dave be
Hes more of a designer here then an inventor. This has been done as you mentioned many times, hes just tweaking it to his taste.
Further that 'unique' steering style is a terrible idea. Don't go around a corner at more then 15mph? Even if hes exaggerating the concept is absurd for a modern vehicle. Every vehicle type of any number of wheels does better then that. Its not going to ride like a motorcycle, because it isn't one. It can have similarities, but as mentioned in the article those stop as soon as you start pushing the design to actually doing any, you know, moving.
Bob Stuart
I'd put my tilt control sensors on the steering column. Everybody uses the steering wheel to brace themselves in a corner, and so has had an easy time learning to lean on a Go-Kart; this would just take the rest of the trike along with your back. Leaving the whole steering column completely upright would take a lot of room, but we could probably learn to pretend that it was pretty close to a virtual pivot on the seat very quickly.
Nick 1801
It certainly looks gorgeous though, in sunny Australia, I'd want an opaque roof. Morgan 3-wheelers seem to be able to go around corners at more than 15 mph.
Daishi
In motorcycles with an extended swing arm they are less prone to wheelie but they tend not to corner very sharp either. Buell made some slightly shorter wheelbase motorcycles that wheelie'd a lot under power but were capable in the corners. The guys I have ridden with in extended length swing arm sport bikes and choppers struggle to up through corners even when the rest of us aren't going hard. The moral is as wheel base length increases on motorcycles there is a huge cornering penalty.
Aside from other steering mechanisms this is significantly longer than the MP3 or Can Am Spyder which means working it out would be an uphill battle. For some reason I was thinking the spyder was designed to apply downforce to the outward wheel to prevent roll but they actually use a a torque limiter and wheel breaking in their stability control system for the moose test: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77By0mM1qDA
It is a technology they worked on with Bosch and may be available. Some of the stability issues might best be solved by making it slightly wider in the front and shorter front to back.
Concepts are cool and telling people "if you want safety drive a volvo" is an attitude that I really wouldn't mind seeing more off in our nerfed politically correct word but if you produce a vehicle intended for public roads you mostly have some legal obligation to ensure safety and stability is a design goal.
IMO the fact that it looks like it would roll over if cornered at speed hurts the aesthetics anyway so I don't think there is a lot to lose tweaking the dimensions to pull some respectable lateral G numbers. The 1997 Mercedes-Benz F300 Life Jet is a similar vehicle that is supposed to capable of hitting 0.9g in corners: http://i.imgur.com/R5q6MUD.jpg
The Active Tilt Control (ATC) system it uses was probably pretty expensive to develop though.
duh3000
great looking. lots of good ideas. nice he's thinking to give the pilot a chance to be either in the wind or protected from th rain. mystixa's right though : got to lose that wacky butt-steering idea... 15 mph turns ? No way. No market.
EddieG
American insurance companies will continue to block 3-wheeled vehicles by arranging for them to be classified as motorcycles. Few people will go for a special license and a helmet to drive vehicles like this, no matter how fuel-efficient or safe they may be.
bergamot69
I agree with mystixa, 15mph cornering is ludicrously slow for this kind of trike- whilst trikes that are literally a motorbike that is ridden in the typical motorbike fashion and have car-like back axles may well be slow and unstable (not that I've ever been on one- they would be laughed at in the UK), other trikes are far from slow on the bends, such as the amazing Grinnall, the latest and most wonderful Morgan trike, and any number of home-build specials, such as my friend's Beetle based trike.
What is the point of having the ability to lean into curves if you can't gain any speed benefit from doing it? A good trike design will corner more-or-less flat, making use of it's lightweight construction and low centre of gravity to achieve this. If the buyer wants to hang out with bike clubs using this then he is going to annoy a lot of them by getting in the way every time he wants to corner- even the most extreme Harley-type bikes that can't lean far without fouling will be able to out ride these round corners.
FD Victor
Nice looking concept. But given the width of the front track, why does it have to lean? And where does the canopy go when it's retracted? It looks like it collides with the rear wheel. Also, I'd change the chrome strips on the front fenders for vertical LEDs. Then it'd be something I'd consider buying.
ihateorange
What an arrogant little....... designer. Maybe he should go away, study the Carver, and then come back with something that is actually usable! The "if you can't drive it it means you're not good enough" argument will be off no help when the first hipster wraps one round a tree and sues him!
Mel Tisdale
No thanks! This will perform sufficiently like a car to give enough of a false sense of security to let the driver move in his seat for some reason or other (retrieve a dropped item, say) and as a result produce some spectacular manoeuvres as a result. You can move about as much as you like on a bike, and a normal tilting three-wheeler and not come close to losing control. The bike tells you when you are near to going too far.
If this particular tilt system is retained, I suggest that it is connected to an iphone so that it can call an ambulance and give the location of the forthcoming accident the moment it comes into action.