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Old 01-02-2012, 07:02 PM   #67 (permalink)
NeilBlanchard
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There is a huge difference between a trike and a reverse trike. Two wheels in front is the only way to make a 3-wheeled car. The stability of one wheel in front at highway speeds or on an off-camber turn and/or a downhill turn would not be something I would want to drive.

And the G-Wiz accident is a straw man -- that is a death trap by almost everybody's opinion. It is a NEV, right? Isn't that how it avoided a crash test?

No design is inherently crash-worthy or not crash-worthy. The G-Wiz has 4 wheels, and it is not very good in a crash. The Aptera was designed to be crash-worthy, and it was crash tested, both in a computer, and for real. They did a 35mph front end crash; Steve Fambro will hopefully release the video of this.

The dynamics of a 3 wheel reverse trike is apparently quite tight and crisp: Three-Wheel Vehicle Handling Characteristics

There are several videos of the Aptera tearing around turns. Again, I think the reasons that they failed to produce these are many, and none of them relate to the 3 wheeled design. Most are poor management decisions, and misguided decisions that lead to the redesign that was the SO-1. They put all their eggs in that one basket, and they blew it, as we saw at the X-Prize. They did no actual testing of the SO-1 before taking it to the X-Prize.
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