Looking like a cross between a pedaled dump truck and a modern day motor carriage, the new Intelectra from German startup Dynamic Drives Giessen is a seriously muscular cargo mover for cities.
It’s definitely less efficient than a standard well-tuned bike. On the other hand, I’m guessing you can plug it in to charge the battery and so you the rider don’t need to supply all of the energy to drive the thing. Plus it’s going to be excellent for hills because you don’t need to supply all the climbing power. If this were a pure manual crank vehicle you would absolutely hate it on the first hill! Pedaling 1200lbs up a hill sounds like an absolute nightmare!
No doubt. But it’s pretty unusual compared to pedal assist. With pedal assist, your leg work doesn’t lose any power in the transfer to the wheels, and you still get all the benefits of this system.
Perhaps the reason they didn’t go with pedal assist is due to the sheer amount of torque needed to pull that much weight. I could see them not wanting to have a huge gear train to be able to get the pedal power into the correct part of the torque band to both accelerate and maintain pulling power.
It’s definitely less efficient than a standard well-tuned bike. On the other hand, I’m guessing you can plug it in to charge the battery and so you the rider don’t need to supply all of the energy to drive the thing. Plus it’s going to be excellent for hills because you don’t need to supply all the climbing power. If this were a pure manual crank vehicle you would absolutely hate it on the first hill! Pedaling 1200lbs up a hill sounds like an absolute nightmare!
No doubt. But it’s pretty unusual compared to pedal assist. With pedal assist, your leg work doesn’t lose any power in the transfer to the wheels, and you still get all the benefits of this system.
Perhaps the reason they didn’t go with pedal assist is due to the sheer amount of torque needed to pull that much weight. I could see them not wanting to have a huge gear train to be able to get the pedal power into the correct part of the torque band to both accelerate and maintain pulling power.