Building Quadricylces in Mexico or China

Hello philgib

Include a picture, or two, please.

If you build these in China, you'll send the drawings, get a few, then discover a factory under a different name is making them by the millions, and undercutting your price too.

I do hope you are offering a model with mudguards and a soft-top, for use on rainy days.

Kind Regards....

Sounds great. would love to see some visuals.

I never really investigated building it, but here is some mock-up renders of a similar idea I had about 10 years ago for a 6 person commuter cycle. I remember thinking about regenerative braking systems and flywheel energy storage, so the vehicle could maintain reasonable road speeds and starts. You would have to have lights and signals of course... it can get to be quite the engineered deal, as it will be a "vehicle" in the eyes of the law, especially as more people ride on it.... and then that will have to involve insurance, etc... as usual, all the social, economic and political considerations begin to outweigh the simple mechanical purity of the idea.

note that the first render has wheels inboard, and the other 2 renders show them outside.

chris

Hi Chris88,

Nice design. A couple of questions, it you don't mind. What is the motive source? I see no pedals or chain mechanism. Also, whether the wheels are outside the canopy/frame or inside, getting into the slot seem awkward and, as it is configured here, your passengers are going to get very wet . Also, how do you steer this puppy?

Anyway, I am interested in hearing more about this idea, I find it intriguing.

/Ari (Orpheuse)

Ari,

As I implied, these were just concept renders. I was just pondering the practicalities of the product, and eventually gave up because of the non-mechanical factors.

Each pair of wheels was to be articulated with a walking beam for suspension, and the front pair would be 'steerable walking beam'.. a more complex mechanism to be sure, but interesting. The steering can be a simple post and lever. brakes for all seats maybe, but only one steering station, I think.. like the captain of the ship.

I put the wheels on the outside, due to travel in rain, and grime being cast off the wheels, and would encase the wheels with full fenders. I thought that the upper clamshell could open with an articulated hinge that would allow the 'door' to clear the wheels vertically before rotating up. There was going to be a door for each seat, opening on one side only (curb side)

The vehicle is only practical when it has a full complement of riders, for it would be too cumbersome with a half crew, therefore, all riders would have to have the same start and finish points. I envisioned a common chain or shaft drive.. maybe flywheel energy storage, with regen braking..etc.

there is a lot of possibilities here. but problems when you start thinking about handling this vehicle in traffic in a commuter situation. It is much more applicable as a sporting cruiser where more suitable roads and paths can be sought out.

Originally, the motive power was to be all humans, but the more I thought about it, the less practicable it seems to me. Maybe if the vehicle had a motor boost, like a moped, or other methods of making the vehicle truly road worthy, and able to accomplish 80-100k, yet gathering a great deal of its motive power from humans, this would make it into an economically viable alternative.

I'm not going to build it, so feel free. I would be happy participating in engineering design. I have solidworks now, which I didn't before, so can work out more of the mechanisms to make it functional. This was rendered in Povray/Moray.

any other questions just ask.

chris

btw, if you need some help doing mechical drafting and 3d modelling, I will gladly help.

chris

You might consider having some of the components pre made in china. too save money.

If you do, you dont want to have to many parts made in the same plant.

Keep what you are building to yourself. Do not send complete drawings to China.

And you need to use more discretion in what and where you write this. People from all over the world read these.

Hello philgib, if this intended for the USA then why don't you find a vacant building in your area and start production with a few people and as demand grows ad to your staff.

In the USA advertise your product and find some of the shopping channel TV stations like QVC or Home Shopping Channel and get your product on at a completive price and ship from your factory.

Your product will have to competitive for there are a lot of people already building

Four Wheel Bicycles was one link that I found to list of such cycles.

Since fuel prices have risen so much in the past year here and as most every where else people are starting to look for such things and they probable not seen something like a quad ride bike and are interested in it. Because it's not been something seen except in some tourist beach areas or private communities.

But good luck with your endevers

metalSmith's

HI!.

First, how may quadricycles are you going to produce, China will be glad to support your proyect but only if you are going to produce thousands or millions of pieces so chek the size of your market, besides what has been said about copies over there seem to be true.

In my opinion what you need to do is to design your quadricycles in a way that may let you implement flexible production capacity so you can adapt it to the market conditions, a good product with few parts, easy aseemble, well stuctured, with good shape and with competitive costs, will do the trick.

considering this, any place in the world will do as long as you take care of the fleet costs depending on your market focus.

¡Good luck!.

Well... I don't see anyone mentioning quality issues with production in China! what is wrong with you people??

Offcourse labor cost will be like 2/5 cheaper to produce in China rather than in Mexico... BUT the cost of quality is HUGE and you can't mess with quality in your products. This will cost you like 10 times more in the first 4 or 5 years ..... not to mention communication issues and some misunderstandings which will cost you.

If you have a problem with production, then you will have to fly over there, 2 or 3 days lost travelling, or if there is an emergency you can't communicate till the next day due to the time difference is huge and hence more scrap in your process.

People are starting to realize that the savings they thought would get in labor cost just aren't true due to all of this problems that are surging... not to mention that labor cost in these countries are going up as the country is going up also... my company has realized all of this and is starting to have doubts BUT there is no turning back since they invested millions of dollars to have their own plant (to avoid copyright problems ) when they found out it was more expensive due to a special tax that applies to our products..... then the heads rolled....

It will also depend on the volume and where you plan to distribute your product.

Good in-site on these other problems. There is also the fact the it is against the law in China to take profits out of the country. The only way the company I worked for there was to manufacture there and sell to our selves at a cheaper price. The company is Chinese and belongs to a US firm. It took years to work out the quality issues. Under strict rules Later they had to put in there own GM. It was the only way it worked. Getting to quality was a night mare. Now the product made there is sold on that side of the world. The rest of the parts are sent to the US for assembly and testing. For sale here.

As well as taking into account the quality issues, remember that the energy for transportation is never going to be cheaper. And remember that Mexico signed a Nafta agreement that could ease a lot od difficulties.

I would start with a friend or two and get a working prototype.

One thing that always got me an account was showing the prospective investor something tangible, even if it doesn't meet with the investors idea of what it should look like or act like.

The fact that I was confident enough to show up with an actual product, even if there was only 1 on the whole planet trounced all sorts of drawings and financial predictions. I'm an old fashioned mechanic, I like to get my hands dirty and keep my mind occupied.

Don't get me wrong. CAD prototyping will save you hours of hard labor and failure. But all the computer simulations don't equal 1 prototype.

Have your paperwork handy, but "build it and they will come" (Kevin Costner, "Field of Dreams").

Good luck

Ari (Orpheuse)

Please consider logistics, and how you would deal with faulty components (rejects) if you plan to build these out-of-country (or off the continent).

I work in Mexico, and see a lot of business returning from China due to rejects and faulty product - its a lot easier to iron out engineering issues when they're accross the border as opposed to being accross the ocean.

There are significantly important details missing from your concept drawing that will effect price and performance. Filling in these missing parts and refining the concept while it is still a computer model will cost you half the time and 1/10th money in comparison to fixing these problems in the garage or exchanging papers w China.

When you have it all worked out you should find that most of what you need is a simple purchase. If you are making all kinds of custom parts you will spend more than you need to. The parts you can not buy and need to make will give you some indication if anything about your quad cycle is unique and therefor potentially patentable.

The detailed design drawing will also give you a detailed parts list so you can check costs.

If your nature is such that you can't stand being confined to a computer station for days on end then building a proto from scrounged parts of other vehicles is the only pratical method of getting a learning curve started. There are lots of shade tree mechanics in any country who can help you with this. Look for one or more who have some experience in custom vehicles. Once your done with one you should have a good idea of where to go next.

Best wishes,

OK there seems to be 2 projects now on this thread :-) The second 3D project is truly amazing ! Anyway, back to the first project. I jsut drove all the way from Chihuahua, Mexico to the flat beach of Bahia Kino with the quad inside my van(yes, it can be dismantled in a few minutes) for testing. All I get at the beach are thumbs up, V's, even from cars which stay blocked on the only lane behind me for 2 minutes. But I really need to work on a sunroof ! We just went with my wife for a 5 miles shopping pedaling and brought back 2 tanks of 5 gallons of water. Because the whole area was flat, that was really easy and we could hardly feel the difference between unloaded and with 80 pounds of water. That makes me want to make an optional "full cargo" rack. I am not sure of how much I can load though. I guess I have to load and keep loading until I cannot pedal any longer:-) The quad is jsut not or the USA. Customs try to offend me each time I visit this country, whereas the only paper I need as a tourist is a passport. I can imagine if I want to create a plant ! Too bad. I really want to concentrate on poor countries who desperately need these kind of vehicles. Nobody will care about legal lights there if they can transport 300 pounds of water from a village to another a few times a day without overloading little kid's top heads or women. So... Thanks a lot for all your constructive comments. China may indeed be a bad choice. Mexico is not easy as the gvt does not help new projects that much unless they are really big. Also Mexico is starting to load building plants with taxes. I have a few friends managing producing plants, and I get the same feedback from them. But lots of companies including Ford are definitely building brand new plants in Mexico, I suppose that the decision from those high-paid guys figuring out each country pros and cons for months may be taken seriously. But I also understand that these new plants are aiming at the US market. I would guess that Mexico would be interesting if I remain on a small scale and concentrate on Central and South America. But I surely aim at Africa and India. Not sure what the best platform would be to sell there. Again, thanks for all these ideas. Phil

so true... there's a lot of trouble with the damn mexican government. They don't give enough support... unless you search for the spotlight and get the connections. You need to make some moves and get to know important people... either way, it's gonna cost you almost the same as China but with good quality... if you want to try out Africa or India then knock yourself out but I would suggest to take the cheap stuff there and keep the expensive and more qualified products in mexico. I can assure you that we know how to deal with quality issues (even if your government blackmails us with having salmonella on our tomatoes )

Either way, you know what the problem is here in mexico? The problem is that only 40% of people pays taxes... so the government starts thinking of ways of getting the money it needs.... so they get tougher with the only people they know... which is the same people that pays taxes!! it is fucking insane... go ask for taxes to the beggars, they get more money than an engineer here... I will show you :

I make 600 bucks a week and have to pay 90 dlls of taxes

A beggar gets a couple of pesos each stop signal. a stop takes around 30 seconds red and 30 seconds green....

so it is 60 cycles an hour x 10 hour is 600 cycles a day ... thats 1200 pesos a day... that is 8400 pesos a week which equals to 840 bucks a week and does not have to pay taxes. yeah, give those beggars more money so they can multiply like rats....

If your target market includes India, Malaysia, Africa, Philippines, why not look at manufacturing there - possibly in multiple locations? That could save enough on freight to make the hassles worth it. Mexico and China are not the only places that can make things, and the Orient has used pedal power extensively for generations.

You are right. Problem is, I am squeezed between the idea between purchasing lots of bikes at a very low price because this represents 60% of my costs, and the idea of just producing locally so that there is no other issue than just building.

I will see if there is a way to work with a global bike company which would accept to consider me as a wholesale buyer in every country I would produce the quad from. That would really help cost wise.

I also heard about foundations which send thousands of free seond-hand bikes to poor countries. I could them simply use them and reduce my seling prices by that much, which would become a gang for the end-buyer.

that might work.. create a complete design and build package. Create jigs and tooling to build the bike you want. then license the entire operation to a third party, either locally, or internationally. Open up a competition to interested buyers (and investors) and see who has the combination of best quality and lowest delivered cost.

Others have implied here that the US may not be your ideal target market. China might make a lot of sense as a producer of a refined well engineered product, if they were also a primary customer. If you are dealing with China, and the design is very well thought out and has success in test markets, then they will probably borrow the design anyway (like all good designs) so licensing the technology makes at least some sense. you will continue to get paid if you license it to them.

If you design well enough, and test the design interatively, and improve it, you can eliminate a lot of quality problems through design, and then in designing for poorer quality materials and joints. (ie, if the joints are not welded, you won't have weld problems.) Make the methods of construction part of the design, and features, so they can't be done otherwise without violation of the license.

but it takes a lot of iterations to make a mature design. that is one beauty of designing in 3D, but you would still want to ride them.. up hills, over bumps.. take them apart if possible.. does it fit in a closet, or the trunk of a car etc. make a list of all design considerations and questions..

chris

what kinda bikes do you need? I can get you bikes but where do you want them to go??

First and foremost, don't speak to anyone about your idea, or show any drawings or pictures until they sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA). It's not a patent, but if you one day patent the device, it will help to show your intention to keep it confidential, if you ever need to prove it. Don't be afraid or embarrassed to ask even friends and family who you speak to about the device to sign the NDA. Just explain about the intention part.

Good luck,

Bluezone

Ok, I see an Open Source HHPV (Hybrid Human Powered Vehicle) brewing here. Shall we begin? We need to standardize on s/w (which did you use?) model a bunch of parts and start the assembly generation. Once released, we all get bragging rights and cushy jobs since we were on the OS team. Any takers?

yes, sign me up.

I love the idea. I have solidworks 2007. I do have an upgrade to 2008 but haven't installed it yet.

and i am trained to use it. I am an experienced electromechanical draftsman and quality manager.

chris

If you ever want to manufacture in Mexico, more specifically in Tijuana I can help you out with the production data, training, workers, permits and yada yada bing bang.