Yeti mobility vehicle fight stalemate
A New Zealand entrepreneur who developed and sold converted Skoda Yeti cars designed to make them easy to operate for wheelchair users is blaming NZTA for the fact that they have all been taken off the road – but the NZTA, through its agents the LVVTA, says they are dangerous, and have to be modified.
And in the meantime Roger Phillips, who owns U Drive Mobility (UDM), says he’s been contacted to set up a factory in Bordeaux, France, to build the cars there, and will shift his production from his factory in Waiuku, Auckland.
He says he’s written to Prime Minister John Key about this, but hasn’t received any results.
“From now on we will be building the kitsets here for assembly in Bordeaux, and Skoda is involved in possible distribution,” he told me.
He said in the meantime he is awaiting EEC certification of the vehicles and their crashworthiness, and this will clear the vehicles for importation into New Zealand ready-built.
We have been contacting Roger Phillips for a couple of months in an attempt to get latest developments regarding the EEC certification. However, each time we have been told “the French” have put back the testing for another month or so. The latest date is August.
The issue with NZTA, according to Roger, revolves around the rear suspension. The original multi-link suspension (developed from that in the VW Golf 5) has been removed in the mobility vehicles, and replaced with a suspension unit using racing-derived coil-over-shock units.
According to the LVVTA’s CEO Tony Johnson, one particularly significant problem was the incorrect suspension geometry in the new independent rear suspension.
“Whereas a standard Skoda Yeti has 1.6 mm of ‘toe-change’ throughout its full range of suspension travel, the UDMmodified rear suspension (redesigned to make way for the lowered floor and fuel tank) had 43 mm of ‘toe-change’ through its full range of travel.
“This is a significant safety issue because excessive ‘toe-change bumpsteer’ in the rear suspension can cause a vehicle to ‘rear-wheel steer’ during a mid-corner bump-disturbance.
“This ‘toe-change bump-steer’ resulting from the incorrectly-modified suspension in the UDM vehicles is a very serious condition.
“In 2009, a driver lost control of his vehicle and a passenger was killed in the crash, and the coroner’s inquest showed that the cause of the loss of control was because of the ‘toe-change bump-steer’ geometry created by the incorrectly modified suspension.
“This is the same characteristic that is present in the UDM vehicles.”
UDM’s Roger Phillips poo-poos this, and instead set up a test at Hampton Downs race track in early May, with V8 Supertourers driver Simon Evans “hot-driving” a modified Yeti with a wheelchair-bound passenger, and then undertaking a number of exercises on the skidpan.
According to the UDM website: “Cars proved to have excellent safe handling characteristics as expected, and a great day out. UDM intend to repeat this exercise for clients later in the year, with special awards for fastest hand controls.”
However, it doesn’t just stop at the suspension, says the LVVTA, and the modifications are far more extensive.
UDM says it removes the whole of the floor pan and replaces this with a completely flat aluminium sandwich which is bonded (glued) to the remaining steel in the chassis platform.
From the A pillar back, only the roof panel and A B and C pillars are retained, with the car completely re-engineered with floor well, fuel tanks, and rear suspension assemblies fabricated from bonded and billet alloy.
The rear hatch/bumper and side/ interior panels are fabricated from carbon fibre.
EZlocks are installed at the front of the vehicle so a wheelchair, or custom car seat can be wheeled and locked in place for the driver and front passenger.
Radial hand control can be installed, as an optional extra, and wheelchairs gain access via an electrically operated rear ramp supplied by a French company.
One of the features of the UDM design is that it enables three electric wheelchairs, or combinations of four ambulant adults, plus luggage, to be easily loaded and transported, with their owners in place, in a compact and economical vehicle that takes up little parking space, and is easy to manoeuvre.
The front seats are easily removed
on wheels, allowing a tired wheelchair driver to swap driving duties with an ambulant passenger in order to rest on long journeys. Seats belts fold out of the way, eliminating plug-in floor belts so the wheelchair user is completely self-reliant regardless of the seating combination used.
The rear seats fold down to accommodate passengers, and a removable rear net prevents luggage or groceries sliding around the floor well.
The basic price is $84,950, excluding radial hand controls, which cost $3,500 extra. The wheelchair retainer belt kit costs $1,200, and hand controlmounted right hand indicator switches another $1,900. Other options include keyless start, different wheel and tyre combinations, and a car-mounted battery charger.
But all is not well, says the LVVTA, and there are numerous problems with the vehicle apart from the suspension, including inconsistencies in the build process, the materials used, and the bonding material used to glue the aluminium sandwich into the vehicle, as well as its strength to do the job.
“During the period of June to August (2013), a number of respected people in the disability transportation sector contacted LVVTA to express their opinions that they were concerned about the nature of the modifications and the overall safety of the UDM vehicles,” he says.
This was in addition to an audit review of the previous certifications conducted by LVVTA certifiers.
LVVTA staff traveled to Auckland to inspect the vehicles, and among other things discovered there was no documentation regarding Design Approval, nor was there any evidence the vehicles had been independently tested in any way.
Several times, and in both Auckland and Wellington, the LVVTA staff checked out vehicles, once accompanied by a heavyweight panel including an aeronautical engineer, an automotive engineer, a welding expert, and an experienced motor vehicle constructor. In addition, an independent composite material expert formed part of the inspection team. Their conclusions: There was inadequate evidence that the aluminium sandwich panel system was sufficiently strong and durable to replace the original high-strength steel floor and sub-frame (it should be noted here that this product is not actually a ‘composite’ material as it is often referred to – ‘composites’ are a composition of two or more different materials such as a combination of resins, fibres, carbons, and aramid). There was inadequate evidence to show that the aluminium sandwich panel material had a load rating that was sufficient to support the (wheelchair and occupant) loads to which it would be subjected. There was inadequate evidence to show that the adhesive used to attach the aluminium sandwich panel to the remaining vehicle structure was intended for structural load-bearing applications (this is important because there was no load-bearing mechanical connection holding the new floor to the remaining vehicle structure). The attachment system of the critical safety systems (seats, seatbelt anchorages) to the aluminium sandwich panel floor appeared to be unsatisfactory, and insufficient testing had been undertaken to prove otherwise. The general crashworthiness of the vehicle in both a frontal collision and a side impact had been significantly compromised. No suitably experienced or qualified automotive engineer appeared to have been engaged in the design or development of the vehicles’ modifications. There appeared to be little or no procedures developed for ensuring conformity of production from vehicle to vehicle. As a result of this the LVVTA staff members and specialists put together a number of “fixes” that would make the vehicles roadworthy, and offered them to UDM.
However, said Tony Johnson, only a few of the issues were addressed, some of them poorly, and the main issues remain.
One of these is that in testing by the LVVTA the seatbelts deformed their mountings at only half the legal load.
Roger Phillips told me the LVVTA had been withdrawn from the process by NZTA. “They (NZTA) have agreed to evaluate the cars based on EC certification,” he said.
However, Tony Johnson disagrees with this. “LVVTA has been trying to work with the Phillips brothers in our effort to make them understand the issues, and to put them right, and we are continuing to do so.
“We have bent over backwards to help these guys, especially for the people who have bought the cars. We have been working with these guys for just on a year now to try to get the vehicles right.”
In the meantime the UDM website continues to carry the following statement: “All U Drive Mobility vehicles are manufactured with LVVTA certification, and comply with all NZ registration requirements and are equipped with the same components and design features to allow simple parts sourcing and competitive cost.”
READER REPLY 0140636