Finally, a Motorcycle Your Spouse Might Actually Approve Of
Image Credit: Trinova.
The daily commute is a special kind of purgatory. It's the universe's way of telling you that you should have paid more attention in school so you could afford a helicopter. For most of us, it's an endless sea of brake lights, a symphony of car horns, and the slow, creeping realization that you're aging in real-time while moving at the speed of a startled glacier. The solution, for the brave, has always been the motorcycle. It's nimble, it's quick, and in many places, it lets you legally slice between lanes of stagnant traffic.
There's just one tiny problem. Your significant other has seen one too many action movies and is absolutely convinced that the moment you throw a leg over a motorcycle, you'll be auditioning for a role as a human cannonball. And there's this whole business of weather and staying upright. But what if I told you there's a machine that offers the traffic-busting agility of a bike with the all-weather comfort and stability of a car? And, because it's 2025, it's electric.
Image Credit: Trinova.
The answer is Trinova - a three-wheeled tilting contraption that looks like a fighter jet canopy had a baby with a superbike. And before you dismiss its creator, Markus Scholten, as just another hopeful inventor in a garage, you should probably take a look at his resume. This is a man who cut his teeth in Germany working for titans like BMW and Karmann, where he was the engineering lead on projects for Porsche, Audi, and Mercedes-Benz. He later moved to the U.S. and led the chassis development for the impossibly gorgeous Fisker Karma Sunset. So, he knows a thing or two about making things that move.
The idea for the Trinova wasn't born in a sterile design studio under fluorescent lights. It actually came from a moment of pure frustration. As the story goes, Markus had an interview at Tesla. The drive there was a breezy 30 minutes. The drive home on California's infamous 405 highway? A bumper-to-bumper nightmare lasting over two hours. When he finally got home and his wife asked how it went, he declared that if he got the job, he'd need a motorcycle. Her response was less than enthusiastic. "Then you're not getting the job," she said, before adding the fateful words, "…but maybe it's time you build that three-wheeled vehicle you've been sketching since you saw GM's Lean Machine back in 1982."
Image Credit: Trinova.
And so he did. The result is this remarkable tandem two-seater - meaning you and a very close friend can sit one behind the other. This allows the Trinova to be astonishingly narrow, measuring just 33.5 inches across. That's slimmer than some of my old Uncle Barry's trousers. This svelte profile is the key to its superpower: wiggling through gridlock where cars can only watch in envy.
But the real magic is in how it handles a corner. The Trinova features an "intelligent balance system" that lets the main cabin and the two rear wheels lean into a turn, just like a MotoGP racer. The difference is, you're cocooned in a fully enclosed cabin, and you don't need the knee-sliders or the cast-iron courage. When you come to a stop, the system automatically straightens itself up. No awkward balancing act at the traffic lights, no chance of a clumsy, low-speed tip-over. It's the motorcycle experience, with the scary bits engineered out.
Image Credit: Trinova.
The production version is planned to have two hub motors, one in each rear wheel, which ought to fling this 750-pound rocket from a standstill to 60 mph in 3.5 seconds - that's faster than a lot of very serious sports cars. Top speed is pegged at over 120 mph, which is more than enough to get you into a world of trouble. It's a commuter, yes, but one with a serious wild side.
Powering this lunacy is a 10 to 12 kWh lithium battery pack. Scholten reckons this is good for 100 to 140 miles on a single charge. Is that enough? For the daily grind, absolutely. It'll get you to the office and back with plenty to spare for a detour to the shops. A cross-country adventure might be off the table, but let's be fair, that's not what this is for. This is a surgical tool for dissecting traffic jams, not a grand tourer.
Image Credit: Trinova.
If you aren't quite ready to embrace the silent electric revolution, Markus has already built a prototype with an Aprilia RSV 1000R combustion engine. He even hints that a petrol-powered version might be offered if enough people ask for it. A sensible compromise, or sacrilege? I'll let you decide.
Here's the rub, though. You can't just walk into a showroom and buy one. Not yet. After a less-than-ideal experience with a previous partner, Scholten is planning to launch a WeFunder campaign to get an initial production run off the ground. This is where the dream meets the harsh reality of manufacturing. If the campaign is a success, he hopes to price the Trinova somewhere between $18,000 and $22,000. That's a chunk of change, but for a hand-built, innovative machine that could genuinely revolutionize your commute, it doesn't sound entirely unreasonable.
Image Credit: Trinova.
Every time Markus Scholten sits in traffic, he's reminded that he has the solution sitting in his workshop. He says he's not done yet, and I am firmly standing in his corner. The world needs more clever, slightly mad vehicles like this. Is it a car, or is it a bike? Yes, it is. And no... It's not really either, but it might just be the most brilliant answer to a question we've been asking for decades.
