Here’s some awesome stuff I’ve been checking out:

Bakfietsen
How can you not love something named Bakfietsen?! Okay, they’re stupidly expensive, but you could still buy four of them for the price of a car, and with a rain tent for your cargo and enough room for three kids and groceries, why would you need a car?

Kona Cargo Bike — like the Xtracycle but with a frame built around the cargo.
I can’t really tell from the pics if the dimensions are similar to the Xtracycle, but it sounds like it. This looks nifty, with the frame built around the cargo idea and all.

There are a few more, like the Mundo Cargo Bike, which is similar to the Kona. And the Surly Big Dummy is a Surly bike — makers of awesome cargo frames — built around the Xtracycle cargo attachment. These have been crazy popular and are largely sold out.

It’s really cool to see that this market is taking off in the US. When I first checked out cargo bikes in college, I’m pretty sure Xtracycle was the only one and I promptly fell in love with the idea, but never actually got one — couldn’t afford it and didn’t really have a need, since I was mostly just riding back and forth to school.

However, one of these or similar will almost certainly be my next bike purchase, once Minerva (my old, upright commuter) is sold! The Kona is the most reasonably priced if I want a full cargo bike with frame built around the cargo, but the Xtracycle full builds are also pretty reasonable. Another option is to not sell the old bike but have an Xtracycle Free Radical conversion done on it. I’m still pondering this but several friends are interested in buying my old bike, so we’ll see.