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Hello, tricycle adventures around the world. Seekers of mystery on your three-wheeled machines of mystery. This is Peter Kaltreider at SixThreeZero. E-bikes and E-trikes and bikes. Why do the pedals only power the left rear wheel?
So I know you came here on your quest to solve the mysteries of the tricycle. And here's one where we will find the answer that so many of you have been seeking for so long. Although the electricity powers the motor in the front, why do the pedals only power the left rear wheel and not both? Okay. So if you're going to turn in a car or say a three-wheeled vehicle or a four-wheeled vehicle, the inside wheels and the outside wheels need to go at different speeds of rotation. I'm going to do a pirouette, okay? A beautiful pirouette. Since you guys are here for mystery and entertainment, and you'll notice that my right foot is going to be moving very much faster than my center foot. Ready?
See that? My right foot had to go much faster to get around this circle, and my left foot hardly moved at all. It just spun in one place. The same thing happens when you turn on the tricycle. So if we turn like this, turn a sharp turn, the right wheel here is barely turning, whereas the left one is turning a bigger circle. Same thing if we go in the opposite direction. Now, the left wheel's almost stationary, but the right wheel is needing to turn. So when you have wheels that are in pairs like this, the same thing with a car, they need to be able to spin. They need to be able to rotate at different speeds. Okay?
And this is where the mystery comes in. What do you do to allow for that and not have your car just skid? Well, it's a very ingenious device that they came up with. I don't know, maybe in the early days of the car is probably like the '20s or so, maybe even before that, called differential, which allows the wheels to spin at different speeds when they need to when you're making a turn. Later on, they realize that one of the wheels in your car will be losing power, so they can't with a thing called limited-slip differential. You can look at all this up. There are some really cool videos on YouTube that explain it. It's really quite ingenious, how they overcame these different problems. But anyway, on our E-tricycle, you can also put a car-like differential on a tricycle. I think that maybe some companies do it, and we're considering it.
I don't think it's necessary. And it does cost more. So right now we just have the pedals that will power the left rear wheel. So what I mean by that is if I were to lift up the back end of the trike, and I start to spin it like this, it's really only powering the left. The right one is going with it. I don't know if you can see. I'm going to turn like this. And so this one will keep spinning, but I can stop this one, and that one's still going. So they're actually independent of each other. They move independently. This one can be going forward. And then this one goes backward. Now, they are connected so that the left wheel is pushing the right wheel along with it, also giving it power. But if you start to make a turn, then there is a slip allowed with the differential.
So that's the reason why only the left wheel is actually powered by the pedals, by the e-trike. Now, it doesn't matter up here in the front where the motor is. That's going to just give you the power that you need for the electric assist. But when you do start to pedal, you should know only the left wheel is getting powered, so that the wheels can rotate at different speeds and allow you to turn safely and effectively.
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