A far off project planned is the computer controlled EV pusher trailer. This trailer will be couplable to the electric vehicle through some sort of hitch, after which it will have a standerd car drive wheel and a motorcycle tire as a 'idler' wheel. The idler wheel will not be powered, and will not come in contact with the ground when the system is under power. The main drive wheel will be powered, and will come in contact with the ground only when the system is under power.

Note that this is a far-off project so the details specified here may be changed or ammended many times before construction of this trailer even begins.

The plan is to design a system that is completely safe under all conditions, including catastrophic failure of any tire in the system. In addition, it would be nice to develop software sensors that can notify the rear computer of catastrophic failure of a tire, so it can switch over to the alternate tire and broadcast a general alarm. There has got to be some optical way to do this. here you will find a rough sketch of the system. Some notes on components: 

	1) For the ICE, it seems to me it would be a good idea to use a water cooling system for the engine - this would make the engine last longer under high loads. Some of the mid-sized hondas have water cooling systems and might be well suited to this type of duty.

	2) The motorcycle's transmission is to be controlled by one servo and two solenoids. The solenoids are to kick the transmission gear selector up or down (both operating in pull mode for most efficiency), and the servo's job is to fight the spring that holds the clutch closed. A servo was chosen to enable slipping of the clutch, which may be especially important when starting.


	3) The onboard computer takes care of all gear selection based on the VSS and TPS. Two sets of lookup tables are in it, one for wide open TPS, the other for non wide open TPS.

	4) The throttle is controlled by TPS and by cruise input. Under cruise control
	the throttle is locally actuated however the EPO switch on the dash still 
	functions.

Some control notes: 1) A keyswitch should be present on the pusher trailer. With this keyswitch turned on, it shuold be possible to operate the onboard hydraulics to raise and lower the trailer.

A random note: When not fitted to the car, this trailer should be able to rest on the rear tire and a kickstand - it should in fact weigh about as much as the bike that donated the parts. Another random note: While the pusher does have it's own battery pack, which can do such things as operating hazerd flashers and allowing powering up of the hydraulics without the host car connected, a power and data feed from the car must be connected to the pusher prior to being able to power up the ICE. In addition, the car being pushed should be outfitted with a easy-to-reach EPO switch, which in a emergancy can be used to cut out the pusher.