The Velodisco was an art car designed and built for Burning Man 2007.

Burning Man is an experimental community created once a year in the Black Rock desert of Nevada, USA.
For more information please visit www.burningman.com

Team:

We were a group of friends, and friends of friends who first coelesced in San Francisco around the Spring of 2007. Amongst us were artists, engineers, business persons, pyschologists, urban planners, and musicians.

 

 

With consideration of the environmentally focused "Green Man" theme of that year, we wanted to build a non-polluting vehicle which could be human powered. In addition we needed something of sufficient size in order to carry most ot the persons in Piazza Orange (30) which was our Burning Man camp and primary organizing body of the project.

Time, money, lack of specific technical skills. We all were working day jobs full-time, so this project unfolded during evenings and on weekends during the early summer of that year.
Our biggest issue was how we could introduce human effort into the propulsion mechanism in a cost and time effective way. 

We decided to use an inexpensive, old boat trailer as the base of the vehicle. In the front of the trailer we connected a rickshaw utilising a standard trailer hitch after reinforcing the rickshaw's rear end.  On the back of the boat trailer we attached four bicycles using the front forks after the tires had been removed. For a breaking system, we chose to install an electric piston driven hydraulic system which was activated when the rider on the rickshaw utilised the rickshaw's back breaks.

Evolution:

In keeping with the Burning Man tradition of not holding on and rebirth via destruction, we burned the top portion of the Velodisco at the end of the festival.
However, the core platform, and propulsion and breaking systems were preserved, and were later used as the basis of the Parkcycle (see pics below)