fredswain

iTrader: (1)

This is exactly the way I see rc going in the near future. It'll be a one car fits all package. Extending that philosophy, manufacturers could offer one basic design but allow you to change your arms, chassis, shocks, etc on the same platform so you can build a 2wd buggy or a 4wd sct from the same master kit. We aren't far off from that in terms of design anyways.

I know the idea doesn't really seem all that radical from what we are doing today but big technological innovations aren't being created from within the rc world. They are being created outside of the rc world and integrated into it. Car design is essentially just a copy the geometry and repackage game which makes comments stating which car is better quite funny. Associated has settled on an arm length and shock mounting location on those arms that is the same on the B3, B4, and B44 and I'm sure their next vehicle as well. It's one they discovered on the 1989 and 1991 Stealth cars and ultimately settled on. It's one that has been copied from most other companies, Durango being a good example. Arms are interchangeable between the 210 and B4.

Kit construction and car design will just continue to integrate all of the current designs into one package. The big innovations will need to be made elsewhere for the rc industry to learn from and copy.

lbenton

iTrader: (48)

Brushless technology will continue to improve, motors are always getting more powerful and producing more RPM. And ESCs are getting lighter and able to handle more power as well.

Radios will improve for range and likely bandwidth, not sure that more range is super handy for cars now as you can already drive them to a distance you can not see them. But with bandwidth it would allow some POV style driving to take fresh root. Would be an awesome way to do trails in a crawler, or can you imagine a race at a track with nobody up on the stand?

Batteries, or maybe even super capacitors will improve the "fuel" going forward, we will at least improved quality on our LiPos for a while as they refine manufacturing and the general cost comes down. But a bank of capacitors would be a huge step as that matures, how nice would it be to be able to charge up in a matter of seconds and not have to worry about things like C ratings. I guess caps still puff though, so there will always be that. And with a high output bank of caps you could just about fry yourself on it if you are not careful...

We will see some materials improved, in the very least more exotic stuff you can get now will be more common and cost less.

I do not see 3D printing being a dream for any manufacture, it will take control out of their hands for dealing out parts and making much of the profit they enjoy now. They will more than likely find a way to protect themselves from such activity. It will on the other hand take some root I think in the open source crowd. Imagine the impact on current big names when an open source print it yourself lineup of cars come to the scene?

Beau S

iTrader: (2)

+1

1967Typhoon

iTrader: (35)

Your radio could speak your lap times to you, it could speak your temps as well. Plus there could be alarms in place that go off. You could also do awesome things like binding ESC parameters to switches on your transmitter.

My point is, electronics in RCs are not NEARLY as smart as they could be, because of this modular design that we have stuck to. An all-in-one ESC/Radio/Transponder/Telemetry unit would be a HUGE leap in tech. There are countless things you could do with that amount tracking and real time adjustments. You could pull all sorts of data which would help you with setup and maximizing speed. And it wouldn't be terribly expensive if it was all bundled together on one unit.

Think about this:

Your car is running great, your temps are decent. You are sitting in 2nd place with just a couple laps to go. You adjust your ESC timing way up for that final push, and find some extra speed in the straights to take the win. Sure, your motor peaked at 170. But it only did so for that last leg of the race. And you take the win. How awesome would it be to be able to set up a car like that! Heck, you could have the ESC run the timing dynamically as high as temps will allow! Set your max ESC and Motor temps to what you desire, and the ESC dynamically adjusts them on the fly to keep the temps below that mark. You could find a lot of speed from that on these new high grip tracks.

Dave H

Ah, OK. What about gearing changes? Would your design require extracting and reinstalling an inline planetary set? Need several sets, possibly including carriers or whatever the proper term is, compared to pinion gears and occasionally a spur? How low of a ratio can a planetary realistically have?

Dave H

One possible area that could be revisited is multi link suspension. That's a major full size evolution over the past few decades, especially in the rear suspension. Seems doable, links are already used, has been done in the past, original Losi, some others. Takes more sophisticated design, but perhaps not a big challenge to manufacture.

Zero steering scrub, toe changes through travel, all kinds of tweaks that full size uses become available.

OSRC

iTrader: (10)

Why are we locked into a 540 can and a "standard" stick pack, based on old style cells? A decent brushless 380 can easily move a 1/10 touring car, and lipo's can come in all sorts of sizes. Smaller motor, smaller pack, and a compact steering servo could easily lead to lighter, smaller chassis and drive components. Possibly even off road as well. Less mass = less force = less breakage. I figure if 1:1's are making do with smaller, more powerful motors, why not RC? Suspension geometry will never change, and I don't know that we can get much more efficient drivelines but I think we have yet to fully take advantage of the brushless revolution and what it could do.

Agreed that a lot of it is going to come via phone/mobile technology. Would love to monitor/adjust my ESC via bluetooth right from my phone for example.

1967Typhoon

iTrader: (35)

You can already do that with a Speed Passion Reventon Pro.

W.E.D.Jim

iTrader: (17)

New advances will likely come in the form of electronics. On the fly programming/tuning and more efficiency of speedos and motors. Batteries especially will improve rapidly.

Although durability can also be enhanced thru better design and testing of prototypes with closer to production parts during the early phase of testing.

But don't worry, 2.0, 3.0 and other revisions will still happen since the market is small.

I do know for a fact the next new car will also enable us to run faster laps and be easier to drive at the same time.

masher81

iTrader: (16)

I see a day in the future where you ship your car to an event... and marshal puts your car on the track.. and you sit at home with some sort of head gear on and drive the car POV style.

some guy

I don't know where it's headed, but gyroscopic traction control with steering assist, steering angle sensor,with an electric motor with rpm sensors for each wheel would make a car as fast as could be no more diffs, very little wheel spin. Would be a different experience.

F1Yankee

are we talking about racing? if so, then cars will follow what the race governing bodies prescribe. for the most part, i think that has been done well enough and is for the better.

outside of racing, do what you want. there's already plenty of ABS, traction control, launch control, stability control, et cetera. log your g's in mad drifts, yo. go to japan and enter your autonomous car against others. the world is your oyster.

you can already get telemetry recorded (kinda poorly), configure your esc with bt/wifi, and now config your esc through your radio. motors are more than strong enough, batteries provide tons of juice, and you don't (shouldn't) ever have worry about conflicting frequencies or other radio fits again.

i do not think race cars will get much faster, nor should they. cars have approached their maximum in lap pace, now progress needs to be made in cost. just about any industry says "ok, after all this work we have a great product. now how do we reach the same level at a lower cost?" mostly, costs need to come down on quality electronics and batteries. as long as the price of a bare chassis is just a small drop in the bucket of rc racing, costs are upside-down and people quit or, more wisely, never get in.

JiuHaWong

Liquid cooled motors.

dtr

I hope for a lot of things already mentioned, mostly vast improvements in battery (or whatever) technology for longer runtimes.
One little improvement that seems inevitable is better radio safety and security to avoid any interfence in control, guess it will come to air models first as those are way more dangerous. Some sort of authentication and encrypion of radio communication that is fast enough would be cheap to implement compared to current receiver prices.
Oh, and I would love independent front and rear brakes, that is easy to do with a stick remote, or something very simlar to a bicycle handlebars, just shorter.

fredswain

iTrader: (1)

If you think run times are short or that radios suffer from interference, you haven't been doing this long enough to remember when that was actually true.