Robert Q. Riley Enterprises: Product Design & Development
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Personal Urban Commuter
Three-Wheel Platform Provides Product Differentiation

Lifestyle Vehicles
Slide 12 of 18
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This slide helps elaborate on the idea that "design," or vehicle packaging and personality, can impact energy consumption.  The car in the photo was designed in 1978, and I was one of the two co-designers.  At the outset, we asked the question: "What would the 21st-century urban dweller drive?"  The presumption was that it had to be much more energy efficient than existing cars...... and this was our answer in 1978.

Now the actual prototype achieved somewhat less fuel economy.  But I’ve taken the liberty to insert figures that would result from using today’s automotive technology.  The prototype was powered by an unmodified industrial engine that was about on par with 1930's automobile technology - maybe not quite that advanced - and it still achieved about 55 mpg.   Using today's technology, this car could easily achieve in excess of 100 mpg. 

Low mass is the main ingredient of the vehicle’s high fuel economy.  In city driving about 70 percent of a car’s energy goes to the effects of mass. So all we did was build a small, lightweight car, and style it to suggest that it was a totally new type transportation product - as opposed to a cheap econobox version of a conventional car.  Although the three-wheel platform does help reduce weight and rolling resistance, the underlying reason for using it was because it naturally conveyed the message that this was not just a downsized ordinary car.   We were attempting to create a shift in perception through the use of "design." 

Safety is an issue that comes to mind when we talk about 800-pound three-wheel cars.  But it’s possible to design three-wheelers with rollover stability equal to that of four-wheel cars.  It’s also possible to make ultralight cars with lots of crash protection.  And with emerging technology, it’s possible to avoid automobile crashes altogether.   Safety is a whole presentation by itself, so I’ll limit what I say about it.   But by 2020 NHTSA expects that crash avoidance, rather than crash survival, will be the primary focus in automobile safety.

If we were to consider vehicle mass as a safety feature, then the natural extension would be to build 10,000-pound cars and make the highways a lot safer.  But safety should be envisioned as an engineering problem, not a challenge to out-smash the other car.  The whole idea of crash survival as an approach to safety is rather uncivilized, and far more elegant solutions are being developed.   

 

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