DURHAM: A team of engineers from Duke University has built the world’s fastest monowheel, EV360. The electric monowheel is built for speed, not for distance.
The wheel sports a small 72V 22Ah lithium polymer battery with 1.58 kWh of capacity. The team estimates that the battery should be sufficient for 14.5 km of range when riding at 32 km/h.
The EV360 is powered by a motor achieving 14.75 PS continuous and 31 PS peak. The motor is designed to propel the wheel at speeds of over 112 km/h.
The team currently consists of Anuj Thakkar, Carlo Lindner, Ahmed Ahmed-Fouad, and Fran Romano.
Thakkar said, “The project I am most proud of in my 4 years at Duke is the monowheel project. We have constructed a one-wheeled electric motorcycle. This was very much on the whim, you know, there are no real advantages to one-wheeled motorcycles. However, it was a really hard project and we thought it would be a very cool opportunity for us to apply what we’ve learned in classes to a very difficult project.”
Thakkar told Electrek about the problems faced during the production of the monowheel. He talked about the ‘gerbil incident’ that is accidentally looping around with the outer wheel instead of remaining seated at the base of the vehicle.
He further said, “At low speeds, lower than 24 km/h, the primary mode of steering is using your feet to softly drag or tap alongside the vehicle to adjust the orientation, much like sails on a sailboat can use wind drag to adjust the orientation of the boat. At higher speeds, leaning allow small changes in vehicle direction, but the radius of steer is often so small it’s difficult to say the rider has nearly any control of the vehicle at all.”
The wheel sports a small 72V 22Ah lithium polymer battery with 1.58 kWh of capacity. The team estimates that the battery should be sufficient for 14.5 km of range when riding at 32 km/h.
The EV360 is powered by a motor achieving 14.75 PS continuous and 31 PS peak. The motor is designed to propel the wheel at speeds of over 112 km/h.
The team currently consists of Anuj Thakkar, Carlo Lindner, Ahmed Ahmed-Fouad, and Fran Romano.
Thakkar said, “The project I am most proud of in my 4 years at Duke is the monowheel project. We have constructed a one-wheeled electric motorcycle. This was very much on the whim, you know, there are no real advantages to one-wheeled motorcycles. However, it was a really hard project and we thought it would be a very cool opportunity for us to apply what we’ve learned in classes to a very difficult project.”
Thakkar told Electrek about the problems faced during the production of the monowheel. He talked about the ‘gerbil incident’ that is accidentally looping around with the outer wheel instead of remaining seated at the base of the vehicle.
He further said, “At low speeds, lower than 24 km/h, the primary mode of steering is using your feet to softly drag or tap alongside the vehicle to adjust the orientation, much like sails on a sailboat can use wind drag to adjust the orientation of the boat. At higher speeds, leaning allow small changes in vehicle direction, but the radius of steer is often so small it’s difficult to say the rider has nearly any control of the vehicle at all.”
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