Here's an interesting rig one customer brought to the Whole Earth Center's Earth Day celebration. Google something like "bicycle engine kits" and you'll find various ways to soup up a bicycle with battery-powered motors or, in this case, an engine and gas tank made in China.
The owner said that it cost about $150 on the internet, and gets 50-100 mpg. Cruising speed is 25 mph. The contraption occupies a gray area of the law, with no clear determination on whether the rider needs a license. The 2-cycle engine is not God's gift to air quality, and my daughter thinks adding an engine defeats the purpose of a bike, but it definitely has less "embedded energy" than a car, and could fill a niche for green Marlon Brandos.
(Update, April 26: The other evening, such a bike passed by, pulling one of those bike trailers for kids, with lawn chairs as cargo instead of kids. It turned the corner and disappeared down the dark street, like some sort of Energizer Bunny. The beauty of such transportation is that the rider and the cargo comprised the majority of the weight. There weren't two tons of automobile going along for the ride.)
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