ross millar

I flew home from Ft Lauderdale today, and I enjoy picking up a random magazine for a flight – like junk food for the brain. Today I bought the May 2007 copy of Popular Science, in it a special on the “Future Of The Car“. Interesting read, as a gearhead I have been reading articles on alternates for some time. One thing that strikes me as poor design in the Javelin Speedsled – a design flaw that seems to be commonly overlooked in several designs (see GM’s Skateboard concept); are hub mounted motors at each wheel. It has obvious benefits, like an open frame for liberal seating and body configurations. The flaw is this: disregard for unsprung weight, and rotating mass. It’s simple: the lower the weight of a wheel, brake and suspension assembly, the better the vehicle will ‘hold the road’. I don’t know about you, but I feel that future cars should out perform existing ones, in safety, as well as balls to the wall performance. The solution is a simple one, move the motors to the chassis, thus becoming sprung weight, and run short drive shafts to the wheels. I’m more than willing to retain a ‘conventional’ (read: existing) seating arrangement for function, these seating arrangements have served human transport well for over a century, why change it now?

I have more to discuss here than I have time right now, so more to come on this in future posts.