Go Ped brand bike motor

The people from Go Ped were also at the Tour de Nez (exhibiting in the somewhat slim expo area). You may be familiar with their powered push scooters. This product looks much like the deck and battery of their push scooter driving a friction wheel and is attached to a bike via a beefy seat post / seat tube clamp. It's a much more compact and elegant solution than some of the kluge bike motors out there, and creates a rack that (I'm assuming) could be used for some light cargo. As with any bolt-on solution, it faces integration and fit issues. Unless you have two fist-fulls or more of seatpost showing, you're not going to be able to get this thing mounted. Also, to disengage the friction wheel from the tire, you must reach back and pull it up (as demonstrated to me by a company representative). Reaching your hand under your butt towards an unseen high torque motor mechanism seems dicey. But, there's too much namby-pamby business keeping alternative transportation off the roads already. Good on them for this attempt at something different.

By the way, I heard something profound on NPR the other day. If a European and American see a Smart-Car demolished by a Hummer in a crash, the American will say that the Smart-Car is unsafe. The European will say that the Hummer is unsafe. Totally different paradigm in a place where people have lived in close quartered civilization for several centuries longer than we have here in the USA. Of course, Hummer is a business failure right now whereas Smart-Cars are seeing success. Maybe the capitalist way of sorting out the winners and the losers is working.