There have been a lot of electric vehicles in my world in the last few weeks. Starting with some great new commercial ‘toys’ we have lying about in the Wildfire office. Think scooters and skateboards – the good ones are a lot of fun too and having read around the subject I’m convinced battery powered recreational ride-ons, for able-bodied adults, represent the thin end of a very big trend wedge. Hopefully more about those later in the year.

Then late in June I got a cheap but highly entertaining Chinese e-bike purchased second hand from a man over the river. Why is a fit and healthy cyclist buying a motorised bicycle? Getting road insurance for a lazy teenager (mine) on anything two-wheeled and petrol powered in the UK is pointlessly expensive, and so this low-tech transporter has turned out to be a big hit.  Dear Green Party, so far I count 23 car journeys avoided as a result – not bad eh?  And then there’s this inspirational chap from Sweden who made the tabloids last week with his amazing flying carpet using electric drone motors and regular lithium polymer batteries. There’s something about this video that makes it all seem so real and do-able, so maybe I will.

I’m fundamentally a petrol-head and I was starting to think that with surging popularity in public transport and everyone’s addiction to Uber we’d totally lost the appetite for doing our own thing transport wise, but apparently not. Electric motors are really having a renascence. If proof were needed even my opinions have shifted — I clicked on a link for California’s Zero motorcycles the other day, its online presence is now stalking me round the internet like a bad smell, but I suspect that when the price point reaches a number I consider acceptable, for another completely pointless addition my fleet of vehicles, I’ll be clicking buy-it-now on one of those too, signifying my assimilation to the electric collective.

One final point, although the terrifying compressed air BB machine-gun on this site – (it’s the man from Sweden with the excellent magic carpet again) – is probably not the best use for any ‘maker’s’ skills; some of the other projects and information certainly are. It’s both educational and inspirational for a geek like me. Some of the content is already downloaded for investigation back at my dad-cave and might feature in a future blog here, you never know. One day, I’ll fly away.

@mrshephard

Photo credit: BMF