Pedal pushers: the vehicle with an identity crisis--part bike and part car--just might transform the city lover's commute.

• Author: Williams, Allison
• Position: PICTURE THIS

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ELF--the Skittles-colored mashup of bike meets tricycle meets car--is on a roll.

The Science Channel featured it earlier this summer on Haw It's Made. The ELF is appearing in a national TV commercial this fall. And the fact that investors recently put another $2.5 million into the vehicle's developer, Organic Transit, signals that the Easter egg shaped bike-car hybrids aren't a novelty but may fill a niche for transportation in an increasingly urban world.

Creator Rob Cotter and 15 employees assemble and sell the ELF at a workshop in downtown Durham. Comedian Jerry Seinfeld bought a bike while visiting the city for a 2013 show, becoming an early customer of the company founded a year earlier. Organic Transit has about 700 bikes on the road today that have racked up more than 1.5 million miles, Cotter says.

By law, the ELF is considered a bicycle--it has the handlebars, wheels and gears of a bike--with car-like features of a 1-horsepower motor, side mirrors, turn signals and a body, albeit in lime-green, ultra-durable plastic. A flexible solar panel on top provides power to a lithium-ion battery, which then powers the motor, though it also can be plugged into an electrical outlet.

Cotter came up with the idea of a solar-powered trike after working on traditional cars for Porsche and on experimental cars since the 1980s. But no groundbreaking mode of transportation comes easy. Cotter discovered that it's surprisingly difficult to make an American bicycle in an industry dominated by suppliers in Asia. The iconic Schwinn bicycle, for example, is made in China and Taiwan. To assemble an Organic Transit bike requires 400 parts, 250 of which can be found only on an ELF. Still, Cotter says 80% of the ELF is made within a two-hour drive of Durham, with 90 parts built, molded or fabricated in house. "We're the most American-made bike in existence," he says.

But competition may be fast on his heels. Germany-based Schaeffler AG, maker of ball-bearings and automotive parts, plans to build 40 prototype Bio Hybrids, a four-wheeled electric-powered bicycle. Schaeffler employs 84,000 workers around the world, including at a plant in South Carolina.

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For Cotter, this is confirmation that Organic Transit is on to something. By the time the Bio Hybrids are completed, Cotter expects his bikes to have...