As children we loved to ride in a pedal car or on a kettcar. Attention, now it’s getting nostalgic: Something like this is now coming onto the market in large numbers – in the form of the Twike 5, which is now going into series production. Unlike in the past, you don’t follow mommy with this pedal car, but – electrically assisted – at up to almost 200 km/h on the motorway! Whether you want that is another question.
Okay, strictly speaking, the support is the other way around, so by pedaling you support the battery that drives the 70 kW/95 hp electric motor, not the other way around, as we know from cargo bikes or electric rickshaws . Whether you pedal or not is not so relevant for reaching high speeds, so the we-are-now-independent-of-Putin effect is rather small. The slower you drive, the better the physical exercise. At 50 km/h, 10 to 20 percent of the driving force can come from the muscles. Full power only with the larger of the two batteries The battery of the two-seater is correspondingly large, two variants are available: a version with around 18 kWh energy content and a range of around 100 km 250 km and a battery with twice the capacity (36 kWh) and the resulting double range. With it, you can finally not only drive around the sandbox, but should travel up to 500 kilometers. The manufacturer specifies the consumption for the vehicle with low drag (cW 0.24) as 7.3 kWh/100 km. The maximum speed is over 190 km/h with the large battery and 130 km/h with the smaller one. If the storage is empty , it gets difficult with the propulsion in the “Human Power Hybrid”: The Twike 5 weighs at least 600 kg. So it’s good that at least the passenger can pedal along with the pedal generator. Or you simply plug the vehicle in. With alternating current, a range of 7.5 kilometers can be refueled in ten minutes, with direct current it is 45 kilometers in the same time. Behind the two people, the Twike 5 offers space for 300 liters of luggage. What doesn’t exist is a steering wheel or handlebar. The whole driving takes some getting used to. It is steered with two levers that you hold in your hand on the left and right. “Germany’s most innovative vehicle” is to be launched as a small series of 500 units from the end of the year. The price: depending on the size of the battery, 39,900 or 49,900 euros. The pedal knight bolide is built in the small town of Rosenthal not far from Frankfurt.
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