vehicles

The 2010 snowmobile season, which begins this month, will see daredevils in places they couldn’t reach before: in deeper powder, on remote cliffs, squeezing between trees. That’s because the first full air-suspension sled swaps the usual heavy steel coils for air-filled shock absorbers, creating a smoother, 20-pounds-lighter machine. Riders can easily steer the FX Nytro MTX SE 162 with their weight, glide it nearly drag-free through powder, and unstick it from drifts.

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If a Segway and a foldable scooter got together, they might hope to conceive something like the YikeBike mini-farthing. The foldable electric bike resembles a sleek, futuristic upgrade of the old high-riding bicycles, and it can fold up for easy storage under a desk or in a cupboard.

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The wind may be restless, but the fastest air-powered ground vehicle is surprisingly steady as it sails over the dusty ground. Called Greenbird, it was developed by English engineer Richard Jenkins and the U.K.'s largest private green electricity supplier, Ecotricity.

On March 26 in a dry lakebed in California, the craft broke the world land-speed record for wind-powered vehicles by more than 10 miles an hour, setting the new record at 126.2 mph.

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In 1959, William Bertelsen became the unlikely star of a national science magazine.

He wasn't a scientist. He was the country doctor of Neponset, Ill., his hometown of 500 people; he was married, with three girls and one boy. In all his days at school, he hadn't taken a single class in aerodynamics, and only took one course in physics.

Then, at 38, his career in cooking up futuristic, unorthodox vehicles began.

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Twenty years ago, duck hunter Stan Hewitt built his first amphibious vehicle, a clunky 10-wheeled truck-boat hybrid that topped out at 10 mph on land and just 7 mph on water. Hewitt wanted to tackle the prime duck habitat of the Alaskan tundra, an area hard to access using regular vehicles, and needed to improve the craft’s speed and maneuverability to handle the currents there.

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