Hybrid Motorcycle Car: Ecomobile

Hybrid Motorcycle Car Ecomobile
Motorcycle car hybrid the Ecomobile looking to become the next big thing in personal transportation.

Dan Whitfield has seen the future of personal transportation, and it looks like a stubby missile on two wheels and goes like one, too, depending on your tolerance for drawing attention from police cruisers.

It's called an Ecomobile, or Eco, and it's basically a motorcycle enclosed in a hard shell that makes it suitable for riding year-round, in any kind of weather short of Buffalo in January.

And since the shell is made of Kevlar carbon fiber -- yes, Kevlar's the stuff bullet-proof vests are made of -- and is three times stronger than a car's, it may appeal to those who see a motorcycle as nothing more than a rolling coffin with tailpipes.

"I see it as a much more humane motorcycle," says Whitfield, 59, an instructor at York Technical Institute who is also the sole U.S. service agent for Eco.

"If you're driving a normal motorcycle and you strike a deer at night, you're in trouble. (With) this vehicle, if you strike another vehicle, your survivability chances are 200 percent better than on a motorcycle."

As we know, though, history is replete with all sorts of gizmos heralded as the future of personal transportation that never caught on.

Just a few years ago, the Segway, a self-balancing, electric-powered