Chinese University Patents Crazy Single-Track Rescue Motorcycle

10 years, 2 months ago - 8 September 2014, Autoblog

Students at China's Chang'an University have applied for a patent on the bizarre creation seen above, according to Visor Down. It's clearly based on a motorcycle, and this oddity appears to be an attempt at a conversion to remove the wheels and replace them with a single, continuous track.

The modifications would seemingly maintain the suspension of a normal cycle, including a telescoping front fork and rear swing arm, while completely ditching the wheels.

Obviously, the Rescue emblem and white cross indicate that this creation is meant for emergency duty, and it's almost certainly for off-road conditions where tracked vehicles excel. That said, the sport bike front fairing doesn't seem to quite fit the rest of the design.

We can't help but wonder if this vehicle is a solution to a problem that nobody has. A snowmobile or ATV would probably have as much capability as this thing, and just think about how you would control a continuously tracked motorcycle. A straight line shouldn't be too difficult, but actually deviating from a straight ahead seems like it might be awfully difficult, at least in comparison to the other options. Bravo to the Chinese students for working out the idea, but we probably shouldn't expect to see this hitting the slopes or the trails anytime soon...