Of snow and tarmac

Although it’s sweltering in New England, Shawn Watling’s mind
is on ice and snow. The Canadian snow machine racer and SolidWorks user has
just won a Popular Science Award for inventing a way to make sleds faster,
greener, and more agile. His patent-pending Rear Axle Drive track technology, among other things, moves a snowmobile’s propulsion axle to the rear to put more power directly to the ground. Click on this image to check it out in action:

  

A rendering of the RAD design in SolidWorks:

 

Watling is in talks with several
household-name snowmobile makers interested in his work. In the meantime, he’s installing
RAD on racing sleds that will attempt
the Guinness world record for the snow machine quarter mile… on asphalt.