By Lloyd Alter / Source: TreeHugger

This TreeHugger is totally conflicted about food trucks. On the one hand, they have led to an explosion of entrepreneurial activity among young people who couldn’t possibly afford to open a conventional restaurant. On the other hand, they compete against the bricks and mortar restaurants that we want on our main streets; they pollute and they generate a lot of garbage and they don’t have bathrooms so their customers then have to sneak into those bricks and mortar restaurants.

I am less conflicted about ideas like Wheely’s, first covered last year, when Derek called it an ecological café bike. Since then they have sold over thirty of them around the world. The developers claim that coffee entrepreneurs are pulling in $700 per day. The coffee is made on an ethanol-powered siphon brewer so even the fuel is green.

Last year’s model cost sold for an impressively cheap $3,000; the new one has running water, digital displays, running water and an electric boost. It has a lot more, but costs $ 7,000 now. I am wondering if it isn’t getting a bit too big and heavy; I liked the minimalism of the original. More at their Indigogo campaign.

Now if you are like me and you prefer an espresso to a coffee, there is the Velopresso. It comes with a propane-fuelled coffee machine and a pedal-driven grinder. It was first covered in TreeHugger in 2012, but now it’s finally in production and available for purchase, for £9,995 ( US $ 15,041 and dropping daily). The designers write:

Read more @ TreeHugger