Third Wheel, The

AUTOMOTIVE

ENGLAND ONCE produced the Reliant Robin, a three-wheeled car that featured a fiberglass body and a noisy, fumous engine. It was the butt of many jokes-mostly about its proclivity for tipping over as it rounded corners. But now a pan-European initiative, led by a Bath University design team, has developed a sleek-looking, three-wheeled two-seater that's also environmentally friendly. The Compact Low Emission Vehicle for Urban Transport (CLEVER) car combines "the efficiency of a motorcycle with the comfort and safety of a car," says Ben Drew, who with fellow Bath mechanical engineering student Matt Barker designed a tilting technology that lets the CLEVER car easily and safely glide around the corners and curves that give robins fits. The micro-mini-it's about 3 feet wide-can hit speeds of 60 mph. It runs on compressed natural gas, so it emits about a third less carbon dioxide than the average car and gets the equivalent of 108 mpg.

The $2.9 million, three-year project was funded by the European Union and other partners, including BMW, the Techische Universitaet Berlin and the Institut Francais Du Petrole. The French engineers developed the 218cc engine from a BMW C1 scooter motor. And unlike the Robin, it's very quiet. Clearly, the CLEVER car is no joke. -TG

Copyright American Society for Engineering Education Sep 2006
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