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The “fifth wheel” parallel parking tool that never hit it big (2018)
- aidenn0 4y agoI actually had this idea when I was a kid; good to have it confirmed that I wasn't the first to think of it.
- FR10 4y agoVery interesting, I guess one of the reasons it didnt take off because it wasted so much space in the boot
- wutbrodo 4y agoIn the article it mentions that his second iteration was externally mounted, and didn't take up trunk Space.
- legohead 4y agoI had this random shower thought the other day that electric cars could easily have more than (powered) 4 wheels. Then I realized they are plenty fast already...
- dhosek 4y agoThere was another idea I remember reading about in the 70s or 80s in (I think) Omni Magazine: Four wheel steering: All four wheels can be rotated. with the steering wheel. Turn the wheels to a full 90° and you can then move the car sideways into a parallel space. A lot more practical than this plan which pretty much destroys all the trunk space. Especially, with an EV where you can connect motors directly to each wheel, I can see this working out very nicely.
- simulate-me 4y agoAllowing wheels to rotate 90 degrees would also destroy trunk space (and space in the engine compartment).
- salgernon 4y agoMitsubishi (and others) in the 80s,90s had 4 wheel steering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steering#Four-wheel_steering https://www.autoweek.com/car-life/a1871191/four-wheel-steering-demystified/ I never drove one; I had a friend that said it really didn't do much for him that he noticed.
- Schroedingersat 4y agoDoesn't one of the new mercedes have four wheel steering, but it refuses to be active during parking unless you pay a subscription?
- grandchild 4y agoI don't know if this is true or not, but I beg you, don't post comments like this. It's a question, and you could've spent the extra minute of research to _actually find out_ and post that. This way we are left with negative value: We don't know any better, and instead are mentally burdened with speculation, that we have to actively work to not muddle up with what we know later on. You can do better!
- kwhitefoot 4y ago
- daveguy 4y agoI think it never made it big because: 1. Thinking about having to parallel park makes sure you are less likely to bump the cars in front and behind. Moving the front in and then swinging the back in seems like a good way to swing the back into another car. 2. Parking wasn't as much of a nightmare in the early 30s. Then WWII happened and that metal would have been an excess. By the 50s it was a "failed" idea. Having 90 degree car wheels (that can only go 90 degrees at ~rest) combined with the sensors on a modern EV might make it feasible. But I'm not a mechanical engineer so "90 degree car wheels" might have some other feasibility problems, even at rest.
- wutbrodo 4y ago> By the 50s it was a "failed" idea. What do you mean by this?
- flukus 4y agoWhen something has been around for a while but never caught on we're usually quite dismissive by default, usually on the assumption that it never caught on for a reason. Think of your own reaction the last time 3D TV's were hot. Things will usually fail for the same reason again and agian unless there's been a fundamental change to make it more feasible, like battery tech making the latest round of electric vehicles successful.
- throwaway0a5e 4y ago>Having 90 degree car wheels (that can only go 90 degrees at ~rest) combined with the sensors on a modern EV might make it feasible. But I'm not a mechanical engineer so "90 degree car wheels" might have some other feasibility problems, even at rest. Should be easily possible to get almost the same effect on any RWD car if the engineers feel like designing for it (they don't). It's just a matter of allowing enough steering angle (amount depends on wheelbase). Every forklift made in the last 70yr can pivot about one of the non-steering wheels if you turn the wheel far enough. Some commercial trucks have enough steering angle to get almost the same effect (though they're much longer so the required angle is less) With ABS to brake the pivot point wheel it would be pretty graceful and you'd avoid the "just plowing straight" that forklifts tend to do when you try and crank the steering to max on anything other than pavement. But there would be a lot of tradeoffs in order to get the range of motion you'd need out of the steering wheels so it makes sense that they don't.
- mauvehaus 4y agoParallel parking just isn't hard enough to justify the expense and complexity (same thing, really) of adding this device to a car. This is a lot of gizmosity to solve a problem that can be solved with a couple hours of practice on a quiet street.
- blamazon 4y agoNowadays automated parallel parking is a relatively commonplace thing ("it's got smaht pahk!"[1]) and we have come full circle. Hardware complexity superseded by software complexity. Kinda neat. Interestingly, automated parallel parking systems are allowed to be used during road licensing tests in the area where I live, to demonstrate parallel parking competency. Same goes for all driver aid systems, including Tesla FSD Beta etc. Bit of a head scratcher for me. [1]: https://youtu.be/WBvkmWDjsYc https://youtu.be/WBvkmWDjsYc
- NoahKAndrews 4y agoThat's such an awful thing to allow in that context
- blamazon 4y agoSymptom of a car dependent society I guess. Driving is a prerequisite for being an autonomous adult here (a state in the northeastern United States) so licensing requirements are mind bogglingly relaxed, and once you've passed the test once you can renew your license infinitely until you die. This approach really shows when you use our public roads. People largely either do not know all the rules and best practices, or don't care to follow them.
- pandaman 4y agoWatching Russian dashcam videos you'd think people found their licenses in a cereal box yet it requires a stern test with theoretical questions of the form "Here is an intersection, one street has a rail line, there are an ambulance, a fire truck, a military column and a bus on each side, who has the right of way?" (and the answer is that it's a bus because even though the fire truck would have a right of way normally it loses it because it would need to cross the rail line as specified in the Chapter 8.19.75 of the Federal Rules of the Road). And the driving part involves driving a manual transmission vehicle without power anything through an obstacle course. So I would not correlate the driving test difficulty with the behavior on the roads.
- AnotherGoodName 4y agoReversing cameras essentially have the same function. They are amazing too btw. The one change to cars in the past 50 years that i really care about. I don't mind having a carburetor. I don't mind wind down windows. I don't mind manual gearboxes. But I demand reversing cameras. It lets you know exactly where the car is as you parallel park.
- litoE 4y agoMany years ago I visited Buenos Aires, Argentina. In the flat parts of the city center, people would parallel-park their cars and leave them in neutral (very few cars had automatic transmissions) and without setting the parking brake. When you arrived and found a parking spot, there would be a man that, for some standard tip, would push all the cars in front or behind you, one at a time, until they were all bumper to bumper. This expanded the slot where you wanted to park, making your parking very easy. When you wanted to leave, he would likewise push cars in front or behind you to widen the slot where you were, making it easy for you to pull out.
- paxys 4y agoI have found that across most of the world (including expensive "first world" countries in Europe) it is perfectly normal for cars to have random dings and bumps from everyday use. I had a tour guide in Italy who "nudged" the cars on either end while getting into a parking spot and no one thought twice about it. In the US it would have caused a mini riot. Over here for some reason it is socially unacceptable to have a car in less than pristine factory condition even after months or years of use, and people will spend thousands to fix the tiniest of scratches. It's crazy just how much of the average person's paycheck goes towards just getting from one place to another.
- philjohn 4y agoThe Grand Tour touched on this with their "french cars" episode.
- cjrp 4y ago> In the US it would have caused a mini riot. Is that true everywhere in the US? In NYC I saw a lot of cars with rubber bumper guards, presumably to protect against these little "nudges" when parking.
- mattlondon 4y agoIn the UK this would be deeply frowned upon. Front + Rear dashcams would be used to claim on insurance and report a "hit and run" accident to the police. I don't put it down to people trying to "make space", more down to incompetence IMO. At least in the UK cars will generally be parked with the handbrake ("emergency brake" in the US AIUI) engaged, meaning that the back wheels will not move, so "nudging" a car will only damage it - if you are "nudging" hard enough to make the stationary wheels slide along tarmac, then that is quite some considerable force. A "little bump" can be enough to cause some expensive damage on modern cars. So if you are "nudging" another car, I'd put it down to just being a bit of a crap driver who doesn't know what they're doing as you're basically simply driving into things (deliberately or accidentally)
- bitwize 4y agoI remember seeing something similar on Beyond 2000 back in the 80s. It was a set of small, swivelable wheels that deployed and allowed you to slew your car into the space.
- jusssi 4y agoI wonder how much more functionality would be needed on top of a state-of-the-art active suspension, to enable the car to "walk" sideways into a parking spot.
- Chris2048 4y agoalso: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mecanum_wheel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mecanum_wheel "The mecanum wheel is an omnidirectional wheel design for a land-based vehicle to move in any direction" Would be interesting to have a bunch of these extend out from below the car. It would double as an inbuilt jack too.