To one side, we have tanking sales numbers for some of the world's most successful car companies, such as BMW and Toyota (TM), On the other, we have what Jalopnik is calling the "Carpocalypse"—the collapse of the Detroit auto industry. And in the middle? Numerous new-vehicle launches.

What gives? Well, some of these rides have been in the works for years, so it's more a question of inertia than good economic timing. But there's also the question of the shifting mobility landscape. In the developing world, people who used to ride bicycles and scooters are finally getting affordable four-wheeled, enclosed mobility, in the form of micro-cars like the supercheap Tata Nano. In the developed West, we want our own version of progress, so we're seeing all kinds of new ways to get around hitting the streets.

Some are cool, and some are a little weird. Here are two examples:

Cool: The Can-Am Spyder, a three-wheeled motorcycle that in motorcycle-mad California doesn't even require a license to operate! It's a serious piece of transportation for people who are freaked out by the challenges of riding a big bike. It'll cost you about $17,500 to get rolling in the version with a semi-automatic transmission. Top speed is 110 mph and mileage is somewhere north of 40 mpg. (See it in action here, evaluated by the L.A. Times' much-missed motorcycle writer, Susan Carpenter.)

Weird: The Peapod, a neighborhood electric vehicle (NEV) produced by, of all companies, Chrysler. (Chrysler has been involved with NEVs for some time now.) The pitch is green, green, green and techno-hipsterish: The Peapod integrates an iPhone or iPod into its instrumentation. But the Peapod highlights some of the problems that have dogged EVs since the early days of the car industry. It looks neat, but it has a top speed of only 25 mph, and a range of only 30 miles on a 6- to 8-hour charge. Price? Around $12,000. This is why the internal combustion engine won all those years ago.

Like a number of EV projects, the Peapod rests on wishful thinking. The idea, presumably, is that urban coolios will see it as an alternative to mass transit or taxis. It reeks of design and of iCulture. Of course, NEVs have previously been confined to, um, neighborhoods (read: retirement communities) because they rarely encounter traffic on the way to first tee. The Peapod's 30-mile range would be seriously tested in crosstown Manhattan gridlock, simply based on the need to keep the thing running while it's not actually moving.