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This is the Bike That Dan Built:

How the SUV velomobile and ev-Liberty.com came into being


The idea to build the "ev-Liberty SUV" was rather unintentional. I'm a small-business entrepreneur, and an inventor-type who always has a few ideas rattling around inside my brain.  


I saw the first recumbent human-pedal-powered airplane back in the '80's, and thought that a recumbent bike would be a more comfortable way to ride a bike than the conventional design. So I decided to build one from scratch while I was in Bible school in 1986, and bike home with it from Minneapolis, MN to Ripon, WI. Back then, recumbents were almost unheard of, and definitely an unusual sight.


Fast forward to late Fall, 2010. When via research on electric cars that one of my sons did a couple of years ago for a speech for his homeschool speech club, we came across a website on electric vehicle projects,  I bookmarked that site and check it now and then to see what's been posted. One day, I saw a velomobile and thought to myself, "I could build one of those." It didn't take me long to start the design process on one of my own velomobiles.


A few weeks later, in mid-December, I fell off the roof of my house while shoveling snow. I broke my right heel and three vertebrae in my lower back. By God's grace, I didn't require any surgery, but I wasn't supposed to walk for 3 months. Since I couldn't do much else, shortly after the accident, I decided to get out my drafting paper and start drawing the blueprint for the “SUV Sustainable Utility Velomobile," built around the TerraTrike Rover recumbent trike. That project became my "work" for the winter to keep me from driving myself crazy with a severe case of cabin fever. Instead, I drove my family crazy, as I transformed our family room into a velomobile factory!  


As I progressed in my recovery, my velomobile developed from idea to reality. By the time I finished the velomobile, four months later, I was ready for some major physical therapy to strengthen my legs. The "SUV Sustainable Utility Velomobile" has been great for that----someone has even referred to the bike as my "rehab-unit"!

SUV
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