An Elf for the earth

Marty Robinowich is no celebrity, but it’s not unusual for people to take pictures of him when he’s riding around town.

It’s not the 64-year-old Vestavia Hills man that’s the focus of their cameras. It’s his vehicle.

The retired telecom engineer and financial advisor frequently can be seen riding around Vestavia Hills, Hoover and other nearby areas in an egg-shaped mango orange and wasabi green vehicle with three wheels — two in the front and one in the back.

The vehicle, called an Elf, looks a bit like a small car because it’s partially enclosed, but it’s legally a three-wheeled bicycle.

It’s powered either by good old-fashioned foot pedaling or by a battery that can be charged with the solar panel on the roof or by plugging it into an electrical outlet. Riders also can use a combination of pedaling and battery power.

The Elf, manufactured by a company in Durham, N.C., called Organic Transit, can go about 17 miles before it needs to recharge if using the battery only. Riders who supplement the battery power with pedaling can extend their trip to about 25 miles before the battery needs recharging, Robinowich said.

It takes about 2½ hours to recharge the Elf with electricity, or seven hours of sunlight. Of course, you can pedal it as far as you can go, but it weighs about 160 pounds, and it helps to have the battery power when going uphill, he said.

Robinowich has always been an avid cyclist and competed in bike races in the 1960s and ‘70s. Years ago, he rode his bicycle to work at BellSouth on U.S. 280 until he got run off Dolly Ridge Road in 2005 and decided it was too dangerous.

As an engineer, he had been tinkering with the idea of something like the Elf for more than two decades, but “my design wasn’t very practical,” he said. “It would not have worked.”

Then his wife found the Elf on the Internet and showed it to him. They drove to the Elf factory in North Carolina. “I tested it and said I had to have one,” he said.

He ordered it, and five or six months later it was delivered to Vestavia Hills in February 2014. He’s had it for nearly two years now and has put more than 5,000 miles on it, he said.

When he retired at the end of 2014, he was riding the Elf to his financial advising job at the Colonnade. It was an 8-mile trip from his home in Derby Downs, using the back roads, he said.

He’d pack his tie, work shirt and dress shoes in the Elf’s trunk, change clothes when he got to work and change again before riding home, he said.

The roof protects you from the sun and keeps most rain off you as long as the wind is not blowing too much, he said.

Now that he’s retired, he uses the Elf to run errands and do most all of his grocery shopping, she said. “It’s got a huge trunk in the back,” he said. He also rides it to an American Red Cross office on Caldwell Mill Road to donate platelets on Saturdays, he said.

Organic Transit advertises that the Elf has a top speed of 30 mph, which means it can’t be driven on interstates. However, Robinowich said he’s gotten his up to 45 mph on Columbiana Road.

“I go really, really fast going downhill because I like it,” he said. “I take the Elf to the absolute limit … I really ride this thing hard.”

The Elf has brake lights, turn signals and headlights, but it doesn’t require a car tag, insurance or license because it’s legally a bicycle, Robinowich said. Hoover police at one point told him he needed a vehicle tag, but when he went to get one, the people at the tag office said he didn’t need one because the Elf doesn’t come with a vehicle identification number, he said.

As an engineer, Robinowich is always tinkering with his Elf. He retrofitted it with front suspension, put a new seat in that’s easier to adjust, put in a more efficient solar panel and a quieter and faster motor, and installed a meter that tells him how much charge is left in the battery.

“Retired engineers have to amuse themselves,” he said.

But at the beginning of December, he took it back to the factory in North Carolina for an upgrade since he had bought one of the earlier models. They moved the transmission from the rear wheel to a point behind the seat and added a rear disc brake and new, much brighter headlights, he said.

People are very curious about the Elf when he’s out driving it, he said. They’ll take pictures and ask him a lot of questions about it because most people have never seen one, he said.

Organic Transit has sold more than 500 Elfs, but Robinowich is only aware of six in Alabama, including his. There is one in Guntersville, one in Montgomery, one in Mobile, one in Irondale and one in Hoover, he said.

Woodie Comer, a 71-year-old Bluff Park resident and retired pharmacy technician, saw Robinowich riding his Elf at the Publix off U.S. 31 in Hoover in June 2014. The next month, he met Robinowich and took a test drive and decided to get one himself.

Comer found a couple in Guntersville who had bought two Elfs. The couple are in their 80s, and the Elf was too much for the husband, so they wanted to sell one of them, Comer said.

The base price for an Elf is $5,495, but with extras, a typical new one costs $7,000 to $9,000, Robinowich said. Comer said he was able to get his used one for $4,000.

He’s had it since August 2014 and thoroughly enjoys it, he said.

“It’s fun to drive,” he said. “It’s an interesting little gadget. I think it’s very practical … I try to get it out at least once a week.”

He frequently rides his to the Piggy Wiggly and other stores at Shades Mountain Plaza but doesn’t take it out on the main roads, he said.

People often take pictures of it, and some people have followed him home to ask questions about it, he said. But he still can’t get his wife, Peggy, interested in riding it, he said.

He likes the fact that he doesn’t have to buy gas for it, he said.

Robinowich said he likes the exercise aspect of having an Elf. He has lost 40 pounds since he started riding it, he said. But he’s also an environmentalist.

“I just think it’s great for the environment,” he said. “It’s called saving the planet.”

For more information about the Elf, go to organictransit.com.