The third eMotive prototype has the front suspension of an ATV; later models will have a body covering the machine.

THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL / Steve Szydlowski

In January 2002, Khipra Nichols was vacationing in Cambodia and was intrigued to see entire families buzzing along the roads on small motorcycles. And they were often carrying the groceries at the same time.

“It’s very common in Southeast Asia,” said the well-traveled associate professor of industrial design at the Rhode Island School of Design. “Dad driving, two older kids (onboard) and Mom riding side-saddle feeding the baby from a bottle. I once saw six people on one bike.”

In a sense, he never came back, because the sight inspired him to work on a project to develop a cheap, clean and more comfortable mode of transportation for ordinary people in developing nations.

Nichols also said safety was a big factor. He noted a recent bulletin from the World Health Organization that reported that the second leading caused of death in sub-Saharan Africa after AIDS is traffic accidents. He said that was very largely due to the use of motorcycles as carriers of multiple passengers, many of them children.

“That really caught my attention – the vulnerability of the people in accidents,” he said. “I started sketching. I wanted to do something better.”

Nichols has since teamed up with Michael Lye, also an assistant professor in industrial design at RISD, and Chris Bull, a research engineer at Brown University, and the group – which calls itself eMotive – has developed three prototypes of a four-wheeled, electric vehicle with handlebars and a motorcycle bench that seats four people.

“There’s no great name for it,” said Lye. “For the time being, it’s Project eMotive.”

Nichols has since regularly traveled to Southeast Asia, spending three to six weeks taking pictures and making notes. He has visited China, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, noting “exactly the same phenomenon in all those places.”

Indeed, he has just recently returned from Hua Hin, in Thailand. “In Thailand there is more concentration of these vehicles than anywhere else,” he said.

In the fall of 2003, he and Lye applied for a RISD research grant and used the money to travel to San Diego to visit Bruce Meyers, who developed the VW Beetle-based Dune Buggy, and to Turin, Italy, to visit Ital Design and the Machimoto, which was designed in the mid-1980s by Giorgetto Guigiaro. The half car, half motorcycle has two motorcycle benches seating a total of eight people.

They also visited kit-car makers, such as Miami-based Street Beasts and Wareham, Mass.-based Factory Five Racing. “With kit cars, manufacturers do the heavy work while the labor-intensive work is done by the end-user,” said Lye.

“The whole idea of this vehicle is that it could be built locally with parts shipped to local manufacturers,” added Nichols.

Visiting so many designers was an inspiration, said Lye. “We wanted to see as many things as we could from as many places as we could.”

In the summer of 2004, the two RISD professors teamed up with Chris Bull at Brown. Bull, whose paper- and book-laden office is in Brown’s Prince Laboratory, said he had been working on transportation projects, in particular human powered and bio-diesel powered. For the past year, the team has been joined by Matt Forkin, a senior at Brown who is concentrating in engineering and visual technology.

While RISD has a workshop, Nichols said working with Bull at Brown’s Prince Lab has allowed the group to “test ideas right away” on full-size prototypes. “We’re used to sketching our ideas and working with small hand-held models,” he said.

The current vehicle is the third version the group has produced – Prototypes 1 and 2 have since been disassembled with some parts incorporated into Number 3. “They’re getting more sophisticated,” said Bull. “The power train is pretty well developed.” The motorcycle bench gives the vehicle the look of a snowmobile on wheels. Being electric, the engine was silent as the four sat in a row grinning and took a spin around the lab with Lye at the controls. They said they have taken it out on the streets around Brown, attracting bemused attention as they zip silently along.

The vehicle is battery powered and can reach 40 miles per hour with a range of 40 miles on one charge. Bull said the batteries need to charge overnight if the onboard charger is used, but can be charged in four hours with a higher-capacity charger. The battery is lead-acid rather than lithium ion. “The price is right,” said Bull.

The vehicle is narrow for city streets and the front wheels are farther apart than the rear wheels, which makes it maneuverable. “If the front end goes through, the back end will follow through,” said Nichols.

Lye said the group was not yet negotiating with manufacturers, but noted, “We want to keep the price on a scale of the motorcycle and scooter end of the market. We need to make it more affordable than a (motor)bike.”

The group hopes to take Prototype 4 to Ashesi University in Ghana in 2008 for “testing on location as part of the design process.” Lye noted a connection with Ashesi through students from the Ghanaian college who are studying at RISD, and Nichols noted a trip he took through a number of West African nations, including Ghana, in 1987.

Lye said such testing formed an ethnographic aspect to the project, namely: How will people actually use the vehicle?

“How does it get used?” asked Nichols, noting the many ways that people in Southeast Asia use the small motorbikes. He said many are welded to frames to form sidecars that are used to create small roadside stands to sell food and drinks, as well as taxis or freight haulers. “It’s a matter of creativity and necessity,” he said. “They don’t use (the motorbikes) as just transportation. They are integrated into their lifestyle.”

“We want them to be easily adapted, for carrying loads or people, with different drive trains (using different fuels) depending on what’s available,” said Bull.

At the same time, Lye said he had recently visited Cambridge University in England and had been struck by the number of bicycles in use. “This is not just for developing economies,” he said. “It has broader applications.”

He referred to Neighborhood Electric Vehicles, such as electric golf carts, that are used as everyday transportation in retirement communities in places such as Arizona and Florida.

pelsworth@projo.com