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Cocorut
789d
Horse Powered Bicycle / Car?

Saw someone post about this and the idea came to my mind as well, but would it be possible to make a horse powered bicycle or car?

#discussions #energy #offgrid #tech #technology
replied 788d
This made me laugh. You have brightened my afternoon. Cheers 🍻
Cocorut
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Well, it wasn't intended to be humor, as animal power's used for practical design, although I'm fine with it providing a laugh as well; definitely think of implementation ideas
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Oh. No horse is going to peddle.
Why don’t you just stick a solar/electric motor on the cart to make the cart easier to pull for the horse? The horse would become less tired.
Cocorut
replied 786d
hybrid would be best, gas or electric as backup. For animal like horse, a treadmill or pedal design to propel vehicle manually
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Take a car, add a horse in a cage using pedals, instead of pulling it the horse/cart way, making a huge bulky thing you call a "bike". Yea, you can quit your day job now.
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I had thought he meant a treadmill setup (i.e. hamster wheel), not pedals, though is it then technically a bike anymore? Either way, I think the product would be very niche at best
replied 789d
Wouldn't that be horseback riding and horse-and-cart?
Cocorut
replied 789d
not what I was envisioning, imagine a bicycle designed for a horse with gas or electric as backup if they're tired.horses walk to pull carts, imagine if they had a bicycle to pull cart
replied 788d
Ah, you want to add the cost/hassle/danger/extra weight of a horse to the cost/hassle of machinery. And you want a platform with the sturdiness to keep a frightened horse safe at speed
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I would advice that you complete tests with a working prototype including a real horse and without accident BEFORE you give up your day job in pursuit of this idea.
Cocorut
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you could do it with dogs; I welcome any constructive ideas if you have them
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I think the naysayer can be an underappreciated role, though sometimes well designed new products can be very hard to predict, and sometimes the naysayer is proven wrong.
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For this product you will be competing with stuff like the dog sled. Those exist with wheels already, and at least one dog can rest on the sled if it is not already in use.
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The dog sled is a very simple design, and I expect it would be hard to improve considerably on it. Trust me, you would not be the first one to try to improve on such a design.
Cocorut
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to repeat the insight: humans can cover more distance with a bicycle than walking, likewise animals should be able to do so if a machine is designed for them to power like w/ pedaling
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You "invention" reminds me of Jimmy Speckerman's invention: glasses that show non-3D movies in 3D. In both cases the idea is trivial, many have thought of it, but practical problems
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are hard to solve satisfactorily, and the "inventor" wants someone else to do that part, as if that was just mere trivial implementation details. In reality that is the hard part.
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However, still, there could be good new ideas. A nice parallel would be the "instant Legolas", which for some uses improves on another old and tested product: bow and arrow.