HSE? EHS? SHE?

Yes I hate most abrvs as they are now being hijacked by new line managers as the new way to talk. This rubbish managers speak is rdclous. (sorry needed some vowels in there to make it a bit clearer)

I believe that dilbert had some great ones with the abrvs. I think I got the link from here some time ago, almost pissed myself with laughter.

Yeah, judging by the taper on that body, the wheel can only be 4.5 inches big! That sounds fun

Do you scrape your knuckles when you go around too aggresivley?

Love the pod and would like to see more of it.

please?

Do you scrape your knuckles when you go around too aggresivley?

Very perceptive -- yes, that is really exactly what happens. Control was (in its two wheel form) by joystick, mounted on the center of the floor. A monocoque works best if it is a full tube, without holes in it, but it's nice to be able to get in an out, see out, etc... so originally, at the base of the canopy, there was an elongated hole to form a cockpit. There is reinforcement around the edges of that hole, to restore both torsional and bending stiffness (both of which are about 10 times higher than in the scooter frame from which I stole the mechanical pieces). That reinforcement is perfectly positioned for scraping knuckles. -- the wheel is actually about 12" across.

In the real deal, all this stuff will of course change. But the current thing makes a good test mule. Funny you should say "pod". Its called Pod One.

www.Gaiatransport.com is the site.

That looks cool Ken, Nice simple but effective site too.

Have you got time line expectations for this thing?

At what cost do you think you could enter the market. Must cost a small fortune to r&d.

I was wondering if it needed to adhere to car laws or bike laws for things as lighting, handbrake and that sort of thing.

I build my own sidecar before as I did not want to be fixed rigged. I found that it is a complete grey area with very little people knowing exactly what to do when asked. Found better not to ask as if those penpushers don't know, they make it up as they go along and you end up doing too much as they want to cover their asses.

I built my sidecar according to the sidewinder principle which was originaly british but is now manufactured by armec in switzerland. They told me they do not make them for harleys so I copied them for my sporty first and then refitted it to my glide. Good fun.

Thanks for the compliments.

Time line: I expect to have a high fidelity prototype by the end of 2008, pending funding, which I am trying to round up now. At that point, we can take orders for delivery in (again depending upon level of funding) mid 2009.

I'd like to keep the price below $15,000. That's pretty close to half the price of the Aptera, which is a nice enough vehicle, but composite construction is expensive, and in practice doesn't yield sufficient weight reductions to justify the labor costs*. Looked at in terms of content, my vehicle has about half as much "stuff" as the smallest cars, and if we could get up to similar volume, we'd be down around $8000. We'll be using as much off the shelf (or easily modified) stuff as possible to keep costs low.

The R&D is costly, but I am trying to keep things as low-tech as possible while still exceeding 100 mpg by a comfortable margin. Even so. if they still had "poor houses" I'd be in one.

By taking the traditional approach of low frontal area, low Cd and low weight, the power train does not have to be too exotic to meet the efficiency goal. The Aptera number of 230** mpg at 55 mpg is a little higher than I calculate for mine, but in both cases when you add some load to compensate for real-world conditions, the fuel efficiency plummets. (I once drove a friend's Lincoln Mk7 [heavy, good sized V8] and got 75 mpg at low speed on a perfectly flat road -- hardly real world.)

Re car laws: it has to adhere to bike laws, which makes emission certification easier, and means there is no need to do official crash tests. However, we plan to do crash testing partly to demonstrate that we will be much better in side impacts than many other small vehicles (by virtue of some pending IP.) and will probably have at least frontal impact air bags.

*the central portion of the monocoque on the test mule is fiberglass in epoxy over a wood core, and makes a remarkably light, stiff structure. But by the time you put in all the other stuff, the overall weight saving is not enough to justify the cost.

** A good story, while endlessly rambling along, off topic: I have declared myself a "human CFD machine": In this post from a while back, when the Aptera people were claiming 330 mpg, I argued that their real Cd would have to be around .10, not the .06 they were claiming (and that would support the 330 figure figure). (Their early promo info talked about CFD, FEA etc, to make people think they are "high tech", I suppose.) Their "CFD" was off by nearly 100 percent. Their real Cd, they claim now, is .11, a number supported by their current mileage claim of 230. I figure I should get some sort of prize for being able to estimate their Cd from 3000 miles away better than they did with CFD in their own offices.