Putting aside any green sensibilities, as a recovering motorhead, it's painful to see such badly tuned engines.
It's just such a waste of horsepower! This is not how we transfer the maximum amount of kinetic energy from the power plant to the wheels and the pavement.
If the goal is to discharge power in a display of abject futility, why not just Flintstone it... skip the motor and have a dozen guys push the truck?
Just for the hell of it, I googled "Big Bicycle" just because it was such a jaw-dropping phrase in the article. I stumbled across this explanation, which I also found very entertaining... a very worthy foray into the world of faux conspiracies, vaguely reminiscent of "Birds Aren't Real" :
"We’re not especially proud of this, but convincing the automotive industry, AAA, oil companies, Tea Party supporters, tabloid newspaper columnists, and run-of-the-mill NIMBYs that a group of people who are disproportionately represented among traffic injury and fatality statistics constitute some sort of all-powerful political force capable of instituting a totalitarian New World Order is a trick we’re not even sure we know how we accomplished. We’re sorry so many people have had to die, but if Washington, DC has .0000001% fewer parking spaces for cars thanks to our efforts, it will all have been worth it..."
"Like all totalitarian regimes, we have no endgame other than the complete and utter transformation of every corner of society into a utopian world of our own creation, if you’ll allow us to brazenly misuse “totalitarian” and “utopian” in the same sentence. And while we’re not sure what your cities and towns will look like, exactly, we do know that citizens will be thinner, healthier, wealthier, and more attractive. I’m sure to most Americans that sounds terrible, but unfortunately it’s just the way it has to be. As a compromise, we will allow each city or town to choose from one of two different new names: Amsterhagen or Copendam.