Those skilled in the art will recognize that existing vehicle cover designs are beset with problems of bulk, cumbersomeness in deployment, excessive weight, aesthetically unmarketable, and/or excessive cost to manufacture. Full covers, with sides, offer protection to all surfaces albeit with the trade-offs of bulk, cost, and a timely and cumbersome deployment, storage & security procedures. Attempts to add convenience with rollers (U.S. Pat. No. 5,176,421; 5,056,839; 4,732,421; 1,912,231 and others) have resulted in large and costly designs which have covers that require folding several time longitudinally, thereby creating bulky, stiff, and costly configurations to roll up into a compact shape, as "idealized" in their patent figures.
The principal areas of a vehicle that are subject to incident solar radiation infrared (IR) heating and ultra violet (UV) paint fading!, bird droppings, and other foreign material deposits are the horizontal/top surfaces. Therefore, these are the primary surfaces to protect. Prior art designs, without sides, are costly and cumbersome (U.S. Pat. No. 4,174,134 & 3,222,102) or lacked a practical ease of rapid deployment, recovery or storage (U.S. Pat. No. 2,751,977 or 3,992,053).
Hybrid designs, such as U.S. Pat. No. 5,029,993, have limited coverage, lack ease of deployment & recovery and require side tie-downs to aerodynamically stabilize in high winds.
Attempts to achieve an ideal "one-man" design have been made (U.S. Pat. No. 5,378,035 & 5,294,167), but they can not be made wide enough for full horizontal protection or incorporate the necessary lateral edge seams or elastic members and thusly require additional side tie-downs to be stable in a cross wind as dictated by the limitations of their simple curved configuration, where no lateral over-hang can drape over the lateral edges of the top of a vehicle.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds