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This Is the Gyro-Stabilized, Two-Wheeled Future of Transportation

wired.com

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Re: This Is the Gyro-Stabilized, Two-Wheeled Future of Transportation

#71

Post by sankyo »

jack-r-abbit wrote: post #61
jff wrote: post #32

All the seating and cargo capacity of a motorcycle, with the visibility of a car! There's no way in hell I'd split lanes on that thing; when I'm on my motorcycle, I have no obstructions and can see all around me, and definitely know where the edges of my bike are. This looks like a low-slung claustrophobic nightmare. Even if it is a very technically cool thing.

As I understand it, lane splitting is illegal in many U.S. states, but is considered lawful in California (though there is no law for or against it... it is simply "allowed"). I might be wrong but I thought the main justification for lane splitting was due to the air-cooled aspect of motorcycles and the harm that can come from sitting in stalled/slow traffic (although, where I live I see this get abused everyday by m…

I split lanes (San Francisco) to avoid being rear ended by an inattentive driver. The safest place to be is between 2 cars at a red light. Of course I like going faster than all the cars around me and I can get a block or two ahead of everyone by cruising up to the front of the queue. There is a safe way to split lanes - do not go more than 5-10 MPH faster than the cars, and watch for gaps because a car will change lanes unexpectedly to fill those gaps.

I like the idea of the vehicle in the article mainly for these reasons: more throughput on the roads (every car has only one passenger) and fuel efficiency. I would like to see a world where people commuted in these and only used the SUV for bigger trips.

Re: This Is the Gyro-Stabilized, Two-Wheeled Future of Transportation

#72

Post by BHSPitMonkey »

jackalope wrote: post #44
TylerE wrote: post #7

Remember the last two-wheeled, gyro-stabilized future of transportation? The one that was largely a commercial flop, and which the company president ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Heselden ) _drove off a cliff_.

Or Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion car? It suffered a similar tragedy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_car#World.27s_Fair_acc... The first picture in the Wired article shows the driver's unhelmeted head poking out of the roof above the rollbar. Prototype or not, how could the CEO even let a photo be taken of such an obvious safety flaw, let alone allow a journalist to take it for a test drive? Demonstrating a lax…

It's obviously designed to administer as much force as possible directly to the brain in the case of a collision.

Re: This Is the Gyro-Stabilized, Two-Wheeled Future of Transportation

#73

Post by jack-r-abbit »

cameronh90 wrote: post #62
jack-r-abbit wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it, lane splitting is illegal in many U.S. states, but is considered lawful in California (though there is no law for or against it... it is simply "allowed"). I might be wrong but I thought the main justification for lane splitting was due to the air-cooled aspect of motorcycles and the harm that can come from sitting in stalled/slow traffic (although, where I live I see this get abused everyday by m…

Lane splitting in the UK is allowed and encouraged, as it reduces traffic on the road.

Well... this is being developed in Alameda, CA... so in one of a few US states that even allow lane splitting. Just like a lot of European cars never make it to the US, this may never make it out of the US. So to completely discount it because it can't/shouldn't do what is not really allowed in the vast majority of the most likely market seems like just looking for a reason to hate on it. If lane splitting is the best way to reduce traffic around here then we're all screwed.

Re: This Is the Gyro-Stabilized, Two-Wheeled Future of Transportation

#74

Post by hexagonal »

How much power do the gyros consume?

And, of course, if you're using them for regenerative breaking, then they'll have less headroom to counter tilting forces. If you saturate them with regen load then they won't provide any stabilizing force at all. I hope it has a couple of really beefy power resistors in case the ECU suddenly has to bleed off gyro load in a way that won't cause an uncommanded acceleration.

Re: This Is the Gyro-Stabilized, Two-Wheeled Future of Transportation

#75

Post by jack-r-abbit »

sankyo wrote: post #71
jack-r-abbit wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it, lane splitting is illegal in many U.S. states, but is considered lawful in California (though there is no law for or against it... it is simply "allowed"). I might be wrong but I thought the main justification for lane splitting was due to the air-cooled aspect of motorcycles and the harm that can come from sitting in stalled/slow traffic (although, where I live I see this get abused everyday by m…

I split lanes (San Francisco) to avoid being rear ended by an inattentive driver. The safest place to be is between 2 cars at a red light. Of course I like going faster than all the cars around me and I can get a block or two ahead of everyone by cruising up to the front of the queue. There is a safe way to split lanes - do not go more than 5-10 MPH faster than the cars, and watch for gaps because a car will change l…

True, not every lane splitter is unsafe. In stopped traffic, getting to the front of the line on red (thus out in front on green) is probably the safest. I'm talking about the people zipping in and out of 50mph traffic on 580. I see it everyday.

Re: This Is the Gyro-Stabilized, Two-Wheeled Future of Transportation

#76

Post by ChuckMcM »

lloeki wrote: post #59
ChuckMcM wrote: post #55

This is a cool concept, although I doubt it will be ready by 2014 at their current rate. My reasoning on that is that you have to have a complete pre-production vehicle before you can even start safety testing. But that isn't a knock, I like optimism as much as the next person. The horizontal flywheel concept is quite cool, and I'm glad they avoided the problem of earlier attempts which just had one (cars that did th…

Amusingly the problems you mention are inherent to a two-wheeler, and given the necessary dimensions of the egg-shaped outside you might as well add some more wheels at the corners to solve the stability problem. Then you end up with something like Renault Twizy [0] (look at the top view on page 2 to get an idea of its dimensions), currently sold today starting at 7000€, plus 50€/month of battery rent. I would not ha…

Nice. That looks like something out of a science fiction movie. More of a golf cart than a car but still, interesting to see that they are in production.

Re: This Is the Gyro-Stabilized, Two-Wheeled Future of Transportation

#77

Post by DanEdge »

jack-r-abbit wrote: post #61
jff wrote: post #32

All the seating and cargo capacity of a motorcycle, with the visibility of a car! There's no way in hell I'd split lanes on that thing; when I'm on my motorcycle, I have no obstructions and can see all around me, and definitely know where the edges of my bike are. This looks like a low-slung claustrophobic nightmare. Even if it is a very technically cool thing.

As I understand it, lane splitting is illegal in many U.S. states, but is considered lawful in California (though there is no law for or against it... it is simply "allowed"). I might be wrong but I thought the main justification for lane splitting was due to the air-cooled aspect of motorcycles and the harm that can come from sitting in stalled/slow traffic (although, where I live I see this get abused everyday by m…

The vast majority of motorcycles are water cooled and have been for some time.

Incidentally, lane splitting isn't being abused when motorcyclists do it to go faster than cars; that's the whole point.

Re: This Is the Gyro-Stabilized, Two-Wheeled Future of Transportation

#78

Post by starwed »

sp332 wrote: post #58
jff wrote: post #32

All the seating and cargo capacity of a motorcycle, with the visibility of a car! There's no way in hell I'd split lanes on that thing; when I'm on my motorcycle, I have no obstructions and can see all around me, and definitely know where the edges of my bike are. This looks like a low-slung claustrophobic nightmare. Even if it is a very technically cool thing.

It's illegal to split lanes in most states.

And it's not like it's illegal but folk do it anyway -- I have never, ever seen someone do that in my state.

Re: This Is the Gyro-Stabilized, Two-Wheeled Future of Transportation

#79

Post by WiseWeasel »

TylerE wrote: post #53
WiseWeasel wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did mention that rev two would be around $16,000, assuming they're still in business. That's getting closer to a realistic price relative to competing products. Keep in mind that this is competing with commuter cars, not motorcycles. You can also deduct the cost of fuel over the vehicle's lifetime. For someone commuting one hour each way to work five days a week, the cost of gas for a big car can exceed $200/mon…

You need to factor in the medical bills, though. With a loaded weight of under 1000lbs, in any sort of collision, this thing will lose . Doesn't really matter how strong the frame is, it's just simple physics. Similar situation with the "Smart" car. The passenger cell can take a 60mph impact into a barrier just fine. The passengers - not so much, the g-forces inflicted are much higher than a traditional vehicle. Even…

Unless the person you crash into is also driving one of these, in which case you both win, relatively speaking.

Safety does remain a very important consideration here, and I'm also wondering how safe those heavy gyroscopes under your seat are in a collision. They had better be extremely well-shielded from the passenger compartment.

Re: This Is the Gyro-Stabilized, Two-Wheeled Future of Transportation

#80

Post by InclinedPlane »

ajross wrote: post #70
mbenjaminsmith wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what future will the two transportation choices be motorcycles and covered motorcycles? On a more serious note, how is the current market unsustainable? Even if something as specious as "Peak Oil" were true, it's well within our power to move to another fuel source. And since when does fuel availability dictate personal vehicle design? If we can make any personal vehicle, certainly we can make one with four wheels…

At-the-pump gasoline prices have been moving steadily, inexorably upward for the past 13 years. It's not even news any more when we hit new record prices; it happens every summer. You really think that trend is going to halt any time soon? A median car in the USA is now less expensive than the fuel it will consume (and outside the USA, of course, fuel is a much greater fraction). You think that constraint won't "dica…

"Inexorably". Yes. Now, if we believed that any consistent trend over a period of about a decade would last forever, where would we all be? Buying multi-million dollar 2-bedroom homes in Detroit with our pets.com investment proceeds, I'd imagine.
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