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Yeah, seems to be a common misinterpretation of this Scientific American article from the 70s (only unlocked source i could find) https://cdn.antymateria.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Histo...

On page 10 in the pdf you can see the vehicles and animals compared.

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Thanks yeah. Even ignoring the claim that it's the most efficient per mass, even on a per passenger basis there appear to be modern rail lines that beat velomobiles (let alone bicycles) for energy expenditure per passenger-mile.

I think this is getting into somewhat nitpick territory. If we include per passenger we could just use bikes with 10 riders (extreme tandems). On a flat road the increase of energy for more people is very minor so you can just divide by the number of people.

Yeah but that's basically what a peleton is but without the bikes being physically connected.

Point taken. Although the original statement was about single bikes.

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