New recumbents are expensive, but used ones are very cheap. Afyer seeing several within an hour's drive of me for $300, I got a Rans Rocket for $100. Appparently it had been available (but poorly advertised) for two years.
A little while after I became "the guy who rides a recumbent", I was given a Rans Vivo for free, because the owner hhad determined that the expected sale price wasn't worth the time and effort to sell.
I lived right next door to the guys that developed it and in the Groningen country side you could see them zoom by with some regularity. But where I live now I think I've seen exactly one in five years and that was after it had bowled into a mom on a cargo bike... the stigma roughly identical to driving a Canta on the bike path.
The term of art here is "velomobile."