In urban transportation, electric is quickly becoming king, and the Johanson3 line of electric trikes are riding right into the competition. The Johanson3 scooters sport quite a few features that make them different from just about everything else that’s out there at the moment.

The scooters’ designation as “cargo bikes” indicates the first difference. These aren’t made to simply tool around town on; they can actually function as useful vehicles that will let you get your books, groceries, or even a passenger from one point to another. And if you are using the trike as your “last mile” transpo, it detaches into two parts and folds up for easy stashing in a car or train.

The back seat allows a passenger to sit comfortably while holding onto conveniently placed handles. In the front, the driver has an adjustable seat that can be used for sitting or for standing/leaning. The Johanson3 folks say that this feature is designed to make it more comfortable to ride the scooters while riding a skirt, kimono, sari, or other garment that might make riding a traditional sit-down scooter difficult.

If you don’t have any stuff or people to haul around, the rear seat can also be used as a cargo space. There are several different models from the company, each with a different weight capacity: the Rhino is the workhorse of the bunch with a payload capacity of 660 pounds (or two rear passengers), and the Urban 2+ can carry up to 485 pounds.

It’s hard to gauge just how energy efficient the scooters will be since they haven’t yet been released and speed requirements differ from one country to the next. Twin hub-mounted motors in the back propel the trike along with zero emissions; if you’re riding hard and keeping it around the top speed of approximately 28 MPH, you’ll get between 35 and 40 miles from each full charge. Pre-orders are being taken now with prices ranging from $2,260 for the kids’ version to $3900 for the X-Plorer Cargo Bike.

The post Electric Trikes Hefty Enough to Carry Cargo + Passengers first appeared on Gajitz.

One of the reasons that activities like skydiving and paragliding are so popular is that humankind has been trying to fly since the first time one of us saw a bird take off. What an amazing feeling it is to zoom through the air, heart pounding, while watching the ground so far away below. The ParaMoto Trike concept is a whimsical kind of vehicle that would let you zip through the sky and then zip around on the streets once you land.

Designed by motorcycle and flying enthusiast Zvezdan Nedeljković, the ParaMoto Trike is part scooter and part ultralight paraglider. Imagine zooming toward a cliff in your scooter as fast as it will go, then speeding up rather than slowing down as you get closer to the edge. As your wheels leave the ground, an updraft catches your canopy and you go sailing, enjoying the view and your comfortable seat.

A scooter like this may or may not be possible in reality, but the designer’s renderings make us hopeful that someone will figure it out one day. Fitting an engine, even a small electric one, into a vehicle this tiny would probably mean that its top speed wouldn’t be fast enough for a really heart-stopping launch. But it’s bound to be at least as fast as a human, so it’ll do for paragliding and then slowly making your way home on the road after you land.

The post Let’s Go Fly a Trike: Awesome Scooter/Glider Concept first appeared on Gajitz.

If you had awesome parents, you probably had a Green Machine when you were a kid. If your parents were less awesome, you probably loathed some bratty kid who always liked to rub your face in the fact that he had one and you didn’t. Hopefully you still have that kid’s address, because now that you’re a grownup you can show up on this bad boy and get some well-deserved revenge.

The Green Machine for big kids was designed and built by Parker Brothers Choppers, and it’s way cooler than any chunk of plastic you used to lust after. It’s got an 80 cubic inch Harley-Davidson Evo engine and a gigantic 45-inch front wheel. Just like the original (pictured above) it steers with dual joysticks.

The top speed reached on this monster is 50 MPH so far. If not for the rear tires it could have been certified street legal, but Parker Brothers crew aren’t concerned with that – they’re going for the Guinness Book of World Records title for the world’s largest wheel on a powered trike.

The post Green Wheeled Monster: Badass Powered Trike for Big Kids first appeared on Gajitz.

To a certain point, eccentricity is what drives innovation. Nothing new ever came of doing the same old thing forever. And that’s why, even when a new design looks totally insane, we’re all about supporting the people brave enough to put those ideas out there. The Ex trike (“ex” as in “eccentric”) is definitely insane-looking but also just cool enough to make us totally wish we had one.

Designed by Nils Ferber in cooperation with Sebastian Auray, Ruben Faber and Ludolf von Olderhausen, the Ex looks like a mean racing machine and is powered by two electric screwdrivers which can accelerate the driver up to about 16 MPH. The driver lays in a downward-facing position with arms outstretched, putting him in a terrifying configuration not far from the pavement below.

Steering is done not with handlebars, but with the driver’s body. He twists his spine and moves his lower body to change the vehicle’s course. The interaction of human body with machine is a recurring theme in this design: the appearance of the trike was meant to recall a human skeleton and its exposed organs. It kind of looks like that’s what the rider will become with just a small wrong move on this danger machine, but that’s the kind of excitement that gets the blood pumping.

The post Back-Bending Bike Delivers Terrifying Motor-Driven Ride first appeared on Gajitz.