Red65, Those are good points, but it still seems to me that the real mechanical advantages are few, and the technology has to be adapted to accomodate the styling.
The fact that the idea has been floating around for quite some time, and that no one has picked upon it except for those primarily interested in it's style, lead me to believe that there are no real advantages to using this technology.
I went looking for the BMW concept car you referred to, but only found a 3 wheeler that had regular wheels, and the picture on the osmos website.
Is there someplace that has some real info about this car, and says that they are using the hubless wheel because of it's mechanical advantages? I saw that Toyota has put it on one of it's concept cars as well.
I found a website about the Apache concept bike that osmos talks about also.
http://apache-warrior.motorcyclecity.net/about.html
Not a whole lot out there about that one, either.
The wheel as an armature is interesting, but any time you put the propulsion at the wheel you add to the unspring weight. Putting weight towards the outside of the wheel adds to rotating mass, harder to speed up, and harder to stop.
I think that when the guy wrote about the bearings being "in the muck" , I think he was refering to the fact that they were exposed to all the things that a wheel can pick up and sling around inside it's rim. A traditional center bearing wheel is able to be sealed alot easier, and the bearing speeds are not anywhere near the ones that the osmos wheel has to put up with.
What do those bearings ride on, anyway? Is the inner rim hardened or are they on a hardened ring?
I wonder what happens when the guy with the SB chevy powered monowheel gets on the brakes really hard?
ain:
I started another thread with a couple more monowheel vehicles. One of them, (the vehicle), is pretty funny.
Later, mikey