FitCar PPV: an Audi A4 Avant with PEDALS instead of a throttle
Dutch engineering company BPO has taken an invention by Nasser Al Shawaf and turned it in to the FitCar PPV, a car driven by ‘pedal power’ to get you fit when driving.
Most of us spend hours a day driving, time sat on our backsides gently fuming at the traffic, pedestrians and life in general which, by any measure, isn’t particularly good for our health and well being.
That thought has inspired Saudi-based inventor Nasser Al Shawaf to come up with a way to keep us fit when we drive, which has now become the FitCar PPV (that’s ‘Pedal Powered Vechicle) as Dutch engineering company BPO install Al Shawaf’s invention in to an Audi A4 Avant.
Essentially, the FitCar PPV gets rid of the normal pedals for brake and accelerator (the A4 is an automatic) and replaces them with bicycle-like pedals to control the throttle, and a brake bar on the steering column such as you’d find in a car adapted for a disabled driver.
There are three settings on the car for different driving conditions – ‘Drive Slow’ for urban traffic, ‘Drive Fast’ for motorways and ‘No Drive’ for when you’re not moving – and it’s reckoned you’ll burn 300 calories every half hour you drive. Which sounds wildly optimistic to us.
Oscar Brocades Zaalberg, BPO MD, said:
Our ambition is for the technology to be either adopted by a car manufacturer for a new generation of ‘healthier’ city cars, or for us simply to offer it as a conversion kit in to the after-market – for those wishing to add PPV as an optional active extra to their car. Once you get in the car and drive it, it is intuitive, easy to control and safe – I would encourage any body to give it a try.
Would you want to pedal to work, and back, every day? No, nor would we.
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