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Subject:
General Purpose Vehicles LLC, New Haven, MI
doggtag
6/18/2005 1:51:41 PM
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| These folks developed a family of 4x, 6x, 8x, and 10x vehicles, all featuring an interesting suspension system: it appears not to just be adjustable, but actually active like several automobile manufacturers are pursuing, which smooths out the ride, regardless of terrain.
They have two videos up, one of the vehicle family, and one of a comparison between a standard S&S FMTV and a modified one with the GPV suspension.
Having a vehicle with such an active suspension with the range of wheel travel available (up to 20 inches, depending on vehicle) could offer considerably improved handling performances for wheeled vehicles, including improved weapons control, and possibly more important, crew comfort on extended operations.
link
Lots of promising features, including cameras for buttoned-up driving, V-hull bottom for mine resistance, built-in winch allowing self recovery of the vehicle (even the 10x variant can unstick itself) as well as recovery of other vehicles or limited engineering capability, a very large crew compartment (plenty of space for enough equipment for extended ops and whatever computer gear you want to include), lots of other stuff like the interesting wire-cutting mirrors, gun ports that can accomodate various-sized crew weapons but can't be compromised from the outside, and a redundant electrical supply and APU.
Sounds like a very capable system, although no direct or "ballpark figure" pricing is mentioned. Of course, that all most likely depends on the overall package (type and number of vehicles) one wishes to purchase, including the tech support.
A viable contender/competitor for the wheeled variants of the FCS?
Seems like American ingenuity once more has come up with another system capable of giving euro platforms a run for their money.
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