[euromodder]

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

The asymmetry is so that there can be an aisle to get in from the back door.

Looking at the enlarged plan view, if the rear seat was moved to the right and the seats were to be spaced further apart (lengthwise), I figure you'd still have a zig-zag aisle wide enough to pass through.

There will be at least one "hoop" of a roll cage just behind the driver, and it will be supported by two tubes that run from the floor up to the roof.

CarBEN can have A and B pillar / ring structures like any car.

Think about the 'B' pillar on a typical 4 door sedan: it alone spans from the floor to the roof, with no stiffening panels.

Yes, but it is a "circular" load-bearing structure going all the way around the car.
The B-pillar is helped by the C (and D) pillars in a sedan / station wagon / van design.

In CarBEN, the huge rear hatch opening prevents any such continuous structure behind the hatch's hingeline, and hat's going to cost you in weight and reduced stiffness.

In order to make the roof robust, these structures will have to be continued into the hatch, with an interlocking system locking the hatch to the sides.
That's going to be heavier than a continuous structure, and the extra weight is going to be high up on the vehicle.

There are huge pay-offs in flexibility from having multiple entry/exit points.
In a tail-end collision, your passengers are effectively blocked-in.
It could also become a problem in a low parking lot.

In the event of a side crash impact, that one pillar takes virtually all of the force. Even with the anti-intrusion bars in the doors, the force exerted on them transfers as point load onto the 'B' pillar.

And from there on the load spreads all around the B-ring structure and to anything connected to it.

The floor will have to be a box beam, around the battery pack and this supports the base of the roll bars.

The floor box would actually be a good structure where you could offload impact forces from the B-pillar ... or from stiffeners around the side-doors.

I'm thinking a few cells cane be moved from the very back and added to the side flanks? Or, I'll worry about the exact layout when I get the chassis built...

Keep an eye on weight distribution early on in the design process because it gets more difficult to correct later on.


Don't get me wrong, I like your idea of designing a radically efficient and different car - and I like it better than the Miastrada design (sorry Jim ) as it is far more down to earth. I think that even in this form, it's also more practical than the cramped Loremo.

But don't make a design radical just to be radical.
There has to be a really, really good reason for any radical design feature to catch on.

The shape is radical with good reason, and means the traditional seating pattern is out - but the chosen access option is taking up an enormous % of the cockpit floorpan area (roughly 30% maybe ?) and luggage will interfere with access.


Design ideas :
- drop the huge hatch idea
- add side doors abeam/in front of the front passengers
- rearward sliding doors would hardly protrude from the body as the doors are at the widest section, and the design narrows going aft.
- move the rear seat to the right and further forward, though keeping the staggered layout as it reduces width.
- provide access to the rear seats between the front passenger seats (driver and front passengers already have to get inbetween these seats in the current design)
- the above will provide ample dedicated luggage space at the rear, and an even greater useful volume when the rear seats are made to be stowable in the sides or floor (could interfere with the batteries) ; alternatively, the design cold narrow or slope down even more at the rear if that's aerodynamically useful.