Andre Jute wrote:
The point of a recumbent is a comfortable seat and saving your back,
right?

Well duh!

The point of a recumbent tricycle even more so, hmm? More comfort,
less stress, not so?

Indeed, with the added bonus of not worrying about falling due to road
hazards.

A recumbent trike would be the ideal geribike, one would think.

So how come the things are so low you have to contort yourself and
then drop 18 inches -- boing, boing -- to fall into the seat with
your bum four inches from the road?

Gee, for a guy who wrote a book about building specialty cars, the
answer should be obvious.

So how come the entire thing is so low that you are stressed out from
fear of being splatted not by a bus but by a common low hatchback
because the driver didn't see you?

Drivers notice trikes much more than run of the mill bicycles in my
experience.

I've been looking into recumbents for a spot of speeding, and in
particular into trikes because I already have bikes that can go fast
downhill. Whatever else I buy or build must be different in some
significant way, not just more of the same. (I have several upright
bikes that are pretty near to perfect, for instance my Utopia Kranich
lacking only an automatic Rohloff hub gearbox to be a perfect bike.)

Do us a favor and stop looking.

In the usual curse of bicycling, a bunch of deranged designers took a
good idea -- a bike that doesn't kill your back -- to ridiculous
lengths, all of course in the name of sport. Ha-ha.

Customers are offered virtually nothing but extremes, and at
outrageous prices.

Let us see Mr. Jute build and sell one both at a profit and reasonable
price.

I looked only at tricycles with two front wheels. The socalled deltas
with one front and two rear wheels are inherently unstable, flipovers
waiting to happen.

No silly, see
http://www.hasebikes.com/29-1-recumbent-trike-kettwiesel-allround.html.

After spending an entire night on the net I found:

1. Catbike, a major offender of the splatable lower-is-better
paradigm, launching their Villager as a higher-seated, lower-priced
bent trike. Thoughtless fitting out, needs the boom replaced even to
swap out the useless single chainring for a triple, the old American
curse of extra charges for necessary equipment. Cat's idea of a
"higher" seat is still too low by a mile for their target market.

Jute can not even get the name right, that is "Catrike":
http://www.catrike.com/trk_villager.htm.

2. The *only* trike I found that doesn't suffer this stupid "sporting
image" deficit of a too-low seat is the Anthrotech from Germany,
intended for touring, commuting, even shopping. (Nobody is surprised
by now that the only good bikes I can find are German or Dutch --
sometimes it looks like the last American bike designer to have his
brain in gear was Keith Bontrager.)
Anthrotech:
http://anthrotech.de/index.html

The Hase trikes are also German. So much for Jute's web search skills.

3. The technology is probably mature, and the form of the tadpole
recumbent trike has settled into two ali beams at right angles for
chassis and front frame, with a swing arm for the rear suspension. A
dreadful dullness is creeping over the format, with only esoteric
details distinguishing the different brands, and then only to the
obsessed. The wheels are universally small and the ride no doubt
nasty.

If Jute thinks trikes are nearly as uniform as upright bicycles, he is
misinformed (what else is new?).

4. The only technically interesting trikes I could find were the
Tripod from The Netherlands (surprise!) and the Tripendo from Germany
(surprise! surprise!), both tilting trikes, both technically
interesting on several levels, both too low for daily convenience.
Tripod:
http://www.tripod-bikes.com/
Tripendo:
http://www.tripendo.com/DEFAULT.htm

Tilting trikes have their own negative issues.

So much for the trikes market survey. In summary, there appear to be
only one genuine all-round multifunction bike by Anthrotech, and two
interesting tilting bikes by Tripod and Tripendo. The rest is a
heaving mass of undistinguished sameness.

Another half-assed effort from André Jute.

--
Tom Sherman - 42.435731,-83.985007
I am a vehicular cyclist.