FINE Mobile Twike

FINE Mobile Twike FINE Mobile Twike
First Drive Review

While awaiting delivery of your new Maybach, consider tiding yourself over with another German exotic that will reduce your carbon footprint and your fat roll.

The $26,000 Twike, made by FINE Mobile of Germany, is a human/electric hybrid tricycle powered by a combination of electricity and pedal effort. It looks like an ultralight airplane with its wings removed but is classified in the U.S. as a motorcycle. The low-slung, two-seat, 500-pound Twike will cruise at 45 mph for up to 60 miles on its 280-cell, 360-volt nickel-metal hydride battery pack, or 120 miles with some foot grease applied through the five-speed bicycle sprocket.

“We think this is the kind of vehicle the Wright brothers would have built had they stuck with bicycles,” says Mike Patterson, Twike’s director of North American operations (www.twike.us). The company has sold about 800 Twikes, mostly in Europe. Now, “we’re trying to get America off its ass.”

Pull off the detachable clear-plastic side windows and unsnap the canvas roof, then drop into the recumbent seats. The body is made of painted thermoplastic, the skeleton of welded aluminum tubing. Black carpet finishes off the cabin. Terror alert: The seating position puts your cranium at about the same height as the fog lights on a Lincoln Navigator.

A combination digital speedometer/battery-charge meter serves as the rudimentary gauge. A dogleg joystick sprouts from the middle, basically a rudder with the turn-signal, throttle, and drive-mode controls (forward, reverse, and pedal) crowding the wooden pistol handle.

A rocker switch governs speed. Driving is simple: Depress the top of the rocker to move forward via the 7-hp electric motor, depress it more to accelerate, and depress it until it clicks to activate the cruise control. Hit the rocker’s bottom to change the motor into a generator and slow down using regenerative braking.

There’s also an old-fashioned coaster brake activated by backpedaling.

Steering is more laborious. The joystick takes some arm strength to operate and gets Nautilus-heavy at slow speeds.

Pedaling is even harder if, like almost everyone in America, you’re grossly out of shape. After a half-mile of running at moped speed, the lungs are burning and the quadriceps are screaming.

Push-button driving is a lot more fun, although the Twike accelerates slowly without human assistance and needs about three hours on the 220-volt house charger to fully recuperate. At least there are pedal sets for both the driver and passenger, but the Twike is not an ideal first-date vehicle. Save the Maybach for that.