Duh???? One horse power?

actually no, technically one hp is tha amount of power used to lift 33000 lb one foot over 1 minute.

"To help sell his steam engines, Watt needed a way of rating their capabilities. The engines were replacing horses, the usual source of industrial power of the day. The typical horse, attached to a mill that grinded corn or cut wood, walked a 24 foot diameter (about 75.4 feet circumference) circle. Watt calculated that the horse pulled with a force of 180 pounds, although how he came up with the figure is not known. Watt observed that a horse typically made 144 trips around the circle in an hour, or about 2.4 per minute. This meant that the horse traveled at a speed of 180.96 feet per minute. Watt rounded off the speed to 181 feet per minute and multiplied that by the 180 pounds of force the horse pulled (181 x 180) and came up with 32,580 ft.-lbs./minute. That was rounded off to 33,000 ft.-lbs./minute, the figure we use today." -- https://www.web-cars.com/math/horsepower.html

It would depend a lot on the horse. Of course we're probably going to use thoroughbred racehorses for our horse/bicycle speed tests. Although a clydesdale ought to be able to put out some good speed if we use some really high gearing to make use of his high strength.

I read the above phrase and immediately got the image of a horse with a standard bicycle seat stuck up it's a$$.

That's just not right. . .

For an actual horse treadle powered vehicle see:
https://fleethorse.com/
and search "naturmobil"
I think a pedal mechanism might be more efficient than a treadle mechanism.

Not meaning to hijack the thread...........

How about a doggie bicycle? Different breed could be used to give different performance characteristics. Sled dogs for long-haul, Greyhounds for drag racing, Borzois for speed and distance. Give each doggie it's own window to stick it's head out, and you could go forever.

Either way, you would need a complicated pedal arrangement. A racing Greyhound spends a lot of time in the air with huge amount of leg extension. My big male hound goes from all four paws almost touching to about 6' between front paw and back paw at full speed.

My issue with the Naturmobil is the possibility of the equine engine breaking loose and kicking me to death in the middle of an intersection. Horses are notorious for having little sense of humor.

The search continues.

Warning: this thread is 5 years old!

The Naturmobil development makes it worthwhile to revive. Maybe the horse could just pedal with his or hers back legs.

I object to their assertion that "Naturmobil is the only vehicle that can run without the use of oil. This vehicle is the vanguard in reducing the dependence in burning oil to make it run."

Apparently they are unaware of velomobiles and bicycles.

And in 5 years the biggest problem has yet to be addressed:

Has anybody found a horse that wants to ride a bicycle? If not, we're looking at a solution that has no problem...

We need to breed horses that love to ride bicycles. The brake can be a linked system with one big lever that Mr. Ed pushes with his head. Let's all report back in 5 years and evaluate the progress of this vital project.

Can one effectively hijack a 5 year old thread?

Now maybe if the horse was packing a sidearm, wearing underwear under it's bibshorts and declaring that aluminum bikes were a shoddy product deliberately foisted on a gullible market...

My wife once told me that, "A woman needs a man, like a horse needs a bicycle".

Finally, I think I get what she's talking about, 'cause I'm beginning to feel the same way about things.

PS.

A Horse needs a bicycle, like BF needs this thread...Yeah I think I like that one, even better!

+1

I'm pretty sure the UCI banned horses on bicycles.