Research and Design
Pete Hall, Head of R & D, Talks Shop
Hello, and welcome to the TerraTrike R & D department. We are responsible for all the trikes and accessories that make sure you have an extraordinary ride. Our goal is to get everyone out and enjoying trikes, and we strive to design fantastic products that our users connect with and form a strong bond with. We take designing a new product seriously; whether it is a brand new trike or a new seat bag, the product matters to you and your ride and that matters to our team.
We take our inspiration for new products from many avenues, but our most fruitful direction often comes from you, the customer. We strive to design eminently useable products that perform in a wide range of environments, but you are all a very creative bunch and find new and exciting ways to use your TerraTrike. Your experimentation with how to use your trike motivates us to do something different, see if crazy ideas work, and try what sounds fun.
We thought we might give you a little peak into what happens when we design a new product. It almost always starts the same way, someone on our team notices a problem, an opportunity to do something new or different. This often can be the most challenging part of the design process, identifying a quality problem to solve. We could design any old thing, but we want to spend our time coming up with elegant solutions for worthwhile problems. We then move to fleshing out solutions using a combination of digital and paper sketching, CAD models and testing, and ultimately physical prototypes, usually making several prototypes to test our ideas out. We have an in-house prototype lab for trying our ideas out and riding them as soon as we can. Prototype testing is always a good excuse for a ride during work and the other departments here at TerraTrike always seem to be eager test subjects.
We are very proud of all our designs we produce from the Tour II, which traces it ' s roots directly back to the first trike our co-founder Jack made in his garage 16 years ago, to our supremely popular Rover, the gateway trike for so many to the three wheeled world. Personally as R & D manager, I ' m extremely proud of our Sportster model. We felt there was a void in the high end, speedoriented trike spectrum. Most other models were dedicated to going fast and compromised the comfort and visibility for the average rider. The Sportster from the beginning was designed to fill that space. Designing and nailing a performance trike with an easy riding, widely adjustable, high seating position was no easy task. We focused on making it stable in corners despite the high center of gravity, fast in a straight line and capable in the turn on a dime category. Much time was spent riding prototypes, fussing over angles and millimeters, and nailing the details. We ' re quite happy with the result. If you haven ' t had the chance to try one, I highly recommend a test ride- you owe it to yourself.
Where are we going in the future? While of course I can ' t tell you everything, it ' s going to be exciting. Our R & D team is always looking at the“ out there” possibilities, whether it be a new material, manufacturing technique, steering geometry or wheel size( big wheels anyone?). We will never stray from our goal of getting more people on trikes and will always strive to bring you the best possible experience on a trike. Happy riding!