History of Electric Recumbents

Electric recumbents have not been around for more than a handful of years.  This is not really that surprising since as far as the mass market is concerned, normal recumbents have not been around for a very long time either.

The normal recumbent can probably trace its history back to the older reclining bicycles that people started using about a decade ago.  They never really caught on however, as most people still prefer the normal upright bicycles or tricycles to the reclining recumbents.  Recumbents are starting to get more popular with the passage of time however, so it is quite possible that the future will be quite different from the lessons taken from the history of recumbents.

Full electrification of recumbents has not been attempted to this date.  This is because many recumbents are actually manual more than they are anything else.  They come with pedals that people can work when they want to move the recumbent forward.  To this date, the electrification of recumbents has really only involved the addition of battery-powered engines to the recumbent so that a person that does not want to pedal can quickly turn on the engine and let it do the work for them.

In other cases, the pedal and the engine have been able to work in tandem.  These are known as electric-assist recumbents and they have been far more popular than their fully electric counterparts so far.  Of course, with just a few years worth of history to go on, it is difficult to say what the long term trend might be.