Gas Too Expensive? Try Human Power
Back in 1983, when the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) held its first-ever Human Powered Vehicle Challenge, gas was about 81 cents a gallon, peak oil theorists were considered mostly crazy Chicken-Little types and global warming was but a vague and distant threat.
How times have changed.
Today’s circumstances make human powered vehicles sound more appealing than they probably did 25 years ago. Sweat-fueled technology doesn’t consign us to traveling at 20 mph or less, either, or to living our lives within a 10-mile radius of home. At least, that’s what competitors in the 25th annual Human Powered Vehicle Challenge, or HPVC, aim to prove when they meet this weekend at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
