Friday, September 5, 2008

Deus Ex Machina, an electric Yamaha-branded exoskeleton


Click on the image for more shots of the Deus Ex Machina concept

Bumsuk Lim, a professor at Art Center Pasadena in California, has started a new program which aims to push the boundaries of future motorcycle design. Lim projects two-wheeling as a possible green revolution of sorts, saying, "There is no point in designing existing vehicles and simply adding green technology to the same old problem when we have the opportunity, and the moment in time, to make a greater change! Why not use these new environmentally safe technologies to change the way we ride?"

Judging from the first design we've seen from Jake Loniak, convention has taken a back seat to design. Called Deus Ex Machina, which means God Out of a Machine, the three-wheeled vehicle is a melding of motorcycle and exo-skeleton, complete with artificial vertebrae and pneumatic muscles. A built-in helmet, which sits atop the machine at rest, tilts forward with the body of the rider, making for a leaned-forward riding position. If it were ever built, which seems rather unlikely, the vehicle is projected to accelerate to sixty in three seconds and travel up to sixty minutes at a speed of up to seventy-five miles per hour, all after a fifteen minute charge of the Doped NanoPhosphate batteries and ultra-capacitors.


[Source: GreenCarDesign via Hell For Leather]

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