[HN Gopher] The Dymaxion car: Buckminster Fuller's failed automo... ___________________________________________________________________ The Dymaxion car: Buckminster Fuller's failed automobile Author : conanxin Score : 56 points Date : 2022-08-10 11:49 UTC (4 days ago) (HTM) web link (slate.com) (TXT) w3m dump (slate.com) | Animats wrote: | Car Talk drove a replica.[1] "You've pushed shopping carts with | broken casters that handle better. ... No one in his or her right | mind would ever venture above 45 miles per hour because of the | lousy handling." | | [1] https://www.cartalk.com/blogs/jamie-lincoln-kitman/test- | driv... | pcrh wrote: | >Don't drive like my brother! | westurner wrote: | Good old Car Talk. | | What about with biopolymer superstructure at least, batteries | in the surfboard floor, an elegant teardrop airfoil, | regenerative braking with natural branching carbon anodes, and | an awning? | sbierwagen wrote: | Those are all solutions to problems the Dymaxion car didn't | have? | | The main complaints of the Car Talk article are the awful | handling resulting from rear wheel steering (giving a bad | caster angle resulting in no self-centering-- all modern | tricycle motor vehicles put the steer tires at the _front,_ | even if it complicates the linkages) and the aerodynamic | shape that resulted in a large car with surprisingly little | usable interior room. (a classic Buckminster problem, as this | is still the big downside of geodesic domes) | | All the big compromises of the Dymaxion car came from the | shape, which let it hit a drag coefficient of 0.25. But | modern car engineering has simply passed it by: a Prius is | 0.24 and a Model S is 0.208. There's no reason to accept the | downsides of a Dymaxion car today, which is why nobody ever | copied the design. | westurner wrote: | Where was the center of gravity - the mass centroid - in | terms of handling? | coderintherye wrote: | "In fact, the project had been undermined by interpersonal | conflicts, funding shortfalls, and persistent design issues that | he was unwilling to acknowledge." | | That's the real true story of most failed startups. | balentio wrote: | I somewhat suspect that most of what is a "failure", to the | extent it enters the collective conscious, especially in fields | like engineering, is a later triumph. | jahewson wrote: | I have a sneaking suspicion that you didn't read the article :) | jackmott42 wrote: | Aptera is a modern attempt at a similar approach. It makes me a | little sad because the Aptera really makes so much sense but I | think it will not make inroads in the market, just because it is | weird. | jsight wrote: | TBH, I'm less worried about demand than about supply. It will | be very difficult to build that machine profitably. | robga wrote: | In modern times, the Volkswagen XL1 approached the aesthetic. | It had an equally low coefficient of drag as the aptera. Not | many sold - but it was a production car. | | https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-review/volkswagen/xl1/first-dr... | PopAlongKid wrote: | I recall reading somewhere that the 3-wheel design meant that the | vehicle was inherently hard to steer due to typical roadway | camber (the crown of the road, which means the slope designed to | route water from the center of the road to the edges). Makes | sense to me; if the rear wheel is constantly being pulled to the | edge of the road because that is down hill from the middle of the | lane. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camber_angle#Road_camber | asoneth wrote: | I was most surprised the degree to which Buckminster Fuller lied | throughout the development of the car and afterwards. | | Of course it's heartbreaking that bad engineering killed two | people, but that is not unheard of in automobile design. An | honest and forthright engineering team can learn from failures. | | According to this article Fuller publicly lied about the testing, | safety, maximum speed, stability, production capacity, funding | sources, crash details, and more. I recall that he also implied | that he was the original inventor of the geodesic dome. These | kinds of things put his credibility on other claims into question | as well. | gambiting wrote: | Sounds like Elizabeth Holmes of his time. Lies everywhere from | top to bottom just to get his company off the ground. | srgpqt wrote: | So just like every other successful entrepreneur! | thebigspacefuck wrote: | A periscope? Now that's an interesting idea ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-08-14 23:01 UTC)