Technical and commercial considerations on innovating a hybrid boosting device in a competitive sidecar : a business model

Abstract

Hybrid propulsion systems are on everyone's tongue, in everyday life, as well as on race tracks. Applications in racing vehicles have generally very little in common with those of everday vehicles, it is more the opposite, that serial vehicles run off race sports technologies. A popular trend is the winged abbreviation KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery System), that brings along the decisive advantage for racing vehicles during the races; by pushing a button all kinetic energy that has previously been stored during the braking process, is discharged in the form of a turbo boost that makes the vehicle jump ahead. That sort of technics is already established in Formula 1, or also the LeMans series, but to date there is no such technology at all applied to motorcycles or sidecars. This master's thesis concentrates on a case-specific application of a sidecar and aims at evaluating, whether or not such a KERS is, on the one hand feasible from a technical point of view and on the other hand, in succession implementable as a business model, i.e. offering the system at a price that would still be affordable for private teams, consequently ensuring profitable business operations. For this reason technical, as well as commercial benchmarking studies are launched. Additionally, experts in the corresponding fields of activities concerned are interviewed.The information that can be generated and received from that, clarify feasibility in principle, respectively also profitability of such a KERS-supported racing sidecar and highlight possible future business, technical and also scientific opportunities.