Trike Project Seems to Have What It Takes to Be the Future of Urban Mobility

Here’s the thing, the vehicle you see is not a reality, nor will it be until someone falls in love with it. For now, this is just a project, Project Trike. From the mind of Hyun-jik Song, a designer from Seoul, South Korea, the Trike is meant to be the future of mobility. Does it have what it takes? Time to find out.

The future of mobility is changing even as you read this text. Companies like Daymak or Nimbus seem to be appearing faster than ever before, all with a design like the one you see here. One of the reasons why the designer chose a trike is because it’s a shape that has been encountered by many at one point or another in their lives. Heck, when I was four years old, the very first vehicle which I got to ride was.. you guessed it: a three-wheeled bicycle.

The main difference you’ll see here is that of two tires on the front and only one on the rear. If you've ever ridden an ATC, where only one tire is present on the front, you know how prone they are to tipping over in a turn. Here, though, two tires on the front offer greater lateral stability.

Mr. Song also reveals that one of the reasons why three wheels are used instead of two, like most other trending vehicles, is exactly for stability. But why three wheels instead of four, the dominant design for centuries? To answer this question, Song mentions that a three-wheeled design is simply more compact and lighter than four-wheelers, helping minimalize the quantity of materials used, and the space required to maneuver.

This means that minimalism is a point of focus for the Trike. Looking at the rendering, that’s clear. At the front, wheel wells are formed by panels of unknown materials that run smoothly into the body. This sort of enclosed wheel structure also helps protect otherwise exposed components.

The seating space for the Trike is like a design you may see nearly every day, motorcycles. Once mounted on the ride, you’ll lean over and grip a handlebar used in steering. There even seems to be a gas tank, but the future is sure to turn fossil fuel engines into a collector's item, more than they already are. My bet is that this is electric, although, no mention is made to sustain that theory.

Towards the rear, the taillight also screams modern motorcycles, not to mention the entire rear segment. The rear wheel is held in place by a massive swingarm that pushes against the bike through a giant suspension coil. This is also where I noticed a problem in the design.

If you look closely, you’ll notice that the rear swing arm can’t really do any swinging as it looks to be part of the rest of the frame. I don’t know, maybe I'm over analyzing a design that’s meant to be there just to feed our imagination.

However, it’s no doubt whatsoever that this is a design that could one day be seen on our streets, if not in its entirety, in one aspect or another for sure. There are many Korean designers that like to create similar monocoque structures, so it’s only a matter of time before you could see something like this in reality.