Angular Momentum

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The Tellurian Targa

A couple of years ago I joined Local Motors, which is a venture in automotive crowdsourcing. Haven't entered any of the competitions, but have been active in the Rally, roadster, what next? forum thread...

The consensus seems to be that the next LM vehicle to be produced should be an electric sports car, and indeed the company is planning to engineer and build an electric platform soon. Before I learned of that, however, I got antsy and decided to put pencil to paper, sharing most of my quick, rough sketches in the thread.

Here is the latest:

'TELLURIAN TARGA'

Now of course I don't want to do anything for LM in Tellurian Motors' flat-panel design language, so this means I'm having to get used to drawing curves again...

Before this concept sprouted an 'open cargo area' it already had the removable roof panel and targa bar, and since my ID on the LM site is 'Tellurian', well, the vehicle sort of named itself.

The folding tonneau cover (which when folded, disappears below the rear window) is composed of 4 solar panels. These might not offer much charging capacity, but every little bit helps. Plus, the secondary charging point used by these can also be used by a small, ordinary generator that one might load up for use as a range extender on longer trips.

To be quite honest, I hadn't thought of the genset option until after I'd already decided on what is technically a small pickup configuration -- simply to increase cargo capacity. Some call this 'synchronicity'...

YES, I'm going against my own design ethos in a couple of ways by working on this concept -- it doesn't use flat panels, nor free energy...

...Not yet, anyway.

filsmyth

29July2011

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