Firstly welcome to velomobiles.co.uk. This is a new site dedicated to the promotion of the velomobile as a practical mode of transport. The reporting is from a UK perspective but is intended to take in a broad range of subjects relating to the velomobile from around the world. Subjects are expected to range from: the world human powered speed challenge at Battle Mountain USA, to cycle advocacy issues within the UK; and from current velomobile developments, to items of more historic interest. Obviously we will be looking closely at Europe as a centre of velomobile production and development, and we hope to be able to report from SPEZI this year. At the same time we also hope to report from Holland, which produces a significant number of velomobile models and offers a shining example of how cycling can be made a practical and enjoyable mode of transport.

You might ask, “There are other sites covering the subject so why start a new site about velomobiles?”

There are some excellent sites in English, two in particular that have served as inspiration for this site, Mary Arneson’s and Dale Hammerschmidt’s velomobiling.com and The Recumbent Blog lately run by Rob Mackensie. However the information these site provide is not being updated. It also appears that at the time of writing velomobiling.com’s domain has expired and the site is no longer accessable.

Wikipedia has several related articles and the UK based, and roughly quarterly publication, Velovision occasionally provide articles both on their website and in print. Further information is scattered here there and in some cases given the location of most manufactures is not in English, for example there is an interesting site in Russian which Google Translate opens up to those who don’t understand Russian.

Having said that, there is evidently an increasing English language interest in the subject, especially since the publicity in the US, arising from the ROAM event of last year (2011) organised by Josef Janning. Such was the success of ROAM that plans are now developing for a similar event to cross Europe next year (2013) with the tag line – having fun, promoting logical vehicles. Mary Arneson continues to maintain a blog with occasional references to velomobiles. Additionally several new sites have sprung up, Jason Lattimer has also started a new site covering velomobiles from a US perspective including a web based TV show now at episode 4. Brothers, Randy and Ray Mickevicius, also have a blog and site promoting velomobile use in Canada. In the UK Hephaestus has an interesting albeit academic blog looking at the idea of a practical human powered commuter vehicle, and there is the British work-in-progress development of the Atomic Duck low cost velomobile. There are other sites and blogs which we expect to report and link to in due course.

The intention of this site is: to try and combine an updated and improved database, following on from velomobiling; with ongoing reporting, as in The Recumbent Blog. To that end we will welcome any reader tips on news or events that would be of interest to other readers.

One pattern that can be observed on a number of sites is, an enthusiastic start followed by a series of posts, and after about a year the site becomes dormant. It is hoped that this site will avoid falling into the same trap. The database is expected to come online slowly over the next few months, as it is populated with data, and is expected to contain current and historical information on models and manufacturers. It is likely that significant “home-built” and one-off machines will also be included, so if you think the machine you built is worthy of notice, please get in touch.