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This is crazy you could never make any vehicle have this kinda steering layout. You would imagine that it would be horribly unstable at high speeds +30 km/h. I can't see this being a good idea but it seems to work.

There's a reason why 100% of street vehicles have front steering. So how tricky is it to drive such a trike? Could I take a normal trike and flip some stuff 180 degrees and have the same results?

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    Just go sraight. – Nathan Knutson Jun 13 '20 at 17:16
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    A car is unstable in reverse partly because the steering geometry is designed to go forward. Concepts similar to rake and trailing apply in order to make the car "want to center itself" when going forward. When the car is moving backwards the forces act on steering from the opposite directions. I'd Asume this trike has a specially designed rear fork that won't work properly if installed in the front of a regular bike. – Jahaziel Jun 13 '20 at 18:58
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    Most fork lifts and a lot of construction tractors work this way. – Daniel R Hicks Jun 13 '20 at 18:58
  • "There's a reason why 100% of street vehicles have front steering" there are many reasons, and many of them are related to delivering power to the road, and doing what people expect at this point, rather than handling. Rear wheel steering isn't as freaky as you might think. – whatsisname Jun 13 '20 at 19:30
  • Nearly every power boat and ship in the world steers from the rear. – mattnz Jun 13 '20 at 21:38
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You are not wrong to ask how tricky these things are to steer. They are very disconcerting to manoeuvre until you are quite familiar with them.

They certainly would be unstable at 30+ km/h. But good luck with that; you'd need to be quite an athlete to achieve such speeds. If you could pedal fast enough though, I think you would have a quite hilariously dangerous vehicle in your hands.

In practice, they are ridden at much lower speeds, where the rider doesn't find themselves caught out in ever-greater cycles of steering over-correction, and where the outward movement of the back end isn't rapid enough to be destabilising.

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  • 30km/h would be a speed an Ebike would go. – Eric Huelin Jun 14 '20 at 16:48
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I take it you mean: why isn't the real wheel steering trike unstable like a car driving in reverse?

The reason is because the trike is intended to be used at relatively low speeds where the steering instability won't be a problem. The long wheel base probably helps a bit as well.

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  • I'd challenge the statement that a car is unstable when driven in reverse. My experience is that it's problematic because brains generally fail to do the translation of needing to steer right when going left, but once your brain does this translation robustly, the car itself is not less stable than driving forward. I never had any scruple to drive a car backwards far and fast, I never felt the need to go slow because of any perceived instability of the vehicle. The restricted sight through the back window is the main problem limiting speed. – cmaster - reinstate monica Jun 13 '20 at 21:21

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