Here’s a slide show from the Velomobile Flickr Pool. So many great shapes in here.
Tag: Velomobile
Visual appeal
I’m such a minimalist when it comes to paintwork and graphics on vehicles, but I have to admit that I’m thoroughly charmed by this clown fish Velomobile. I think that I’d be smart to paint Project Streetliner in loud colors, but I love two-tone silver so very much.
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.