Why I am building ROOPOD:

Disclaimer:  I know full well that the best vehicle there is to be had is no vehicle, then one that burns no fuel, but barring those options (walking and biking come hard to a lazy oaf like me)  I Just had to start thinking about this car problem!

It all started one day, when I came across the sticker inside the door of my VW New Beetle…it said…3,704 gvrw…that’s how much it’s supposed to weigh fully loaded…3 passengers, the driver and fuel/cargo etc…

Then I thought, yikes! For a small car, when I drive this car myself…I can take about 600lb off that weight and get about 3100lb actual weight …I am dragging around just under 3000lb of car just to carry my 250lb body around…I am not so hot at math, but if you divide  say 2800 by 250 you get a ratio of 11.2:1 and then I realized, out of my 1 gallon of gas I buy for this car, I use 11 parts to carry the car around, to the one part that is used to carry my weight.  If I add a passenger, I do a little better, even another big guy like me…lets say 500lb and that brings the weight up to 3050lb so that ratio is 6.1:1 a lot better but still six parts of my gallon of gas goes to move the car around…!  I won’t even talk about more passengers as it is incredibly rare to carry more than one…

I thought: I can do better than that! I think I can build something that will get me around, in relative safety and comfort and improve that ratio a whole hell of a lot!  Then the head scratching began.  My eventual goal…A ratio of 1:1 with two people in my vehicle…my numbers would go like this…very simple…250X2 (two of me) (500) that gave me how much my car would get to weigh 500lb.  If I am just in the car then my ratio will be 2:1 so very much better than my VW!

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