossing out streetcars had nothing to do with logic but rather economics for the motor companies.

When we go to the State Fair and see this SkyWeb display year-after-year, my 79 year old Dad is just as puzzled as he was back then when he thinks about why we're not investing in this obvious efficient transportation system vs. throwing away huge sums on light rail focused on singular corridors.

Citizens For Personal Rapid Transit

Personal Rapid Transit (PRT)

Austin Citizens for Personal Rapid Transit (ACPRT)

Just to get you started....

(Slashdot wouldn't accept this one...)
Personal Rapid Transit Index Pag
http://faculty.washington.edu/~jbs/itrans/PRT /

I'm sure you're sick of the "why don't you just bike, fattie?" responses, so for a change of pace I thought I'd give you some useful info.
I've been researching electric bikes myself, as I live in Oakland -- and yes, I'm a fattie too. I can manage the flat bits pretty well, but the hills out here are killer.
One really useful page with lots of links to various manufacturers and honest opinions by actual users is http://electric-bikes.com/others-b.htm#Elebike%20H ub%20Motor%20Kit -- some of the links are broken, but mostly it's got good info. A good FAQ is here: http://www.peltzer.net/ebike/PA_FAQ.htm
As I have a recumbent, a front-wheel system won't work for me. And as I have a drum brake, I need a friction drive. I ended up deciding on Palmer Industries (http://www.palmerind.com/pwrkit.htm). Their product line kinda resembles the Zap system, only they have more mounting options. Plus they're small and friendly. I talked for about a half hour with the engineer, who I think is the husband of the saleswoman -- it feels like a real "mom & pop" organization. They also have several bikes and trikes available.
As for being sweaty, I agree that you should bring a change of clothes, and I find that baby-wipes are great for a quick cleanup when there's no shower available.
Ignore the nimrods who just want to tear you down. It's great that you're looking into the e-bike thing. You don't have to be a triathlete, and doing some of the peddling will definitely help you get in shape, and the motor will help you with the bits that push your limits. An e-bike is far more ecofriendly than a car, and maybe a good stepping stone to "pure" biking. Or maybe not, and that's fine too.

Those already exist, kinda. They have regenerative breaking on some models to put power back in the battery when you hit the brakes when going down hill.

None of them actually store energy while you just pedal though, as far as I'm aware.

I don't know if I've seen anything that stores energy from pedaling (b/c when you're riding you really don't want something dragging on the wheel & slowing you up). There were some kits that, I think recharged during breaking, but from what I remember because of the light weight of bikes (?), the amount of energy gained from this wasn't too great.

Do check out electric-bikes.com, it's an interesting website. I actually purchased plans to make a Slipstream Electric Bicycle, but it's a bit too much for me in both the money and being-able-to-put-it-together dpts.

Actually, the weight of the bike is roughly 24 lbs. It's using pretty much the same solid-but-heavy stuff Giant uses for their low-end hybrids, but with an additional motor and battery setup. The 39 lb figure does not include the battery, but does include the motor and driving system. 15 lbs for a motor with real torque and a pressure-sensitive drivetrain isn't that much, really.

There are actually some excellent heavier motorcross electric bicycles, though I can't seem to find the link right now, that hit 40 MPH. Even in the realm of regular cycling, you have the freeride bikes that are up in the 30 lbs range.

Furthermore, weight isn't the be-all-end-all of cycling. As you mentioned, the bike goes from 1/6th to 1/3rd of the weight of the rider. That means the mass of the system goes from being roughly 170 lbs to 190 lbs... a total increase of about 10%. That number is a little deceptive, because the nimbleness of the rider + bike system is altered by having more mass on the bike, but it really isn't that bad if the bike is driving the rider.

Quality (wheel) bearings aren't all they're cracked up to be. A high-quality drivetrain and average bearings will save more kinetic energy then high-quality bearings and an average drivetrain. I always find it amusing when people put 200 dollar hubs on tires that have any kind of tread pattern. A 100 dollar pair of Michelins will shave a lot more time. Besides, the top-of-the-line is intended to be stripped apart, cleaned, and re-assembled between every race. Without that, they break down quickly. Ever see a Dura-Ace bottom bracket of a weekend cyclist?

Top speed really isn't a function of the quality of bearings at all... roll time is. But in this case roll time is increased by the additional mass. Hill-climbing likewise isn't about higher-pressure tires, but torque. For this bike a pair of $10 toe clips would go a long way to greatly increasing the hill-climbing abilities, top speed, and cruising speed of this bike.

If he hasn't already, the original poster should visit electric-bikes.com. Good resource of available toys, albeit a little out of date.

You say you've ruled out bikes, but have you looked into recumbent bikes as an alternative? They're a lot less effort than the normal kind, and you can get varying levels of weatherproofing too. I presume you don't need *that* much where you are because those mini vehicles don't look like they'd be cosy at 30 below.

There's also the electric bike option, and you can even get bikes that are both recumbent and electric, which would really take the strain away.

You should also look into working from home of course - the most economic journeys are the ones you don't make.

Funny what happens when your amazing balancing anti-walking machine runs out of juice. And once you've picked yourself up off your ass/face, you get to lug your 90lb, $5000 machine someplace safe.

The humble bicycle, as if there was any doubt, clearly reigns supreme in this class of transportation. For getting around town comfortably, get a comfortable bike. For working around the warehouse, get a work bike or trike. And if you would like the electric assistance without your vehicle becoming useless when the battery runs out, get an electric bike. It's just that easy people.

ok then, how about this: you own your own tube capsule. You have a sort of offline station in your neighbourhood which you drive your capsule to in a conventionaly way. You put your capsule into the airlock and its wheels retract. The capsule asks you "where do you want to go?" You tell it. The air comes out of the tube in the offline station. You see green lights. Then you hold onto your retinas as the capsule goes to 300mph and your little fuzzy dice start pointing towards the rear windshield...

kinda like in hover carnage except without all the death and stuff...

You get the independence of a "car" that you can also drive into the subway and link-up in wolfpack trains.

--

My favorite link for this sort of thing is this PRT page. (And on a side note, I think hanging the cars makes more sense than riding on top of the rails). It's a good idea but it will take some getting used to, and will require mass-production to become truly cheap.

A finite resource will always be completely consumed so long as there are no limitations on the consumption of that resource. A resource in short supply becomes expensive, while a resource in good supply becomes cheap, and a resource in oversupply is still snapped up by anyone who thinks they can use it.

This is true of transportation as well. No matter how much road you build, someone will always find a way to use it. The only limiting factor is that people don't like to travel for more than an hour. When highways are built suburbia springs up around them. When the Long Island Railroad was built, the areas around the stations w/in an hour's travel quickly became heavily developed. Building roads does not make travel easier - it just enables more of it. Thus the most important factor in a transportation system is not how much it can carry, but how well it performs at peak capacity. Railroads, and presumably PRT, may become crowded the traffic continues to flow. But auto roads perform miserably above a certain traffic level - some sort of breakdown always occurs and brings huge chunks of the system to a standstill.

The first key to making PRT a reality is to make it effective enough and cheap enough to allow near door-to-door travel as fast or faster than cars. If people have to take a car to get to the PRT station, they will figure that they might as well drive all the way to their destination. The second key is to make the system strong and flexible enough to allow changes in how it is used (like cargo transport, and automatic delivery).

I'm not looking for an electric powered car, because most of my gas consumption is related to short trips around town - trips where most of the time I'm not carrying any other passengers. I live in L.A. where weather related issues aren't much of a problem for me, so naturally I've had my eye on this thing for the past few months. Looks like the perfect thing to tool around town with, as well as deal with the parking situation here.

I'll keep the gas powered vehicle for long trips where I can get the most MPG.