news.com.com — Gibbs Technologies, a high-speed amphibian (HSA) technology specialist, has unveiled a prototype of what it says will be the first commercially viable high-speed amphibian quadbike/all terrain vehicle (ATV), the Quadski.
Jul 12, 2006 View in Crawl 4
theextendednameJul 13, 2006
I think it's a great idea for the convenience factor. No boat ramp needed. Drive that thing off the trailer and right to the water and back again.
shawnbotJul 13, 2006
I just hope these things are a lot more environmentally friendly than their predecessors. Not only do jet skis produce a significant amount of noise pollution, but they also spew a ridiculous amount of gas, oil, and hydrocarbon into the water and atmosphere:"Nearly all PWCs currently in use are powered by two-stroke engines, which do not completely burn the mixture of oil and gasoline delivered to the combustion chamber. According to studies cited in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) gasoline spark-ignited engine rulemaking, these two-stroke engines discharge as much as 25% of their gas and oil emissions directly into the water. On a per-gallon basis, PWCs can emit a minimum of 23% more ambient hydrocarbon (gas and oil) emissions that other two-stroke engine watercraft (USEPA,1991). An average two-hour ride on a PWC emits three gallons of gas and oil into the water.PWCs have twice the hourly annual usage rate of other water vessels, double the load factor (rpm, pay load, etc.), and significantly more horsepower than a typical two-stroke outboard. For these reasons, PWCs emit eight times more pollution than equivalent motorboats. The California Air Resources Board reports that a two-hour ride on a 100-horsepower PWC emits the same pollution as driving 139,000 miles in a 1998 passenger car. The PWC industry counters that the EPA data include older, less efficient PWCs and almost all 1998 models meet new hydrocarbon and oxides of nitrogen emission standards. It will be many years, however, before the older models are no longer used."Source: <a class="user" href="http://www.nps.gov/caha/determin.htm">http://www.nps.gov/caha/determin.htm</a>
twinklyjesusJul 13, 2006
@ Dave Colorado:You know, I know how you feel. I used to like hiking. Then, they opened up all the hiking trails to mountain bikers. So, you're hiking along, it's serene and meditative, then some assh**ES on Mountain Bikes come barreling down the trail and run the hikers off into the brush! It got so bad I just quit going hiking.
ace25Jul 13, 2006
I actually liked the enduro as my first bike. It was serveral miles of paved road from my house to the tracks and I could ride the bike there and have ride on road as well as on trails. It was a good first bike to learn on, and my friends with bikes hated having to push their bikes for miles on the street. Ya, off road the true dirt bikes kicked my butt, but for a leisure trail ride or even a little small jumping it worked fine. This was on an Air Force base where they ticket you for everything, and all my friends did get tickets for riding dirt bikes on the street hense the reason they had to walk them or risk having them and their parents thrown out of base housing.Bottom line, is it fills the role for certain people... rich leisurely people that want to ride from their RV across the lake to the store.
donalbJul 14, 2006
Great, yet another tool for the rich and water-clueless to screw up the foreshore for the rest of us..
pyrixJul 14, 2006
Damn, for $46K you could have a fleet of quads and jetskis and all of them would perform better than this thing at their respective tasks. Hell, you could throw in a dune buggy, snowmobile and an ultra-light and cover all your bases if you want to spend that kind of cash on recreational vehicles.