I wanted something to take the place of driving my car on errands. It just wasn't practical to hitch a trailer to my HPVelotechnik Scorpion trike, so the answer was to sell my Tour Easy and get a Sun EZ3 AX. Next came a Wilderness Energy BL36 hubmotor (400w), a Nashbar trailer, solar panels, MPPT controller and mounting racks for the solar and batts. Work is underway on an enclosure for the trike - call it a fairing, although my first attempt will be to adopt a snow blower cab to use on the trike. If that fails, I'll go coroplast, as I'm a semipro coroplast butcher from a decade ago. In a month's time, I've put on over 400 miles on the rig, ridden it to a basic PV course given by the Will County Forest Preserve District (Illinois) and a ribbon cutting ceremony for a new trail (200 yards of a 26 mile trail - huah!).

All was well until I rode in the rain, thus discovering that the controller was FAR from waterproof, let alone resistant, so, upgrade to a Crystalyte Phoenix 3640 system (amazing how I can justify getting a more powerful system because the old controller doesn't like water) which will allow me to keep up with cars on the road. Total rig weight is 150#, I weigh 240#, so getting on the Scorp seems like riding on a cloud. Picture attached below is Rob (exec. dir. of Chicago Bike Fed.), his son and Diane, also of CBF posing alongside the rig, athough they WERE checking it out just a second before.