by RichD » Fri Jan 19, 2018 6:46 am
As of a year ago the plan for LifeLike was to sell some sets that included "T" chassis cars. New track sections were under development at that time. A new chassis was also in development, that looks like a regular inline car with ceramic grade motor and traction magnets. As far as the cars go, if it was me and I actually had the "M" car tooling, I would use that with the only change being to use ceramic grade polymer magnets. I believe that what the hobby needs is inexpensive entry level cars that run well right out of the box. There are plenty of aftermarket high performance HO cars already on the market. If the price of the cars could be kept to around $20 that would be nice. There are complications to selling cars in sets that might not apply to cars that are sold as separate items. A set car might have to conform to regulations concerning RFI emissions and can't have small parts that a child might swallow. The latter issue led to a redesign of the AFX Mega G car, which caused problems with the pickup shoes making contact with the brush barrels. You don't want to have a beginner buy a set and have cars that need to be tinkered with.