Bob Horn Kneeslider recumbent motorcycle

Recumbent motorcycle of Bob Horn.

Another excellent mechnic building a nice recumbent motorcycle, doing races.
His new steering system still eludes me a bit, but it seems to be working excellently.
youtube movie of steering system

Bob has a nice blog for you to look at, blog.

New monotracer designs

Found some more monotracer, motorcycle designs, for your (and mine) inspiration
More and more designers seem to see the benefit of the monotracer design.

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.

Surpine Exodus

The Suprine Machinery company is proud of their recumbent motorcyle, the Suprine Exodus.
The presentation is on their website.
On youtube they have a movie.
On Diseno-art : Suprine exodus
On cycle world : Suprine exodus


Interesting prototype, unclear is if they plan any streamlined bodywork.

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.

Allert Jacobs motorcycle

Allert Jacobs,

Allert's well known in the recumbent streamliner scene, as a very dedicated builder, has constructed his own motorcycle fairing.

This blog page because I found in interesting little movie of him talking about it, with English sub-titles. Enjoy the youtube movie and his very comprehensive webpage about the building of the motorcycle and the reasoning behind it. As always with Allert his reasoning is very precise and he proves his point(s).

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!