> It has to be beautiful to sell because if you look like a dork it will be a flop. Cue the segway.
The segway flopped because it was hyped as a mass-market product when it didn't have a mass market use-case that wasn't already filled by much cheaper bicycles.
A segway lets you travel as if you had a bicycle, pretty much, only the segway costs more than most bikes, you don't get any exercise, you have to charge it up, and it's more difficult to get it up and down stairs.
I think the fact that it looks kinda dorky is pretty far down the list of reasons why the segway failed. In fact, one can argue that they are seen as dorky precisely because they are so useless for most people.
In this case? the ultralight car category? It needs to be somehow better than a motorcycle. Figure out how to make a vehicle as efficient as a motorcycle (both in terms of up-front cash and ongoing fuel) and as safe as a car, and you are gonna sell a lot of 'em.
Two wheels in front or even 4 wheels doesn't magically make things safer (4 wheel ATV's are still plenty dangerous).
In the US, a lot of the reason for putting 2 wheels of 3 in front is that you get classified differently as a vehicle than if you had 2 wheels of 3 in the back.
>Two wheels in front or even 4 wheels doesn't magically make things safer (4 wheel ATV's are still plenty dangerous).
It isn't magic, it's physics. See this post for a breakdown of the two configurations. [0] The Twike uses the delta configuration, which is know to have issues.
The segway flopped because it was hyped as a mass-market product when it didn't have a mass market use-case that wasn't already filled by much cheaper bicycles.
A segway lets you travel as if you had a bicycle, pretty much, only the segway costs more than most bikes, you don't get any exercise, you have to charge it up, and it's more difficult to get it up and down stairs.
I think the fact that it looks kinda dorky is pretty far down the list of reasons why the segway failed. In fact, one can argue that they are seen as dorky precisely because they are so useless for most people.
In this case? the ultralight car category? It needs to be somehow better than a motorcycle. Figure out how to make a vehicle as efficient as a motorcycle (both in terms of up-front cash and ongoing fuel) and as safe as a car, and you are gonna sell a lot of 'em.