The AeroVelo team, consisting of University of Toronto students and Alumni has won the $250,000 Sikorsky prize for a Human Powered Helicopter that can hover at 10 feet (3 meters) for longer than 1 minute while staying in a 50 foot circle. After many setbacks and a few crashes they accomplishished this goal on June 13th, 2013.  To attain this feat, Todd Reichert had to generate 1200 watts to get the helicopter to up to 3 Meters, hover for a minute at 800 watts, then generate 600 watts to lower the 'copter to the ground. It is an amazing feat both technologically and physically. Both the AeroVelo and U of Maryland team have been very close to this goal for the past year and both were very close to winning. The U of T team has been particpating in HPRA races and the Battle Mountain speed event for several years, and is becoming impressively refined. See more here

In general it seems like manufacturers are raising their prices to keep up with inflation and cutting bike and trike models that do not sell as well. Most manufacturers are now offering e-assist options. Though trikes are selling well, the trike manufacturers are no longer expanding, and most are reducing their model choices. There is a gradual trend toward "big wheel" recumbent bikes. These higher bikes seem to work well for everyone except for the speed hungry recumbent lowracer crowd. 

Full coverage of the Battle Mountain event here

The recumbent industry continues to change and morph, but slowly.

• As far as industry trends go, prices have mostly stabilized, but some have gone up.
• There are more bike models overall.
• We did not lose any manufacturers last year.
• The trike market is leveling off but still very heathy.
• The biggest new trend I see is all the manufacturers building bent tube highracers.
• Another trend is low cost, low bottom bracket, internally geared trikes.

See the new bike models here