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I may be off a bit, but it seemed to be a gimmick to pedal the thing and have it hit 70 mph by pedal power alone... even though it was just on a test stand and not under much of a load. "Power amplifier" reeked of snake oil to me... maybe just a bad use of words for marketing. Maybe partially true, but possibly misleading enthusiasm. Meh, maybe. He only had to make the rear wheel spin but not actually make it move through the resistance of air, rolling resistance of the tires and carrying the weight of the vehicle and rider.
Carbon fiber looks neat, but it heats up mighty quick in the sun and there didn't seem to be a lot of ventilation there for cooling the rider... for streamlining purposes I'd think.
Registered as a motorcycle due to speed and possibly electric motor HP. But with that comes the problem that Elio has been lobbying for a legal solution to regarding helmets. These may have been hurdles that they didn't have the wherewithal to overcome at the time.
And really, how many people (even if you include the niche group of bicycle riders) would want to pedal their guts out like that? The presumed fix for the more lazy of us; a markedly larger group, would be to add more batteries. But that means more weight. At some point there are going to be diminishing returns on the extra weight and probably a lack of space for said batteries.
Finally, I never heard nor saw any mention of cost to get one. Which may have been a deal killer. And the clean energy challenge page was not clear on winners, but apparently Raht racer didn't make the cut. Without backing, maybe they just gave up.
Who knows?, maybe it's down but not out.
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