Originally Posted by jeff-o
So, human powered vehicles will surely be limited to bicycles and perhaps fringe experiments.....
Tell that to the chinese, the indians or the africans: they move stuff you wouldn't believe with their bikes. The only difference between a 500hp truck and a 0.25hp utility bike is speed, but they'll both get there eventually on short (and not so short) distances. Not all people of the world have chosen to rely exclusively on motorized vehicles to get around you know. Your way of thinking is strictly cultural and makes sense only in our rich western worlds (for now), but most of the rest of the world knows better.
I reckon there are four excellent reasons why HPVs will become a huge market eventually (including goods delivery, people moving as well as regular personal transportation): (1) bikes are super-cheap (in poor countries, they're often the only alternative), (2) they don't use gasoline which is getting scarcer and pricier every year, (3) they offer a great answer to urban mobility in dense gridlocked cities and (4) they can provide useful exercise for fat westerners (they lose weight as well as get somewhere, as opposed to pedalling uselessly in a gym room).
Eventually, I think the price of gas and insurance, and endless traffic jams, will force car-dependent societies to rediscover common sense and start using bicycles again where they're useful and economically sound.