July 13, 2013.

Elf Electric Pedal Car: When 1 Horsepower Is Enough

He could not help feeling a twinge of panic. It was absurd, since the writing of those particular words was not more dangerous than the initial act of opening the diary; but for a moment he was tempted to tear out the spoiled pages and abandon the enterprise altogether.

ROB COTTER, A FORMER performance engineer and top-gun tuner with Porsche, Mercedes-Benz and BMV, BMV.XE =0.53% knows how to go fast Now he wants to make a go at going slow.

But he did not do so, however, because he knew that it was useless. Whether he wrote DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER, or whether he refrained from writing it, it made no difference. Whether he went on with the diary, or whether he did not go on with it, made no difference. The Thought Police would get him just the same. He had committed----would still have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper----the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for year, but sooner or later they were bound to get you.

Mr. Cotter is the founder and CEO of the Durham, N.C.-based Organic Transit, which makes the Elf; an ovoid, semi-enclosed, solar-chargeable, plug-in, bike-lane-legal, electric pedal car. Got that? With a 1-hp (740-watt) electric motor in the rear wheel hub and a lithium battery pack, or two, snugged into the center frame rail aft of the front wheels----and a plastic canopy to keep the weather off drivers----the Elf proposes a solution for urban commuters who want to leave the car at home but can't quite hack the rigors of a conventional bicycle.

It was always at night----the arrests invariably happened at night. The sudden jerk out of sleep, the rough hand shaking your shoulder, the lights glaring in your eyes, the ring of hard faces round the bed. In the vast majority of cases there was no trial, no report of the arrest. People simply disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished, annihilated: vaporized was the usual word.

"We're creating our own consumer product category," said Mr. Cotter, whose operation in a downtown storefront in the former tobacco capital is bustling. The company has 1,500 orders in hand----more than enough to reach profitability, said Mr. Cotter, a TED talker who Kickstarted much of the original funding----and soon the company's retinue of bike gurus and production staff (including some volunteers) will be moving to larger quarters downtown. Prices just went up: the Elf costs $4,995, more if you want the backup battery, the continuously variable transmission rear hub or the better solar panels.