2 Wheels Maybe

Taken on the Texas Tech campus Earlier this week I posted a pic (on Mesquite Hugger ) of a little electric Vantage GreenVan that D and I encountered as we were dropping off our recycling. And, as per usual, it sparked a lot of curiosity about oddball electric vehicles for me. So, I soon found a Vantage trio for sale on the Dallas Craigslist. They're in Aubrey, Texas, a little northeast of Denton. Woohoo! $1333 each! If only the little guys were fully street legal and a bit faster... Two of three on one trailer! I would not call them pretty, but, oh, the places you'll go fossil free! While I was on the DFW CL, I had to poke around a bit and saw this electro-pumpkin just east of Dallas. I've seen it for sale before, but it always needed work to get it going. Now it's a runner and a runner at a pretty reasonable price.  Sure, it won't haul as much as three Vantages, but it'll haul at least twice as fast and will incite ra...

From  Mr. Rogers Neighborhood  to the  almighty CitiCar , one of our favorite sidelines around here at the Mesquite Hugger/2 Wheels Maybe Command Center is the quest to learn more about EVs from our not-so-distant past. Today's installment started right down in the heart of Texas - Austin, the home of Jet Industries. What a sexy line-up ( Find it here ) For me, the fascination started with the Electravan. The tiny van got me. I love funky vans, I love tiny cars, I love EVs - the Electravan is all of those! And there're two added bonuses: it's street legal and it's from my home state. Yep, the Electravan and me - we be toit! Learn more about the ElectraVan on Generation High Output (Truth be told, this is the vintage electric car I want the most.) A short Jet Industries history and anecdotal report on DIY Electric Car The only one of these I've seen up for sale Jet Industries on EVAlbum (Page 1 of 4) A Jet ...

It seems that the people who read this blog [I am very thankful for all four of you!] prefer posts that include cargo bikes, electric bikes, or klunkers. So, I thought to myself, Why not feature all the electric cargo klunkers I can find? And I started the search.  The only one I had stored in my memory was available at Luna Cycle a few years ago... It was a beast, but I haven't seen it on their site for quite a while. You could buy it fully built or you could order a bare frame. For what it was, it was quite cheap and really wild.. As I kept searching, I decided it would just be smarter to seek out turn-key electric klunkers . And that didn't pan out too well either. So I searched for electric cruiser bikes and got a lot closer. Two of the first klunker-ish electric bikes were from the same company - Vintage Electric Bikes. I've been a fan of VEB since I saw this video back in 2014. They are beautiful and powerful bikes but I seldom write about ...

[Imaginary Fossil Free Friday bonus points for anyone who visits all six clickable links.] Do you ever feel like you're looking in the wrong direction? Maybe you're walking along looking at a bug in the grass while not noticing the alligator walking down the street ? I do that sort of thing a lot. Every day I find my nose pointed in the wrong direction to see what everyone else is gawking at. Snagit Kia! I want the little blue beast! Kia put out a new electric car ad this week. And it made me happy until the plot turned and I realized I had been looking at the bug in the grass while they had the (really cool) alligator parked in the  garage. See the video here I saw the little blue car and immediately started having Logan's Run fantasies - I've had a lot more of those since visiting the fountains in Fort Worth . But I saw the wedge front end and was thrilled to see a modern incarnation of my beloved Citicar . And I saw the digital readouts i...

It's no surprise to regular readers that I'm a bit obsessed with cargo bikes. In my regular forays into the internet cargo bike jungle, I kept running across images of the Portal Longtail Cargo bike. I think it was even the first cargo bike I ever saw with a PTO. But every time I started to add it to the list of desirable longtails, I remembered there was one big problem - you could not buy one in the states or have one shipped over. Fortunately, that has changed. The main Portal site Good news, US cargo bike fans! You can now buy one stateside for $875 and get free shipping! (That's $124 less than the awesome Yuba Mundo Classic!) And there's a philanthropic BOGO as a huge bonus for us save-the-world types. What's this philanthropic BOGO thing? Toms Shoes Philanthropy Like Toms (and Bobs) shoes, when you buy a Portal Cargo Bike, the company donates a second bike to a Nepalese entrepreneur to help them in business. So, when you throw a le...

When I was kid growing up in Odessa, I never realized how cool it was that there were so many nifty old microcars around. (But I always thought they were the coolest.) I remember seeing one Messerschmitt driving, I located two BMW Isettas in backyards, and I drooled every time I saw the two Austin Minis. The first Mini was a Brtitish racing green Clubman Panel (across the street from Bowie Jr. High) and the second was an old Mini Cooper in full race mode - BBS wheels, fender flares, rally lights, and a racy three-tone paint job (blue, yellow, white). It even had racing numbers on the doors and lots of stickers in the quarter windows. (Strangely, it was also across the street from a junior high - Bonham.) So cool. To this day, I still very badly want an old mini - but these days I want a classic electric Mini . That's not to say I don't like modern Minis. I've test driven a handful of them and enjoyed them all, but they have not yet become as (or more) appealin...

Normally, I like to write about odd and unexpected vehicles, but today I'm writing about a rare and unexpected occurrence - a reader not only used the comment feature but also asked a couple of questions. This is exciting stuff! The Pigeon Projects (Where I Talk too Much) My e-Vespa Years ago, I converted a vintage Vespa scooter to run on batteries. I replaced the original running gear with a rear hub motor and replaced the fuel system with a 48 volt battery pack. And it was mostly a success. But I made one minor miscalculation - I ended up with a scooter that would run only 28 miles per hour. And Lubbock is pretty much a 40 mph town. Even on residential streets, West Texans have little use for dorks inconsiderate enough to run less than 35. The Vespa has been ridden very little, but no one has run it over! I learned then that the biggest drawback to using a hub motor is that the only practical way to add speed is to add more voltage.  But I had already spent a l...