Narrow track vehicles - the convergence of the car
and the motorcycle
By
Mike Hanlon
01:22 November 19, 2009 PST
Nissan's LandGlider
Since Nicholas Negroponte first came up with his landmark teething
ring visualization of the coming together of communication, computing
and content, the term convergence has become the uber buzzword. Now
there’s convergence going on in the personal transport industry, with
the car and the motorcycle morphing as car makers attempt to downsize
their vehicles to make them better suited to the world’s increasingly
crowded roads. This article begins with Nissan’s tandem two-seat, half
width tilting car, the Landglider, and examines all the other work being
done around the world as narrow track vehicles seriously begin to make
their case.
Sitting in Nissan’s Landglider was an experience, I’d been looking
forward to it since I first spied the pre-show imagery – this truly is
near the point where the motorcycle and automobile meet. It’s a two
passenger vehicle, one behind the other, it’s half the width of a
conventional car and it leans through corners like a motorcycle.
Being fully enclosed and with impact absorption zones and a composite
protection tub, the Land Glider’s pilot is a lot less vulnerable than a
motorcycle rider, yet the Land Glider’s light weight and the punchy
electric motors mean a motorcycle-like torque to weight ratio for quick
acceleration and the steer-by-wire system leans the Land Glider up to 17
degrees – it may not be the 45 degree plus of a sports motorcycle, and
the proof-of-concept will surely be in the driving experience as to how
drive-by-wire feels in comparison to the mechanical systems we’re all
accustomed to, but it’s more than enough to have safe, low-speed fun
commuting to the office.
The Land Glider is one of a wave of new single track concept vehicles
being shown by auto makers this year as they begin preparing for yet
another looming crisis for the auto industry - Global Traffic
Congestion!
Global Traffic Congestion
The number of vehicles on the world’s roads will double between 1989 and
2025, while the total length of commonly used roadway will essentially
remain the same.
In Europe, drivers already spend one quarter of their road-going time in
traffic jams, so as the number of vehicles grows, a future of extremely
congested roadways looks likely unless something is done. The developing
super nations of Brazil, Russia, India and China alone will add billions
of new cars to our roads over the next few decades.
Automobiles per capita has long been an indicator of a country’s
economic prosperity and as these highly populous nations grow wealthy,
massive automobile uptake is being forecast.
Right now, China has 131 cars per thousand people and India just 12
cars per thousand.
By 2050, India will have 382 cars per thousand people, and China will
have 363 cars per thousand. By 2050, India will be the most populous
nation on earth with 1.6 billion people, and China will be a close
second with 1.5 billion. Do the math and you’ll begin to understand the
problems we face – by 2050 China and India alone will have 1.1 billion
cars – and that’s more than the total number of cars in use on the
planet right now, and with an infrastructure likely to be well behind
the growth.
Two years ago, humanity passed the point where 50% of the world's
population is living in urban areas. Cities are a relatively recent
development in civilization. Two hundred years ago just 3% of the global
population lived in cities, by 1950, that grew to 30%. But the numbers
are surging and by 2030 five billion people will live in urban areas –
more than 60% percent of the population.
Yet cities cannot build more roads because there is no more space.
Traffic congestion is very bad for economic health. It wastes the time
of all caught in it and the resultant inability to forecast accurate
travel time means more people add additional time to their travel "just
in case" and a huge lump of non-productive time gets added to everyone’s
routine.
Traffic jams waste fuel and increase air pollution, and no country knows
this better than Japan where road congestion is at its greatest on
Earth.
The automobile-based mobile society Japan helped build has ironically
created the world’s largest traffic jams in its heartland for several
decades now.
Japan gets a sneak preview of traffic congestion
...continued
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