Josh Hadar has built a solar electric three-wheeler that will knock you on your ass – literally.

The New York artist has made a name for himself fashioning wildly ornate bicycles and motorized bikes as radical as they are beautiful. He's back with a wild trike that has enough torque to throw you off the back. That's exactly what happened the first time he fired it up.

"The first test ride was a virtual wheelie-fest that left its rider sprawled on the ground," he said.

That kind of hooning, while fun, was a bit much. Hadar added an Alltrax programmable controller and tweaked the gear ratios to rein in the Mars Electric motor, which produces 4.8 kilowatts (6.4 horsepower) continuous and 15 kilowatts peak. Four 12-volt lead-acid batteries give the E-Trike a range of up to 30 miles. Hadar figures he could double the range with a lithium nano-phosphate battery pack.

Everything's bolted to a carbon-steel frame. It rolls on a 20-inch front wheel with 26-inchers at the rear. The trike is 8.4 feet long – about the length of Smart car – and depending upon the gearing she'll max out at 45 mph. That's gotta be fun.

Power comes from a 750-watt array of six solar panels mounted on the roof of Hadar's studio, making this black beauty totally green.

Photos: Peter Reitzfeld. More after the jump.

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With as much as 20 horsepower on tap and a top speed of 45 mph, you know you want to ride it.

Carbon-steel frame is powder-coated gloss black. The E-Trike is the same length as a Smart but so much cooler.

A closer look at the electric drivetrain.