So why is tilting so important?

Some may wonder why I’m insisting on a tilting 3-wheel design for Project Streetliner. Watch about :30 of this video and it’s pretty obvious. The trouble with non-tilting trike is well explained by Wikipedia:

The disadvantage of a rear drive, non-tilting three wheel configuration is instability – the car will tip over in a turn before it will slide, unless the centre of mass is much closer to the ground or the wheelbase is much wider than a similar four wheel vehicle.

So unless the wheels tilt, you’ve got to essentially crawl around corners. I’m not planning to race this vehicle, but I do want to be able to take evasive action in traffic. So tilting it is! A vehicle like the Morgan was low enough and wide enough that it doesn’t really have this issue. But if I want to really benefit from a smaller frontal aerodynamic cross section, I’m going to need to keep things narrow. The advantages of a Piaggio MP3-style front end keep piling higher and higher.

2 thoughts on “So why is tilting so important?”

    1. I could do a lot of things if I did a lot of things. I’m really interested in having more of a cabin motorcycle experience than a tiny car experience. The lean is essential to that. It also lets me have high seed turning stability without having to put 1500 lbs of batteries in the floor of my vehicle. My target is <600 lbs. At that benchmark, something perhaps more like the Myers Motors commuter might be in order, but again, I want more of a moto experience but without the expense of an Ecomobile or Monotracer.

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