A Hyanide is a radical new vehicle design incorporating the characteristics of a snowmobile, an all-terrain vehicle or ATV and a motorcycle. It can go over snow, rough terrain and the highway. It was named Hyanide because of its similarity in appearance to a crouching hyena.

The Hyanide does not use wheels or skis but uses a tank-like thread spanning the whole underside of the machine. Since all the Hyanide needs in order to move is to have any part of the thread touching the ground, it will be able to cross any terrain.

Hyanide History

The Hyanide was designed by Oliver Keller and Tilmann Schooltz, both students of product design, for the Michelin Challenge Design, an international competition. Threaded personal vehicles however have been around since the early 80s when a Finnish company manufactured the Finnat which was basically a snowmobile without skis. Instead of skis, this snowmobile made use of a pair of connected long plastic segments forming a track.

A variation of the Hyanide is the Baal, an ATV vehicle running on a single thread designed for racing. The Baal displays wider handlebars for greater turning precision and lighter material composition, maximizing speed and making it ideal for all terrain racing.Hyanide

Locomotive Power

The tank-like thread of the Hyanide will be composed of 77 matching, rubber-coated, hard plastic linked together by Kevlar material. The rubber coating of the hard plastic threads will be the same rubber that car tires are made of while the Kevlar links will be the same material used for bullet proof vests. This makes the Hyanide threads a lot lighter and maneuverable than conventional threaded vehicles.

Hyanide Controls

Unlike the conventional motorcycle where turning the front wheel changes the direction of the vehicle and unlike a tank where changing the direction of one thread while fixing the direction of the other changes its direction, a Hyanide will change direction by turning the steering wheel to the direction desired in order to change the angle of the front end of the single thread while simultaneously using a foot pedal to turn the rear part of the thread. This makes the thread shape crescent-like and gives the Hyanide the maneuverability to make sudden and tight turns. All in all, the driver of the Hyanide will control the machine by using two handles and a pair of foot pedals.

Hyanide Engines

A variety of engines can be used for the Hyanide from the conventional diesel- or gasoline-powered engines to engines powered by hydrogen fuel cells. The original design of the Hyanide used a 500cc liquid cooled engine much the ones used in ATVs today, capable of delivering 60 HP and 85 miles per hour speed.

The Hyanide exists today only as a scale model and the designers have no plans to start mass producing these machines. Nevertheless, the thread technology and design of the Hyanide has caught the interest of several manufacturers so working models of these new machines may become available in the near future.