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I always find "Architectural vs Engineering" discussions interesting. One of my previous jobs has been as Design Manager for various projects often incorporating Urban design concepts and other Architectural features. Most things are possible given unlimited time and unlimited budgets. Once you fix a budget, and a timeframe, then the purity of the Design has to be compromised to meet the other two fixed parameters.
Comparing Terraliner to anything Apple does is pushing the limits. Apple produce items by the millions, and the engineering solutions required to meet the "Architectural" features that have been determined as "necessary" by the project leader. Steve Jobs did not limit Apple to what was technically feasible at the point in time, he decided what he wanted his product to be/do, then tasked the engineers to come up with technical solutions to fulfil these requirements. However, he still needed to keep a lot closer to reality than what he actually wanted. The incremental development of iPhone and iPad is as a result of a high research and development budget. The technical solutions cost millions, but could be amortised over the next year or two's products. Even so, the cost of an Apple product is always going to be on the high side, due to the costs of these development ( and no doubt the ones that failed miserably that we don't hear about.) The Apple 3 computer failed miserably - we had in our computer science lab - it lasted about a month, it died because of lack of cooling.
Back to Terraliner, it has to developed on a limited budget, then the costs spread over 10-20 units per year. What this thread seems to be about is going through all the "Blue Sky Dreaming" of what the perfect motor home will be, and we have eventually been able to describe the "target owners" - they are the retired couples with plenty of money who want to be able to camp out on a beach or in a field somewhere. They would like to drive around the world but doing it very slowly, spending a month or two at each spot, maybe 300-400km between stops and the "Chicken Bus" routes as the worst likely road to be driven on, and then only when absolutely necessary, with the occasional trip off to a deserted beach of similar.
Now what do our target owners want in their truck? Are they in the least bit interested in the technicalities of flexible vs rigid frames, hybrid drives vs conventional etc etc. Do they worry about emissions, or a full electric drive, or helicopter engines powering their truck, or are they more interested in running their air conditioning and 50" TV screen all night without running a generator? It might be time to list out what the design requirements are, like we have with the drive power estimates.
Hi
Iain,
As always a superb post, because it suggests that you fully understand the intent of this "design exercise," and the current operating scenario of the TerraLiner.
Agreed, Apple has an R&D budget unlike any other company on earth. Apple is now making so much money, that despite a recent share buy-back program and despite paying out a dividend for the first time in its history, Apple's hoard of cash has grown yet further. The sales volume of the most recent iPhones flabbergasted the company itself, and increased its cash reserve to over 200 billion -- see
http://money.cnn.com/2015/07/22/investing/apple-stock-cash-earnings/ . That's a ridiculous and unhealthy amount of cash for a corporation to have, so needless to say Apple can do all of the R&D it wants, and it will never run out of money.
Whereas in the case of the TerraLiner, I needed to become cognizant of the kinds of motorhome and truck technologies that currently exist, and how these might be used more or less "off the shelf" to create the TerraLiner. You are absolutely correct, I cannot posit a huge R&D budget. Which is precisely
why I began this thread in the first place!! It has helped me tremendously in developing a more realistic picture of current engineering possibilities, and how they might be assembled to create a TerraLiner.
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Also agreed that the owners of the TerraLiner will care most about the camper body, and not the mechanical stuff that gets the camper body to where it wants to go. I will come up with a list of "internal appliance" specifications further along. Until I do, just think about the kinds of stuff that a Newell has inside, and the TerraLiner will be roughly similar -- see posts #1948 to #1961, at
http://www.expeditionportal.com/for...igid-Torsion-Free-Frame?p=1962631#post1962631 and following. Much earlier in the thread, in the first 50 pages or so, I also discussed things like hobs, refrigerators, toilets, faucets, showers, bathtubs, and such like, at great length. So if you are interested in reading about that stuff, the first 50 pages are the place to look.
Thinking through the drivetrain and how the TerraLiner will be powered is not unimportant, because as I have been repeating for a while, fail-safe redundancy strikes me as a critical operational goal.
At a number of points in this thread some have argued that those who take expedition motorhomes to the Second and Third World should be prepared to "fix-it-themselves", willing to work as part-time mechanics. As I thought about that, as usual I found myself asking,
"Why?" Why should those who have paid a great deal for an expensive motorhome, be expected to also fix it themselves? Why should mechanical maintenance be such a hassle? Why should they have to carry along a huge set of tools and spare parts, as Gunther Holtorf did when he drove Otto around the world, and carried about 400 spare bits in reserve?:
He carried about 400 spare parts in aluminium boxes on the roof of the car, including some in multiple examples. But thanks to a policy of preventive maintenance, which he had followed in the aviation business and applied to Otto, breakdowns were rare – and there was never one that Holtorf was unable to fix himself.
In a modern car, he insists, this would not have been the case, for one reason – computers. Otto was built in 1988, a couple of years before cars started going electronic. “Otto is nothing but nuts and bolts that means I can unscrew the nuts and pull out bolts to repair anything that comes up myself,” he said in 2013. “In any modern car you cannot touch the brakes because it's all electronically controlled.”
It would be simply impossible, he insists, to repeat Otto's journey in a new car.
See
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/2014/newsspec_8703/index.html .
Gunther Holtorf was a pilot for several years, and apprenticed and worked for Lufthansa before he began his round-the-world journey. He became a manager and executive at Lufthansa, but I recall reading somewhere that he has considerable mechanical knowledge of aircraft repair as well -- see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunther_Holtorf and
http://www.ottosreise.de/en/gunther-holtorf.html . Presumably very few TerraLiner owners will have his kind of background. And today, given that everything is electronically controlled in any case, even a trained mechanic could not field-repair a TerraLiner, even if it did have a more conventional sort of diesel engine.
So the solution, it seems to me, is to go hybrid and redundant, such that there is no single point of failure. And furthermore, to design the TerraLiner's systems such that components can be easily swapped and replaced. Agreed, a retired couple with money may not care about such details when first buying the TerraLiner. But they
will very much care about such details when they are on the road, and something breaks. They will be grateful if, for instance, one of the electric motors fails and yet the TerraLiner continues driving to its intended destination just the same, because the two remaining electric motors are still functioning just fine.
In addition to the drivetrain, it is worth thinking a great deal about TerraLiner power autonomy (namely solar), water autonomy, and sewage autonomy, because maximum glamping autonomy is a fundamental TerraLiner operational requirement. Without maximum glamping autonomy, the point-to-point
"glamp for 3 months" operational scenario that I have been sketching would prove impossible. When it comes to sewage autonomy, the incinerating toilets made by Cinderella may be the best solution -- see post #1573 at
http://www.expeditionportal.com/for...igid-Torsion-Free-Frame?p=1924024#post1924024 . Unlike Incinolet toilets, Cinderella toilets claim to be odor-free. As for water autonomy, I would love to know what kind of Water-maker Bliss Mobil uses. And solar autonomy is worth at least another 100 pages of discussion.
These are the current topics of the thread, the topics that I will address in the next 100 - 150 pages or so. I am simply unwilling to discuss the camper body layout or aesthetics in further detail right now. As I just wrote to
campo, I want and I need to put off more detailed discussion of the camper body and its interior. That's why I have tried and will continue to try to focus discussion on the drivetrain, and the TerraLiner power requirements. Sorry, but I
will continue to insist upon this, and my next post will respond to
safas, because he seems wiling to honor the request that the focus right now in the thread should be on the TerraLiner drivetrain.
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Think of it this way. You yourself,
Iain, have admitted that you spent many years thinking about, sketching, and researching your Unimog self-build, until you finally bought a truck and settled on a camper-box design, and began building it. Along similar lines, I see myself as still very much at the beginning stages of the TerraLiner design/build process. So far this thread has been a terrific place to post, discuss, and exchange research, and to develop a very general "design concept" of what the TerraLiner might be like, and how it could best serve the needs and preferences of my target demographic. I figure the thread will continue to prove fruitful as a research forum for at least another 100 - 150 pages.
After that, I have not yet decided whether ExPo would be the right place in which to share more detailed design thinking, i.e. actual ground plans, elevations, drawings, 3D CAD, and so on. This may or may not be the right place for that. We'll see. It's possible that a more restricted-access, dedicated website would be better, for all sorts of reasons.
Quite frankly, given the fact that a forum like ExPo is so publicly accessible, and allows just about any Tom, ********, or Harry to post, I am not certain whether more detailed designs need or would benefit from that kind of
"anybody can be a critic" feedback. A more restricted, invitation-only website may prove much more worthwhile. At the very least, I would not have to waste lots of time trying to "bring up to speed" new participants, and I also would not have to waste time fending off gratuitous criticisms from mere "Neinsagers" in the peanut gallery. "Neinsagers" would simply not have access. Such a website would be accessible only to those who have proven themselves able to understand the concept; who know how to deploy argument and evidence; who do not merely dogmatically assert; who can be reasonable and measured in their judgments and their prose; who post more than mere provocative rhetoric and hot air; who make genuine and significant "research contributions"; who are willing to do the work necessary, reading all prior posts..... and so on.
Again, I have to think about it. But reset assured you would be on the invitation list!!
All I can say is, I sure am
glad that I have not yet publicly shared any of my drawings or CAD.....:sombrero:
All best wishes,
Biotect
