Before I forget one of the most important elements of any car design, I’ll update on progress with the wheels. It’s actually been a nice change to work on these, as there are very few restrictions in designing a wheel. Actually, that’s a lie – due to the way I want my car/motorbike/thing to work, there willhave to be a very function driven shape. You may have noted (predominantly) round side blisters at the leg ends in the photoshops and sketchovers. These accomodate the electric engines for each wheel. Of course though, I’d want these bumps to be a streamlined as possible, so the majority of each engine bulk will actually sit inside the wheels themselves. Moreover, the wheels have to work joined together as a motorbike wheel, and ideally, have a higher contact patch when open and negatively cambered (this should be minimised in motorbike mode to reduce rolling friction). Thus, an assymetric tyre design is needed.
Speaking of tyres, there is another element I must consider here – I want to do a really unique tread pattern that matches the design (and perhaps references african art/sculptural graphics), but it has to be bi-directional given that the vehicle travels both directions. But before I get (more) boring, here is some of the development of the tread pattern and some of the concepts for spoke design. I was inspired initially by wind tubines for them, but those are quite directional, so after a tweaking cad models for a while, I came to decide on the final one, which I think retains a slight aero styled aesthetic.
