LexHammer said:
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for long range travel.
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recumbent trikes and i love the idea of comfort and low air drag
Comfort...sort of.
Laid that far back, your neck may get uncomfortable tilted down that far to look forward (rather than upward), over time, even with a well-fitting head and neck rest. (lay in bed propped up in that position for as long as you would want to ride, and see how you feel). And that assumes a smooth ride on perfect surfaces, without being janked and jostled around like you will be even at slow speeds on actual typical imperfect or potholed roads, much less the beating you'll take at 40-50mph.
Also, and even more important...."long range travel" from many people with undefined builds means riding on highways between cities, or at least on very long stretches of other very-high-speed high-traffic roadways.
On a trike like this, most of the cars will have tires taller than your head.
They can't see you; you're well below all the traffic around you.
They won't bother to notice you even if they could see you, because you're not a car or truck or something else that might hurt their vehicle if they hit it. (no, not everyone is like this, but you should assume they are for your own safety).
You can add things to make yourself visible above the traffic, but simple flags and whatnot aren't likely sufficient, and they're all going to add drag. The more visible you want to be, the more surface area you'll need. The more surface area you use, the more drag they will add.
Daylight visibility is a LOT harder to achieve than nighttime visibility. And neither one does any good if you're hidden behind other traffic. (as traffic shifts around, some drivers anticipate the space left behind to be something they can move into, and they don't typically leave enough time to react in for when they finally see you (if they see you at all).
For the nighttime visibility, you can cover the trike in lights that light up the entire space around you, including and especially the road surface in all directions, which makes you look larger than you are, and less likely for someone to just ignore you, as they can see you from a much longer distance before they run you over.
For daytime...you have to actually make yourself larger to be seen as larger, to be seeable from further distances. More surface area. There's no way to use the surface area of the road and surroundings to make yourself appear larger and more visible.
I ride in traffic in the city. I try to avoid faster roads, but it's not always possible, so when I do have to be on them, I'm on them at night, and the SB Cruiser trike (which is a tall delta with a large cargo pod as the rear end) has a lot of downlighting to make it appear larger, and it also has body ligthing that shines on the trike itself to make it visible even when no other lights are shining on it, plus it has strips of LED lighting outlining it's shape, that can be seen for a very long distance. (it also has DOT turn signals, etc, but those aren't directly for visibility, just for communicating intent to other traffic since nobody has a clue what handsignals are even if they bothered looking for them).
This lighting makes nighttime riding relatively safe. Relatively. I know that people *can* see me, and almost always it's obvious they do. Sometimes, even with all this, I still get people surprised by my presence on the road, because they were looking for another car, truck, etc., and I'm not what they expected to see, so their brain filtered me out of the stuff on the road (this is just how your brain does things). Haven't been runover yet, but there have been some interesting moments.
But in daylight it is nowhere near as visible as a car, and in traffic when the car behind me changes lanes and the one behind that one thinks they are about to have a clear path, that car may suddenly acclerate and then come very close to me before slowing, sometimes honking at me (sometimes even yelling, though that's rare), sometimes just veering into the next lane (with traffic in it) enough to go around me anyway without slowing down at all. So far no one has plowed into me, because the back of the trike is quite visible when you're right up at it, as it is taller than typical driver eye-level in a car...but still well-below that of an SUV. (it might be near the top of their hood...for a small SUV).
So I don't go on faster / bigger roads in the daytime if there's any choice. I'd rather putter along on the sidewalk at walking speed, or twist and turn thru back streets for three times the travel distance.
At night, the lighting means just about every car goes the entire lane around me, but in daytime they often pass in the same lane quite close to me.
+ alot of space for battery,
If you do what some have done (adam3333, I think it is) and build a big lowslung "tray box" around the seat base, then yes. Otherwise, no there is not much space on there. No more really than on a bike. Your body and legs and arms take up all the space you may think is there.
If you havent' actually sat on one or ridden one like this, you need to do so before you proceed any further, so you can really understand the issues involved.
These are very heavy. They may have a lot of torque or speed (dpeends on the winding and the controller/battery which, if either), but you'll pay for this with a fair bit of drag when not powered, and more mass to accelerate each time, or when climbing hills.
2. Do i need suspension for electric trike, becasue this trike doesnt have and those with suspesnion are at least x2 the price
3. How is the handling of the recumbent trikes with 40-50 mph?
At those speeds, regardless of what you ride, you're going to require really good suspension (I would guess a lot better than that offered on even 2xprice units), unless you are on perfectly smooth surfaces.
If not, you're probably going to get launched into the air, or flipped, or break wheels, on various road imperfections, much less typical potholes, etc. The smaller your wheels are, the worse this problem is (bike or trike).
Even with "good" suspension, if it's not well-designed, you could have have bump-steer that could cause you to flip with high-speed pothole or debris encounters.
And on a trike, you have three separate tracks you have to keep away from all the road surface problems that must be avoided, rather than just one track with a bike. (at most, two in a curving or changing path).
I'm on a simple delta trike, that weighs 500lbs+ with me on it, no suspension, and I get bounced up in the air at just *20MPH* with typical road surfaces all the time. I'd probably be thrown off the trike and the trike flipped over if I did that at 40-50MPH.
I don't like imagining what would happen if it was a couple hundred pounds less, without the mass of the hubmotors in the outboard wheels helping hold the sides down to the road. (it was worse when it was lighter, perhaps a hundred pounds ore more lighter, before i added so many things to it to do the jobs I need it to do for me).
All that said....trikes have their uses, and can be fun too. But I don't know that you're going to get what you want like this.
I think you should write down your specific mission statement and goals, and then list each and every specific need and requirement you have to do those things.
Then list everything you *can't* do, *can't* have, and *won't* accept, etc.
Then consider your budget, and put that down.
Then post this as a complete detailed list, so that we can help you figure out a way to achieve these things.
