As concept cars go, the Peugeot Onyx is especially good at getting attention. Its carbon fiber and copper body, draped over a racecar’s diesel hybrid powertrain, is hard to top. Peugeot has no plans to put the Onyx into production, but it felt the design worked so well that it decided to build an Onyx-inspired scooter and bicycle.
The scooter, called the Onyx Megatrike, looks like it came from the future. It has the same angular lines and copper panels as the Onyx supercar, as well as miniature versions of the car’s headlights and grille.
The Megatrike may sound like the prized possession of a post-apocalyptic warlord, but, like the Onyx supercar, it’s a fuel-efficient hybrid. The powertrain consists of a 400-cc gasoline engine and an electric motor. The Megatrike can travel 18 miles at 30 mph on electric power only.
The Megatrike might actually be more practical than the car it emulates. Supercars are notorious for having small trunks, but the Megatrike has a storage compartment in front of the rider, where a motorcycle’s gas tank would be. A rider can remove it to sit forward like on a conventional scooter, or straddle it like on a motorcycle.
If designing a scooter to complement a supercar seems like a difficult task, then designing a bicycle for the same purpose seems nearly impossible. Nonetheless, Peugeot tried to make the connection between these two disparate modes of transportation with a smattering of tech.
Like the four-wheeled Onyx, the Onyx Concept bike is made of carbon fiber. Peugeot already makes a racing bike with a carbon fiber frame, so that wasn’t much of a stretch. The Onyx Concept also has carbon fiber forks, wheels, and handlebars.
Peugeot’s designer’s also focused on aerodynamics. The handlebars were flattened to reduce frontal area, and the wheels were covered with fairings. The Onyx Concept bike also has an electronic shifter; exposed shift cables would have created too much drag.
Peugeot isn’t putting the Onyx supercar into production, so don’t expect either of these equally outrageous concepts to be in showrooms anytime soon. Instead, they’ll fulfill the same purpose as the Onyx at the Paris Motor Show: attract visitors to Peugeot’s stand and create interest in its products, whether they have two, three, or four wheels.
