544 what if?

Why are mobile homes and ebikes having a moment together? 

America rose to greatness with the car. Fossil fuels have both energized our economy and our population growth. 

And for the past couple decades, one could argue that America has flatlined along with global fossil fuel supplies. 

Sure, fracking gave us a bump, but even the tar sands will be dry in three decades.

So why are mobile homes, RVs, "van life" and ebikes and micromobility sharing this moment?

Because they're both exploiting an existing resource in a new way. We built up an incredible road infrastructure in the past one hundred years of fossil fuel abundance, and both ebikes and mobile homes are looking at that resource differently and saying, "Hmmm... What if we..."

At top is a trailer with a bunch of sleeping pods in it. "Hmmm... What if we turned those parking spots into homes?"

This isn't exactly an ebike graph, or even current. But there are a few numbers of note. 

As of 2019, mobile homes housed about 4% of Americans, but were 10% of new houses.

Also, they cost about half as much per square foot as a stick built home. 

Since we're going rather far afield in this Bike & Battery, why not more train talk?

The past few days I've been reading up about Amtrak, getting ready to make a cross country trip in a few weeks. 

The trip is going to take three and a half days. My biggest regret is they took away dining service for coach customers. The dining car experience used to be my favorite part of Amtrak travel. This time I'm bringing most of my food, and I guess I'll have to find other awkward social situations.

What would it be like if this was a ten hour trip rather than 80?

Much more popular is my guess. Not that the train isn't currently popular. Despite all the negative press, good luck trying to buy tickets less than a month in advance.

Man, we're not doing so great on the ebike content here. Let's see if we can fix that...

The big deal about this ebike is it rides like a regular bike when you run out of juice.

The big deal of this emoto is it's a vintage boxer turned into an emoto!

Thinking differently. This is the  landspeeder of electric scooters. 

And this one lets you use the battery as a UPS. (Universal power supply...aka, you can plug other stuff into it, like lights or your phone.) This is apparently a first on a bike.

Amazon is going to trial the same ebike vans as UPS in England.

And to bring it full circle, yes, ebikes could be fitted to ride on train tracks.

But wait, that's not all!

Stanford students have baked up this lens that will direct the sun onto a solar panel with 90% efficiency all day long, without moving the panel. 

Tesla rolled out a me-too solar charging trailer. It doesn't do much.

And on the other side of the ego spectrum...

Getting too big for your britches is a Chinese billionaire's nightmare.

But what are you going to do if you're just killing it?

Avoid the limelight and keep innovating.

No, really, avoid the limelight.

There's plenty of company coming along, don't look at me.

Seriously, chairman, there's plenty to go around.

We're not done yet.

Now that gas is expensive, and everyone is thinking, "well, I'll just buy an electric car" there's a new reality appearing.

Electric cars are expensive, too.

What if we had a technology that was less expensive/resource intensive than an electric car, but still allowed for mass mobility?

What if?