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Tilting 4WD 'Spider Car' Makes Light Work of Bizarre Terrain

Posted by Soulskill on from the good-for-navigating-those-places-where-you-can't-get-a-car-anyway dept.

Zothecula writes: The Swincar Spider is a remarkable tilting 4-wheeler concept that boasts absolutely ridiculous rough terrain capabilities. Each wheel has its own electric hub motor and is independently suspended on a spider-like limb. The result is a vehicle that leans into fast turns like a motorcycle, but can also happily go up or down a 70-percent gradient, ride across a 50-percent gradient that puts the left wheels a couple of feet higher than the right ones, or ride diagonally through ditches that send the wheels going up and down all over the place like a spider doing leg stretches.

3 of 80 comments (clear)

  1. Oh Great! by deviated_prevert · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Just what the backroads need something that makes it own. Look out fish spawning in creeks and shallow ponds, ground squirrels, ground nesting avian life, insect colonies here comes another bunch of idiots to tear up your home. ZOOM ZOOM their goes the neighbourhood! Well that is if Mazda brings one out before anyone else like Honda, Polaris and Skidoo/whoever the heck does not corner first. Oh and I am sure that they will be available in two stroke oil injected hot rod models that can tear the shit out tree roots as well.

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    1. Re:Oh Great! by BitZtream · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Settle down there Beavis. There are plenty of tows with long throw suspension already. This is only new because you aren't into motor sports already.

      This thing isn't particularly impressive. It doesn't do anything that hasn't been done before other than possibly the suspension angling out to the side like that instead of forward/back or directly verticle, but the end result is that its the same way as every other suspension system on the planet for cars/bikes.

      This isn't going to result in a bunch of new people you have to shout 'Get off my lawn!' at because better versions of this are already available, just not very many people actually care about a feature that really only matters on the Mars rovers.

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  2. Re:Nothing special... by cheater512 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    How does it have conventional axle assemblies if there are no axles in the entire thing?

    You missed the bit where it said that each wheel had a hub motor in it.