Quote:
Originally Posted by euromodder
Selling the high-MPG-at-some-cost-and-annoyance side of things will be bad enough, so no-one needs to design a weird looking vehicle like a 3 wheeler.
There's nothing wrong with having 4 wheels, even if it adds some drag and weight.
The rewards in stability have proven the 4-wheeled concept over and over.
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Actually, there is no intrinsic benefit to three wheelers for drag reduction. If you make the three-wheeler fat, (Aptera style) there is no benefit at all. You have to at least put the people on centerline, (or near, as in Doug's idea) to dramatically reduce frontal area.
Despite Aptera's claims to the contrary, three wheels do not have less rolling resistance than 4. Rolling resistance is a function of weight and Crr. Three wheels with 333 lb on each have the same rolling resistance as 4 wheels with 250 on each.
There is a slight advantage in parts count to three-wheelers.
The real disadvantage to four wheels is that you are then a car, and are playing in a market where a $billion to develop a single new model is standard, and Aptera's 24 million in funding is a rounding error. You can expect to spend millions in crash testing.
Three-legged stools are more stable than four-legged stools. Camera tripods are tripods for good reasons. It's just a matter of engineering a three-wheeler to work right, as Morgan did in the 1930s. The T-rex out-handles a Porsche. Jay Leno raved about the modern Morgan Three Wheeler.