The Three-wheeled Scooter

Piaggio, an Italy-based company known for producing cars, motorcycles and aeroplanes, and probably best known for producing the Vespa, has produced a three-wheeled scooter and dubbed it, the MP3.

According to popsci.com, the scooter's three wheels, one twelve inch wheel in the back and two in the front, provides exceptional agility in traffic and maintains comforting stability at high speeds.

According to the Piaggio site, the MP3 provides both safety and stability. The Piaggio MP3 requires less breaking space because of the three-disk breaking system and the front end road holding which reduces breaking space by 20 percent, while the two front independent tilting wheels provides more stability than any scooter. The Piaggio MP3 grips the road when tailing other vehicles, providing top performance and safety.

The Piaggio MP3 frame uses high-tensile steel tubes, the frame strength and weight were precisely defined and tested during the initial phases of the project. The Piaggio MP3 uses the innovative parallelogram suspension, an original Piaggio design. The tilt mechanism has four cast-aluminum control arms fixed to the central tube via four hinges, two of the guide tubes are on either side of the parallelogram, connected to the arms through suspension pins and ball bearings. The three twelve inch wheels together with the front suspension, provides a tilt angle of up to 40 degrees. According to Popsci.com, this 40 degree lean allows precision cornering without the fear of spilling.

Parking with the Piaggio MP3 would be easy since it is equipped with an electro-hydraulic front suspension locking system that keeps the vehicle upright without using the central stand.

According the Piaggio's site, the MP3 would come in two versions, the MP3 125 and the MP3 250 ie. The Piaggio MP3 125 will have a 125 cc single-cylinder, 4-strong, 4-valve Piaggio Leader Engine while the MP3 250 will have a 244.3 cc, single-cylinder Quasar, 4-stroke, 4-valves, electronic injection engine. The dimensions of the scooter is 2130mm x 745mm, it's height would me 1490mm and the seat height would be 780mm, the dry weight of the Piaggio MP3 125 would be 199kg while the MP3 250 will be 204kg. Both versions will only have a 12 liters fuel capacity and a 1.8 liter reserve. To see a detailed list of the specifications as well as more pictures and video clips, visit the Piaggio MP3 site.

SOURCE:

MotoMatt Cokeley, Triple your fun. Popsci.com. URL: (http://popsci.typepad.com/popsci/2007/06/triple-your-fun.html)

Piaggio MP3. URL: (http://www.mp3.piaggio.com/index_eng.html)

Piaggio, Wikipedia.org. URL: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piaggio)