Fancy driving a car that has bicycle pedals instead of an accelerator or brake? An inventor in the Middle East may have just answered your call.

Designed by Nasser Al Shawaf of Saudi Arabia, the FitCar PPV is been developed in partnership with BPO, a Dutch engineering company, who claim that the mechanism can be retrofitted into any automatic car for less than £1,000.

Pitched as a healthy city car, the tech uses pedals to generate an electronic pulse to engage the accelerator. With three settings, Drive Slow, Drive Fast and No Drive (for when stuck in traffic), the technology has already been trialled in the Netherlands and is said to burn 300 calories every 30 minutes.

Oscar Brocades Zaalberg, BPO Founder and Managing Director, added: “This is two years in the making.

“We started with a simple ‘buck’ to demonstrate how this could work, then tried it out for real on a SmartCar.

“This is prototype two, an Audi A4 Avant – chosen for its cockpit ergonomics, allowing for a comfortable cycling position, with enough room for the physical action of pedalling.

“Our ambition is for the technology to be either adopted by a car manufacturer for a new generation of ‘healthier’ city cars, or for us simply to offer it as a conversion kit in the after-market – for those wishing to add PPV as an optional active extra to their car.”

The prototype model used an Audi A4 Avant, and replaced the brakes with off-the-shelf handles, similar to those used in Motability cars.

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