A Cheaper Vehicle Innovation Than What You Usually See Here - Will an Indian Bicycle Manufacturer Pick it Up?

Green Daily has this very interesting green bicycle innovation which uses Li-ion batteries to make cycling easier: http://www.greendaily.com/2009/02/27/mit-develops-the-ultimate-lazy-biker-innovation-greenwheel/ Designed at MIT, the USA's premier engineering college, the device does seem to make a lot of sense for countries like India and China which pollute in a huge way and which also have many more bucycle users than most other countries do. India also has the world's largest bicycle manufacturer, Hero Cycles. I do think that if this were incorporated into the design of bicycles sold in these two countries in a big way and if they were offered to the public, not only would they help reduce pollution and help poor people cycle more easily, they would also help bring costs down on economies of scale.

Let's see where this leads, though. Like most other innovations, my suspicion is that the Chinese might pick it up and produce a cheapened version, but that in India it will go nowhere.