Sarriugarte and Mate's trilobyte vehicle

BB readers may remember the Golden Mean, the incredible snail car that my friends Jon Sarriugarte and Kyrsten Mate made from an old VW Bug. They recently showed off their latest wheeled creation, the "Electrobyte: Sarriugarteis (Odontochile) trilobite." The hand-tooled exoskeleton is mounted on the drive mechanism of an old electric wheelchair. At night, undermounted blue lights give it an otherworldly glow. Jon says, "People would walk up and ask if it was remote controlled. When I pointed out the leather seat and the joy stick they couldn’t believe you could drive it. Lots of smiling faces when we let them try it out." In their, er, spare time, Jon is a blacksmith and Kyrsten is an Oscar-nominated sound effects designer for Hollywood films. Damn, they are a talented pair.

Electrobite at Burning Man
Electrobite set on Flickr

• [Nasty]

  This is 1000% cooler than a segway. I would take security more seriously if I saw them coming on these things. Instead of just laughing and pointing.

• [Anonymous]

  But is it fireproof? Otherwise somebody’s going to get sued. Am I the only person that thinks that the front is reminiscent of a casque Adriane. Never mind, I am.

• [Miss_Skittles]

  if you missed it at Burning Man (and I did), Jon will be the Maker Guest of Honor at the Steampunk Exhibition in March… (and he’ll have it there!)

  @Nasty – agreed! I wish we could put our Security folks on those

  @mmbb – heh.

• [batu b]

  It’s neat….But TWO burning man related posts in a day?

• [mmbb]

  How wrong was it to think “Sybian” when looking at two of these pictures?

• [Bilsko]

  so would that be a Trilobike?

• [efergus3]

  Very nice. But BLACK in the middle of the dessert? Can anyone else say “third degree burns”?

• [jimh]

  @ Batu: tis the season! And ONLY two is demonstrating considerable restraint, I suspect.

• [David Pescovitz]

  @Batu, And the funny thing is, I’ve never even been to Burning Man nor do I have any desire to go!