The Di Blasi trike: A different kind of green tech hybrid

By | December 11, 2007, 9:51am PST

Last year about this time, I brought my neglected 15-year-old GT mountain bike down to a local repair shop for some much-needed TLC. After spurning all sales pitches to invest in a new one, I then dropped nearly as much moolah to get my faithful ride street-legal. And there it sits, tires going flat in the garage. Chalk it up to the hills in my New Jersey town, which are a little bit too intense for my desk-job thighs. New Year’s Resolution #1 …

So, what to do for quick trips into town? Oh, for the old moped I used to share with my brothers in high school. Actually, scratch that. I don’t even want to know how fuel-inefficient it was. Today, there are so many more interesting options available to folks like me who are trying to avoid taking the car out except when necessary for longer treks. One possibility is the Di Blasi R34 Electric Folding Trike from Folding Motorbike that I just got pitched on last week. (It actually was introduced during the summer, but Di Blasi is preying on people like me who are thinking about year-end gifts and year-end green resolutions).

electric_tricycle_diblasi_r34_01.jpg

A base model of the trike starts around $1,500. Adding an electric motor brings the starting price up around $2,700.

Di Blasi has actually been making folding bicycles and motor bikes for about 40 years, so I guess you could say they have a little experience. Will I be buying one. Not with my freelance journalist’s salary, but I figured this entry might get people thinking.

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Heather Clancy is an award-winning business journalist with a passion for green technology and corporate sustainability issues.

Disclosure

Heather Clancy

Writing publicly about what the high-tech industry is actually doing to help itself and the world get greener or more sustainable is one way I figure I can contribute more meaningfully to said effort. I am also a big OMG-kind-of-fan of smart leadership, which is why the goodly folks who publish this blog let me go on about this topic and why I am always on the hunt for forward-looking business management ideas.

My daily writing is focused on looking for topics for my blogs, GreenTech Pastures and Business Brains. I also write often about emerging technology trends such as mobile computing, unified communications and cloud computing. Occasionally, I will pop up at an industry conference in some sort of speaking capacity. In cases where a speaking engagement involves a sponsor that may be covered in this blog, that fact will be disclosed in coverage as appropriate.

My corporate writing work usually consists of crafting research white papers about some aspect of technology. In the event that my commentary (in written, audio or video form) mentions a company for which I have provided consulting advice, I will disclose that fact. However, there is no connection between these projects and the topics that I am covering in my blog.

Biography

Heather Clancy

Heather Clancy is an award-winning business journalist with a passion for green technology and corporate sustainability issues. Her articles have appeared in Entrepreneur, Fortune Small Business, The International Herald Tribune and The New York Times. In a past corporate life, Heather was editor of Computer Reseller News, where she was a featured speaker about everything from software as a service to IT security to mobile computing.

Heather started her journalism life as a business writer with United Press International in New York. She holds a B.A. in English literature from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, and has a thing for Lewis Carroll.

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