streamlined electric motorcycle mark V.2

Reverted to an earlier design as I felt drifting away from my design objectives: small and efficient.
Uploaded a new youtube movie of the renderings.

SEM website updated

SEM website updated

For me great news.
The website of the streamlined electric motorcycle has been updated with the latest design, as I promissed two days ago!

A design of which I am very proud, although, it is complex, it is the most realistic electric motorcycle so far!

Many, very many hours were spent on the design, designing the hub center steering, the T-splines aerodynamic shape, the singled sided wheel supports, the drivebelt drive, the agni motor, the mannequin, the sitting positions, the "retro" look, the ... landing gear, etc. etc.

Black & White streamliner

Black & White streamliner

The latest version of the streamlined electric motorcycle was uploaded to this youtube link.
This is the version which will be presented on the website streamlined-electric-motorcycle.com
It is by far the best engineered version of the design series of SEM.

One of the things I always do is make a comparison with other alternatives and sometimes even motorcars.
In this case the comparison is with the famous Peraves Monotracer.
This comparisons shows that one of the main design characteristics is still realized: small vehicle = low aerodynamic resistance.
Remember the design is for a 1.9m 6' 2.8" man.

Single Sided Hub center steering

Single Sided Hub center steering,

for the streamlined electric motorcycle.

As a design excercise I have been looking at a single sided version of the hub center steering. It took me quite some hours to figure it out, make the design and do the renderings, but it is done!

There is a  youtube movie of the design,
a take apart animation so you can see how I solved the problem.
It is now possible to easily take off the front wheel, the double roller bearing is much smaller and consequently lighter than the two sided design.
There is more rotational space on the left side of the hub as the brake disk could me moved more inward.

Below some images to peek your interest.

Lit motors

Lit motors

Rekindle the exitement

Jealous, that's what I am when I see the progress of LIT motors.
How does Daniel Kim do it, how does he fund his team ....

Ok enough of this.
Their mock-up is phantastic.
There are several video's online and their website has some also.
This youtube movie can be a good starting point for you.


What is their basic idea? 
They want a monotracer design (ie. motorcycle, vehicle riding along a single track) but without training wheels / landing gear to keep the vehicle upright when driving at low speed. (they have a parking stand)
Their solution is using twin gyro's for stabilization. The precession of the gyro's is controlled in such a way that the vehicle will always stay upright.
Looking at the video's it becomes obvious that there are some issues with the gyro control, too many people around the vehicle, a wobbly motion when standing still, video's cut short suddenly.  Hope they wil soon solve this.

Streamlined shape.
The shape of the vehicle obviously will have to be re-designed as the side windows are not high enough for comfortable view even when small persons are sitting inside.

Battery capacity.
The gyro's  take up a lot of room below the seat(s) and that leaves little room for batteries for the electric motor. From my own designs (for sem) I know that the drive batteries are the major problem, if you want performance in power and endurance you need a large number of relatively high capacity batteries, which take up a large volume ....
In the Lit design I do not see where they intend to store the batteries.

Just some more Lit eye-candy.
Keep up the good work Daniel Kim!

Single sided Hub center steering

Single sided Hub center steering

The first images of the almost finished design of the single sided hub center steering for the streamlined electric motorcycle.

The design had some specific objectives:
- make it single sided.
- easy wheel take-off.
- torsional stiffness of the front suspension.
- sealed roller bearings.
- brake disk close to wheel center.

more to come
- renderings
- simulation

Streamlined Electric Motorcycle on Youtube

Streamlined Electric Motorcycle on Youtube

The video production results are on youtube!!

1. The hubcenter steering design
2. The Evolution of the design from 2007


Now its only the website which has to be changed.

Streamlined Electric Motorcycle

Streamlined Electric Motorcycle, evolution

Just made a little clip of the Streamlined Electric Motorcycle and it evolution, before I will upload it to youtube, here is a preview.

  
Renderings of the design.

The design is based on 1950's motorcars with as an extra objective decreasing the frontal ares as much as possible and producing a smooth yet angular design. The angles are essential to mitigate the lift producing qualities of a smooth airfoil type shape.
The front window now allows for a small window wiper. There are no mirrors ons the design as camera's are more than accepatble to do the job of providing a rearview.
The extreme wasp paintscheme  makes the SEM stand out more (hopefully), which is required due to is diminuitive size.

This rendering of the inside of de SEM with landing gear up shows the very large batterypack underneath the driver and the short front- and rear-fork arrangements. The motor is the large Agni 35Kw motor which is under development.
Control and monitoring is through 2 tablet pc's on one of which the rearview camera presents an 150dgr angle view out the back window. This tablet also presents realtime googlemaps position and route-planning information.

A suicide door for ease of getting out and as the doorlocks are much more reliable a safe option.
The landing gear is controlled by a hand lever, via push-pull cables, as with a motorcycle, the driver is responsible for staying upright. The width of the landing gear is sufficient to prevent rollover on a limited incline.

 Hub center steering to decrease the required height in front and to optimize spring and damping action of the shock-absorbers and springs.
The design shown is for a two-sided frontfork, a single sided frontfork with an a-symmetric hub is under design and expected to make more efficient use of space in the hub.

More to come.

Hub center steering

Hub center steering.

Some pic's of the Streamlined Electric Motorcycle's hub center steering.
This redesign will be published in a couple of weeks on the sem website.

Reasons for choosing hub center steering are:
- reduces height of the front of the vehicle.
- has advantages with respect to springing and damping.

Disavantages :
- non standard components.
- "complicated" front hub.