[python] Electrified!

Siwmae bechgyn (Hiya boys) and any ladies who may stray into this list (Don't seem to be many yet),
When not lurking on the Python list, or babbling to myself in on odd ancient language, I surf several other fields of particular interest to me. One of these is the just-emerging-above-the-surface giant ice-berg of Peak Oil.
Energy Bulletin and The Oil Drum are two of my preferred sites. I've just picked up this from today's TOD additions: http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/3275#more.
On yer mettle, lads! If us recumbent wizards can't get even better efficiency than those inventive guys with the 500 we should hang our heads in shame. Having said that though, you have to admire the huge increases in fuel efficiency that they've made possible just with a bit of 'off-the-shelf' technology and some ingenuity. It's worth reading right through the comments at the end of the item, too. The TOD crowd are intelligent, well-informed above the average, and inventive.
But it strikes me that if Ugo and friends can get this kind of excellent result with the weight of a Fiat 500, think what the bent folk could get with a seriously alleweder Python velo!
I know that there are electrically-assisted velos around already. Just thought that Pythononauts should be up there with the pathfinders.
Jurgen's initiative has opened up a new field in biking, I think. It's a sort of rule of thumb that whatever inventive bikers are dreaming up now was already done somewhere about a century ago, and subsequently forgotten. But was there ever a Python before? I think this might be a genuinely new innovation.
Some of you will have picked up my preoccupation with weather-proofing any bike I use. (It rains a lot here, and I don't want to be forced to bike just in the Summer) Also, being an old git, I want to be able to wind myself up long climbs very gently -- ie, slowly. So I muse constantly around the idea of a trike, or a bike with outrigger wheel, or even retractable small stabiliser wheels for standing at lights or creeping uphill. All of this points towards a Python velo.
And though not particularly interested in anything more than pure muscle-drive myself, I know lots of people who would start to look seriously at an ultra-light electrivelo, with or without pedal assist, as the oncoming energy crisis ramps up so hard that even we of the global Pampered Twenty Percent can no longer ignore/deny it. 

Just thought you-all might like to ruminate on this.

Cofion,    RhG
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