Will Citroen manage to re-invent the wheel?
medium.com
medium.com
Ah yes, because the alternative to biking in place in a pod-car on your way to work is to bike in place in a gym. Not, say, to ride an actual bike to work and get your exercise in that way! (And have other humans alongside you to boot.)
the Citroen Autonomous Mobility Vision has a top speed of only 25 km/h.
Which is about 15.5 mph, for us backwards Americans. I think I’m faster than that on my cheap, shitty junker of a bicycle.
- drivers don't give a crap about cyclists
- every time it rains everything you wear gets mud all over it - no bike lanes in a lot of roads
- terrible public transit, either you sit next to people who smell like pee or the train comes every 30 mins or there are no bike racks or your bike is likely to get stolen if you leave it alone for 30 seconds
- if you need to pick something up on the way to or from work you basically need to wheel around your bike in the store because otherwise it's 100% getting stolen by some guys with an electric saw
- some American cities are very hilly, so any commute longer than 2-3 miles becomes very tiring
“ Well, perhaps when this solution comes out, the government will have made sure that every square foot of tarmac is perfectly level everywhere in the world. Yes, I think that’s right. And anyway, in these clips previewing the car in a futuristic environment, you don’t ever see any bumps in the road, now do you?”
I could see this in use in factories, but this technology basically already exists so not sure what advantage these spherical wheels would give.
> The idea behind this concept is for the “cabin” part of the vehicle to constantly suit your personal requirements. In the future, you’ll be able to ask for a certain interior and exterior combination via an app probably and as the car comes to where you’re at, you get to discover, not only the perfect cabin for you but also some with different designs and purposes.
This would instantly double the amount of trips necessary for any rideshares where you need (want) to customize the cabin (Current Location -> Closest Cabin Station -> Your location, as opposed to Current Location -> Your location). Since folks customizing the cabin likely won’t want to pay double the price, that additional cost will be distributed in part to every consumer. For such a price sensitive market, I don’t see this being even close to feasible. That said, maybe the article was satirical like another commenter mentioned, and this was a comment made in jest that went entirely over my head.
Citroen has probably noticed the trend and is trying to get ahead of it, but is missing the point entirety.
Contemporary automobiles are clearly not perfect, but they have evolved over a century to put considerable thought to safety and efficiency. This "concept" throws everything out the window in exchange for ... cars that go sideways.
I'd like to contrast this to Volvo's effort a decade or so ago where they asked the question "Car design is all male focused, but what are the _actual_ issues women care about?" and came out with really useful if mundane ideas (easier/hands-free access, greener material, etc). There are things that can actually be realized and would be helpful.
They were right that most drivers don’t care about that and think of cars as tools, not hobbies. But framing it as a women’s thing was rough.
I think many modern cars are actually quite close to that prototype in spirit. Especially the electric versions.
For many cars and ares in the world the turning radius usable on small streets is not really a problem.
> open up additional safety buffer space
I don't think that matters, we already have very save cross road designs, we just need to use them.
I’m not sure that this does anything for pedestrian safety, though.
Spherical wheels provide zero radius for off-original-orientation movement from a stop (and similar but somewhat less benefit at low speed) because you can thrust independently of the direction of orientation.
This isn't the same a reduced turning radius, but it has similar effects for certain low speed maneuvers to an extreme reduction in turning radius.
The only thing you can get from spherical wheels that you can’t get from standard wheels with comparable drive is sideways motion, which granted, would be kind of awesome (zooming down the highway and switching lanes with no directional change), but also not actually that useful. You can also get a bit of this from independently-steerable wheels, as someone else pointed out. But that won’t get you sideways motion from a standstill if that’s somehow useful.
You can actually get it from independently steerable wheels with AWD if they are mounted and driven independently (practical with an electric power system) rather than off a common axle; I’m pretty sure I recall concept vehicles (or at least designs) from various car companies with that design, for that purpose.
The typical highlighted urban use case is zero-approach parallel parking. For autonomous vehicles, especially, it would make higher density but basically random access (and, therefore, not subject to easy blockage by small number of vehicle failures) storage possible
> zooming down the highway and switching lanes with no directional change
You probably can't get better than AWD with independently steerable wheels on an axle for this, because the limiting factor in how far you can change thrust direction while maintaining control at highway speed is going to be traction long before it is maximum wheel angle.
Spherical wheels can do it more efficiently because they can do it with less slippage. But regular wheels can absolutely do that maneuver. Even tracks can. Heavy equipment does this all the time.
E.g. if you are on a bike you can have a hyper small turning radius, but only if you mover very very slow (but not too slow ;) ).
The problem is requiring such a radius would be a safety hazard, as people would all the time not get the turn due to driving to fast, even if they literally started driving a moment ago due to a red traffic light.
The customizability in this concept is the over-the-top version of what Citroen offers for the new Ami, where about €60 will buy you a set of stickers (https://ma-belle-voiture.com/en/72-citroen-ami) (I also think the idea of having different ‘tops’ for a car isn’t new, but can’t find an example online)
But thinking it makes sense "on a normal street" sound to me like a solution from an American world view bubble.
Like e.g. the ground clearing of this thing is a catastrophe and speed bumps are a standard solutions for reducing people going gross over speed limits in many parts of the worlds (or the streets are less maintained, or the streets go steep up and down in the mountains).
Similar for many parts of the world the _proven_ solution of cars is to have much less of them (and in some cases avoid unnecessary large cars). Which works out quite well in many cases. And has many benefits, like less resource wasted, less noise pollution, less air pollution, better local economics, etc. Many of this factors still apply to electric cars in some way or another.
The only areas where such a concept makes sense is if you:
- have supper well maintained roads
- either have a super high population density (e.g. Tokyo, or Singapore) but then you probably don't have size for that fancy setup you can put onto it
- or are supper dependent on cars to a point where it feels impossible to not rely on cars (many parts of the US)
I have seen such concept cars already from all kind of companies years ago.
And common factors are:
- Ball wheels
- Whole car in the "bottom plate", top in some way customizable/replaceable.
- Self driving or joystick controller
The interchangeable tops would be whats loaded in the warehouse.
>and the spherical “wheels” don’t seem to deliver any real value over wheels, just more complexity.
They take away a lot of navigational complexity in a warehouse setting where you don't have much space. And they could do exactly the maneuvers necessary in that setting, like bringing a package directly into its designated space, unloading it and then driving out underneath.
You mean the tops are essentially pallets? Okay but how do you get them on and off? This seems like a forklift make more sense.
> They take away a lot of navigational complexity in a warehouse setting where you don't have much space.
I don’t see it. You still need a mechanism to load/unload unless the things you’re moving are capable of doing that themselves somehow. Unless your load/unload mechanism is somehow omnidirectional, you’ll need to turn the vehicle anyway, negating most of the benefit.
And yes, it's often easier to make the load/unload mechanism omnidirectional than to make a space where a directional vehicle can maneuver.
If you were doing to change the tops, though, I would expect some external lift would do that job. Adding lift capabilities to the base or to the tops would add a bunch of weight for no reason. (Those extra tops have to be stored somewhere. Might as well keep the lift mechanism in the storage facility.) The obvious answer is that a forklift is used to put the top onto the base.
These already exist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJtpPyVM_y4
I swear this was a background element in one of the new Star Trek's. Failing to find a clip. At the time, I thought it was a waste of special effects, only to later discover it was a real product.
Those sidewinder wheels seem like a much better solution than the captive spheres in the concept car, though.
Admittedly you won't compete against Tesla or the Big 3 but there are plenty of niches where you might. They won't all be sports cars either. Taxis, police cars or special purpose delivery vehicles.
There are small profitable niches where no one has even entertained the idea of battery powered cars yet. I love the idea of a one pizza car company operating out of what now is an abandoned warehouse in Detroit.
Aside from the ridiculous "cabs" and zero ground-clearance, I wonder if the idea of spherical wheels has any legs. I presume it would be too complex for an average human to control, but I wonder if it might make sense for autonomous vehicles - it would give them much more scope to manoeuvre, and might lead to increased safety.
You saw it in iRobot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audi_RSQ#:~:text=The%20car%20u....
But of course, they don't sell in America.
So, so much for that.
OTOH, looking at the XL (which has 7 seats rather than 5), cold weather highway range is only 140km. I suspect that this accomplishes more in Europe than it does in the US; in any case, I see enormous value in having PHEV range for daily tasks while retaining the engine for family trips, which quickly get into the hundreds of miles.
This takes time for us in France to build such cars with such sort of regulations that you won't buy anyway because they're just fugly euro and not manly japanese. Start lobbying your congressman for more Citroen imports though, who knows, it may last a while before the next "Liberty Fries" boycott because someone here refused to murder some children in some "shit country" :p
Citroen is not a "french company" anymore. It belongs currently to Stellantis that includes Opel, Maseratti, Lancia, Peugeot, Fiat, Chrystler or Jeep under the same brand.
Can't tell if this is satire.
I’m more concerned about the fact that the tires have no actual tread, which means they’re going to be unusable in the rain. Of course this whole thing makes no sense so none of this matters.
Yes, like all of you, it feels a little ridiculous to me. Maybe a LOT ridiculous. But, I don't know, 99% of the time someone tries to sell you on some "bold thinking," it just isn't.
Love it or hate it, I really respect that they're putting something genuinely different out there. Respect to them for actually doing what Elon Musk imagines he's doing.
Yes. This is definitely the solution we need. There's no other way to get exercise whilst transporting yourself.