Efficiency? Think Racing Cars, Not Hybrids

Gordonjcp writes "A renowned racing car designer has said that car manufacturers should be looking at making cars lighter to improve efficiency, rather than adding complex drive trains. In this article on the BBC News website, Professor Gordon Murray explains that a weight saving of 10% in a normal car would make more difference than switching to a hybrid engine and motor combination. Could this be the next nail in the SUV's coffin?"

In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[kalidasa]

Because they're afraid they'll be crushed to a fine pulp when they get hit by a big honking SUV.

Seriously?

[Thyamine]

People are still buying SUVs, and really, I still prefer the idea of an SUV than a minivan or station wagon to try and haul people/stuff around. Maybe I'd feel different if I had a few children to get in and out, but I don't see the SUV going away anytime soon. Plus why not just make a lighter SUV?

Re:In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[cephah]

And their fears aren't exactly unfounded. Only way to get the majority of people to stop driving heavy cars is to increase gas prices to the point where lighter cars are the only option, or having a flag day where everybody agrees to switch, i.e. not gonna happen in the near future :)

Re:In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[morgan_greywolf]

There's an easy solution for that: start prosecuting agressive SUV drivers for vehicular manslaughter and/or attempted vehicular manslaughter. Problem solved.

Re:In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[Anarke_Incarnate]

Because it is impossible for a partial blowout of a tire to force a 5000lb SUV into a 1900lb compact? Why is it that when an SUV owner gets into an accident, it is because they are aggressive? You want to talk aggressive, talk to all the 530i penis compensators who drive like they are on their own personal autobahn.

What about 10% weight savings in the driver's seat

[PrimeWaveZ]

I'm just saying...

It might be helpful.

How about doing both?

[Opportunist]

What's wrong with the idea of making cars lighter AND looking for alternative (and cheaper) fuels? Is there a reason for either/or, or can't we just build lightweight hybrids?

Re:Two things

[LoudMusic]

Cars need to be lighter and more aerodynamic [aptera.com]. The drag on a standard automobile is just ridiculous. Rear ends today are typically vertically flat! Who are these designers that aren't familiar with the teardrop shape?

Well, the teardrop shape is less space efficient than a box, and most vehicles don't go fast enough often enough to make use of quality aerodynamics. If it's just a mom driving her kids to school, and around town, she's rarely going to get over 35mph and likely not waste much fuel in wind resistance. But the fact the vehicle is boxy means she can get more kids / stuff in the back end and much easier. To have the same space but a slopey backend would required adding several feet to the overall length of the vehicle.

Partially right...

[Notquitecajun]

I like bigger autos. I'm 6'3" with a family history of back problems. I DON'T want a car, I want a fuel-efficient pickup/SUV/Crossover that doesn't bounce around like a jeep and I don't have to deal with the up-and-down motion of getting in and out of. I like hauling crap around. I like being able to see OVER traffic.

GM is on the right path with the Hybrid Silverado they are making, but I would like to see something a little smaller, along the lines of a Ranger or S-10/Sonoma (I LOVED the 1994 Sonoma I drove through college). Americans are going to buy small cars in the near future, but the REAL money will be made when we can drive larger SUV's and trucks that get 30+ MPG's.

Re:In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[everphilski]

I bike commute to work, the only close shave I've had is with a school bus. But then again we are both speaking with anecdotal evidence.

Re:In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[Lord_Frederick]

The flaw in your argument is that these days almost NOBODY gives a flying fuck about anyone but themselves. It's not restricted to SUV owners.

Re:In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[Anonymous Coward]

Lumping all SUV drivers in together is as fair as lumping in all bicycle riders together. You know, they don't follow traffic laws, don't signal, ride on the sidewalks, etc. etc. Fuck all bike riders.

Who knew?

[voislav98]

Lighter cars use less gas? What's next? Telling people that they shouldn't live 200 miles from where they work? I heard a kind of a funny fact this morning on BBC, average energy consumption per capita in North America is double that in Europe. It's not like the standard of living or climate is that much different, it's all about the culture.

Hopefully a watershed moment, the oil "problem"

[e2d2]

One could hope that the coming oil problem and the focus on energy use will spill over to the general public's energy use. We have up to know, had almost unlimited energy and we've thrived in that environment. But now that we see a huge energy resource shortage in the oil markets we're starting to rethink this policy of unabated energy use. Hopefully in the coming years there will be more focus on energy efficiency in all aspects of life.

Re:What about 10% weight savings in the driver's s

[Spy der Mann]

How about this. You force people to walk more, and you solve two problems at the same time :)

Re:In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I haven't seen a cyclist yet that's actually been paying attention enough to even know when they're close to being in an accident. They also don't give a flying fuck about traffic laws and pay no mind to street signs, traffic lights, crosswalk indications, etc.. Fortunately, since they don't deserve to live either, physics helps take care of that sometimes.

Wow, I never would have guessed how much fun it is to grossly generalize and cast reckless aspersions about people I don't even know! Thanks for the example!

As soon as...

[Duncan3]

As soon as women stop screwing men in big fast cars, and men stop buying big fast cars to get laid ... we'll have no problem. As if that will ever happen. It's no the tech, it's the human.

Re:In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[wattrlz]

Not to be rude, but maybe you should take the lack of visibility to heard and stay away from the backs and sides of SUVs? You can't expect that just because you are poorly protected and virtually invisible people will be extra careful about preserving your safety. You can hope they will, and you have every right to demand they will, but most drivers are end users and it would be folly to expect anything of them. These are the people who made it illegal to talk on the phone while driving, you know.

Re:In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[MightyYar]

If you have one, I think you deserve the death penalty.

I take you are in the "John McCain isn't conservative enough" camp? Wow.

Have you ever considered that some truck drivers drive like grandmas because they understand the limitations of the vehicle? Should we give all bike riders the death penalty because some of them ride on the sidewalk?

But here I am trying to reason with a guy that wants roughly half of the driving public dead.

SUV's not going anywhere

[katorga]

The majority of "SUVs" are light pickup trucks, and they are the lifeblood of the working class. Landscapers, yard cutters, painters, plumbers, etc etc all require pickups.

Re:In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[Anarke_Incarnate]

Then realize that when you drive a compact or subcompact and have a mechanical failure that puts your vehicle out of your control while it is going in excess of 35 miles per hour, if you kill a pedestrian, you should be charged with manslaughter, because you knew that you were in a car.

That sounds ridiculous, and it is. Accidents happen. People who fail to realize that the world is a chaotic place outside the control of civilized or even uncivilized society will only be upset when they are shown evidence of this.

Cars do not cause accidents, guns do not cause murder, pencils do not cause spelling errors and pie does not cause obesity. The actions undertaken with the use of the "tool" is the cause and the perpetrator is to blame, not the devices. If there were no car, there would be carriage accidents. If no gun, there would be knife attacks. If no pencil, then coal would be used to misspell things on cave walls. If no pie, they would simply have to eat cake :).

Re:Partially right...

[MobyDisk]

I can understand the height issue, and there will always bee a need for larger vehicles. But the thing about seeing over traffic disturbs me.

The need to see over traffic just makes the problem worse. You want to see over traffic, so you get a taller vehicle. That's fine, except now everyone else who could see just find before can't see over you. So they also need higher vehicles. And they you can't see over them, so you need a yet taller vehicles. And each time we do this we get less fuel efficiency and less safety.

Re:In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[Anarke_Incarnate]

Generalizations are .........general.

I drive an SUV. It is a 4Cyl powered machine that weighs about 3300lbs. The mileage is "acceptable" if not a bit disappointing. I have also not hit anybody nor have I been hit, outside of minor parking dings when I return to my car.

However, I have been in car accidents and the majority of them were with sedans where the driver was inattentive or downright moronic.

The trouble you have is not with SUVs but with the people who drive them. Sure, some of them may be more inclined to purchase an SUV, but trust me, they are hardly status symbols anymore. I got mine simply for the utility of it and the AWD features, as I often have no choice but to make it to work (Datacenter) and I can get a good deal of snow on the ground where I live.

Re:In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[initdeep]

As an avid motorcyclist, i can say that a large majority of the time I've been nearly turned to a small spot on the road is due to morons driving cars who are on cell phones.

These morons (or cagers as we motorcyclists car eto call them) come in all shapes and sizes and so do their vehicles.

in fact i can provide anectodatal evidence of everythign from a fucking little college girl who ran a buddy off the road while merging off an off ramp, to the time a farmer pulled his combine onto the road directly in front of a group of 20 bikes.

None of that means a shit to anybody but the people who were there, yet i can say that i'd much rather we prosecute idiots who arent paying attention than go after a specific type of vehicle.

FYI, this isnt exactly a new situation for motorcyclists. We've been complaining about this longer than SUV's have been a mainstream vehicle.

How about instead of trying to lump people by the type of vehicle, we instead start issuing "distracted driver" tickets to all those morons deserving of them.

I'm fairly certain every state in the union has a distracted driving law on the books.

We didn't learn the first time (1970s)

[walterbyrd]

I feel like I'm re-living the past. I am old enough to remember the oil embargo of the 1970s, and how that quadrupled the cost of fuel. For a short time, it was all windmills, car pooling, public transportation, and econo-box cars, then it was right back to the guzzlers.

I also remember fuel prices dropping, very briefly, in early 2006. The sales of SUVs spiked right along with the fuel cost drop. If fuel prices drop during the election, the same thing will probably happen again.

Those who don't remember the past, yadda yadda.

Re:In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[njfuzzy]

They are at fault by nature of their vehicle choice. They could have bought a minivan, but chose the heavier, trendier, more "rugged" option. The only benefits to an "SUV" are psychological/social.

Re:In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[BlueParrot]

Sadly you can remove "these days" from that claim. Your point would still be accurate and as a bonus it wouldn't come out as "Get of my lawn!".

Re:In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[wattrlz]

Because they're afraid they'll be crushed to a fine pulp when they get hit by a big honking SUV.

Which is amusing because most of those SUVs are over half crumple-zone by volume. There was a time when an SUV was a 4x4 vehicle made of steel that you drove because you needed to be able to go off road or lug all your belongings somewhere in the snow. Those days are long gone. Now it doesn't snow here anymore and an SUV is a minivan with a six-liter v8 purchased for ostentation and to satisfy latent napoleon complexes.

Re:In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[llamalad]

It seems to me that there's got to be a reason that pedestrians have the right of way. Maybe it's that in exchange for being granted the privilege of driving an automobile on a public road these drivers assume responsibility for remaining in control of their vehicles and are accountable for the consequences of failing to do so.

You get in a Mazda Miata, drive off the road at 30mph, you run through a mailbox and crash into a light pole. You do the same thing in a Ford Excursion at 30mph, you go through the mailbox, pole, the two kids in their plastic wading pool, grandma whose watching them from a lawn chair, and crash in to the house, maiming mom and dad who were watching tv sitting against the wall you just drove through.

Bigger car = more potential for harming others.

Re:Partially right...

[gaspar ilom]

I like being able to see OVER traffic.

If everyone acted as you, what would you do then? Seeing "over" the traffic seems like a poor excuse to get a larger car, and if everyone did it, it would become a never-ending arms race.

Re:SUV has a coffin already?

[xgr3gx]

Haha - gotta love mass hysteria.
How come nobody is freaking out about heating oil?
- That's 4.50/gal in my area.
Granted, we don't really need it now, but in a few months...
Gas @ 15gals per fillup vs Heating oil at 300gals per fillup.
I can change driving habits pretty easily, but I can't stop heating my home. I keep the heat as low as I can with an infant in the house, and use a programmable thermostat.
Oh my god! Death to the oil fired furnace - long live wood!

Re:Partially right...

[eln]

Most people drive SUVs because they like the way they look, and then they rationalize it by coming up with other reasons.

Most smaller cars have a lot more head and foot room, especially for the driver, than you give them credit for. I'm 6'2" and drive a 2001 Toyota Corolla. I have plenty of head room without slouching over or anything, and leg room is not an issue either. Heck, I have two kids and they fit just fine in the back seat of the thing, so the hauling kids excuse is silly too unless you happen to have 5 kids or more. It makes me crazy when people with 2 kids say they need an SUV to "haul the family around".

As for seeing over traffic, I have no problem seeing the traffic ahead of me so long as I keep a safe distance between me and the person in front of me (2 second rule, remember?), and have only even been close to having an accident (which I was able to maneuver to avoid) once in my 15 years of driving.

The hauling stuff excuse may be valid for some people, but you have to ask yourself how often do you really need to haul around so much stuff that you require an SUV. Most people haul stuff like that so rarely it would be far more cost effective to simply rent a pickup truck when they need to do that rather than spend all that money on the SUV full-time. Even small cars like mine can fit a surprisingly large amount of stuff in them.

I wish people would just admit that they really wanted an SUV, so they came up with reasons why they should get one, rather than insisting that no other type of car could possibly work for them.

Re:In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[gfxguy]

I think somewhere around 1988 was the first year for Camry's, but that may just be in the U.S.

I can tell you, though, things have gotten worse; my 93 Civic gets mileage around what a current Civic Hybrid gets.

Re:In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[Anonymous Coward]

In the US, no one can by light cars. The MINI, a tiny little car, weighs 2700 lbs. It gets 34 mpg. My 8-year-old Integra weighs less, and can at least match the highway mileage. It's also big enough that I can haul a bicycle in the back if I need to. I hauled a full-size storm door home in it once. Modern cars are loaded down with airbags, cast-iron bumpers, traction control, lane-departure warnings, nav systems, and all kinds of other gimmicks intended mostly to either protect the driver from dumbasses in other cars, or to relieve the driver of the responsibility of operating the car like an adult. All that stuff adds weight, which hurts mileage, performance, and handling. The upside, of course, is that you can pretty much run the car into a tree and get nothing more than a bloody nose.

Re:In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[truthsearch]

Call me selfish, but I'm not going to be the guy out there in the lightweight car. I'm not going to risk the life of my daughter "for the greater good". Sorry, but that's human nature.

Except that heavy car you bought is unlikely to have good crumple zones, so when your daughter gets into a car accident she's going to absorb the energy from the impact instead of the car. In some ways lightweight cars are safer for the passengers inside.

Re:Two things

[initdeep]

most people dont daily drive on highways for any significant amount of time.

instead they take their BOXY but easy to get stuff into vehicle to Wally world to get shit for the kids, Best Buy (et al) to get the newest DVD's / CD's, the local mega mall to let the kids wander around, the local soccer field to drop off the kids, the local grocery store to get the food of life, the local fast food joint for dinner, etc.

so aerodynamics plays a lot less of a part then simply not mashing the gas pedal to the floor when taking off from every red light in town.

aerodynamics for vehicles are highly over rated for the large majority of driving time.

and yes, i drive a full size pickup, with a setup for towing, and the associated gearing, and yet, I'm able to somehow, miraculously get 19-20 mpg when driving said vehicle from Iowa to North Carolina three times over the last year.

aerodynamic brick that it is.......

Re:Who knew?

[gaspar ilom]

American cities are failing to provide the infrastructure to do anything like that and the few people who might be interested are far outweighed by the majority...

Exactly as the parent said, it's a matter of culture. ...Why have we not applied political and economic decisions with *different* results from what you describe?

Re:In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[Applekid]

Because it is impossible for a partial blowout of a tire to force a 5000lb SUV into a 1900lb compact?

That's why truckers get specialized drivers licenses, granted upon demonstration of the skills required to minimize the impact of genuine ACCIDENTS like tire blowouts.

SUVs don't require a special license and literally any 16 year old kid who might barely be able to work a manual compact can climb into an H2 and single-handedly manage to kill occupants of 2 or 3 or more small cars.

Why is it that when an SUV owner gets into an accident, it is because they are aggressive?

How exactly do you roll over an SUV if you're not speeding during a turn? How do you sideswipe someone if you didn't fail at cutting them off or didn't check before changing lanes and other basic driving skills?

You want to talk aggressive, talk to all the 530i penis compensators who drive like they are on their own personal autobahn.

Yes, drivers of small vehicles can (and do) get in "accidents" by driving like jerks. The 530i, however, doesn't weigh what an SUV weighs, won't put the same wear on the road, and isn't likely to bounce around other vehicles being more deadly in an accident on a road during a collision the same way a heavy SUV does.

Re:Partially right...

[Jor-Al]

I like being able to see OVER traffic.

Yes, I always love when someone stupid SUV driver pulls right into my line of sight whenever I'm trying to make a turn so that it's impossible to then see around them. Thanks asshole.

Re:Partially right...

[NeoSkandranon]

Well for one thing, (for example) you see the idiot who's passing the person to your left at high speed and is about to dart across two or three lanes (the one to your left, and yours, and however many are to your right) to make it to an exit ramp.

You also see brake lights a little sooner so you know traffic is slowing ahead.

In other words, you can see more of what's going on around you. You can't "pay attention" to something if you can't physically see it to start with.

The downside of course, is that the more tall vehicles there are on the road, the more people think they need tall vehicles to see clearly.

Re:In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[zippthorne]

Yeah, but a lot of bikers ride really stupidly, too. Like the "side-by-side" bullshit. Yeah, I know it's legal in many states. It's also stupid. You've got no reaction room. If you're in a car, you don't drive right up side-by-side with cars in other lanes, why do bikers think it's safe to ride two up in a single lane?

Or refusing to wear helmets. Or pretending that "skull caps" are helmets. I've been through a couple o' "Bike Weeks" in my time, and there are news reports *every freakin day* of bikers who die because they're not wearing helmets and bikers who manage to scrape through because they were wearing them.

So yeah, stereotype wise I lump bikers right in there with women who drive the Avalanche as dumb drivers. The only difference is that I've been nearly killed twice by women in the Avalanche, and bikers mostly put only themselves at risk.

Re:Why the safety assumption?

[Anonymous Coward]

All other things being equal, a driver in a heavier vehicle will always fair better than a driver in a smaller, lighter vehicle in a crash. Simple physics.

Gas Prices are HIGH?

[TjOeNeR]

Come live in Europe. Americans pay on average $4 for a gallon of gas. That comes to about 2.5. In Europe we pay 6 for the same amount. No wonder you're all driving SUV's. At least in the states you can afford it.

Re:In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[khendron]

I can just envision an Apple commercial for the switch

SC: I'm a smart car
SUV: And I'm an SUV
SC: You look a little thirsty, SUV.
SUV: I am. Ever since the price of gas went up, my owner started rationing my gas consumption.
SC: Aww, that's too bad, SUV.
SUV: Tell me about it. I mean, I was thirsty enough before. I could drink gas like there was no tomorrow.
SC: Well, SUV, if you kept drinking gas like that, there probably would be no tomorrow.

Re:In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell your city to build us some bike lanes, then. You think cyclists *like* riding around egomaniacal crazies like you?

Re:In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, how dare cyclists--riding one of the most efficient transportation known to man--dare ride on the same road system as you and your pollutant spewing shitbox.

Re:SUV's not going anywhere

[east coast]

I don't know about you but most of the SUVs I've ever seen have carried little more than the drivers fattened ass and a few sacks of groceries.

Re:In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[Thornburg]

I'm sure all of that increase in weight is SAFETY equipment, right? It isn't the fact that even dirt cheap cars come with air conditioning, electric windows, fancy sound systems, etc, right? And none of that weight has to do with the increase in average wheel size, either, right? And none of it has to do with the huge engines they put in cars, either, right?

The safety equipment argument is a load of hogwash pushed by the American auto industry.

A 2008 Chevy Aveo has a curb weight of just over 2300lbs. A 1997 Geo Metro has a curb weight of just over 1800lbs. How much of that 500lb difference (a lot less than 500kg) comes from the fact that the Aveo has a 1.6L I4 while the Metro had a 1.0L I3? Certainly not all of it, but what mileage would the Aveo get if you dropped in a 1.0L engine and took out the air conditioning? I would imagine it would be quite a bit better than the pathetic EPA 24 City 34 Highway it is rated for now.

Re:In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[antifoidulus]

How much fossil fuels do bike rider use? How many people are killed per year by cyclists(excluding themselves)? None of those are 0, but they are a HELL of a lot less than SUV drivers. Stop warming my planet, stop killing my people just because you have a microscopic penis.

Re:Partially right...

[LurkerXXX]

Great. Of course you realize since no one in a smaller vehicle has a chance of seeing through the windows of that huge thing you are driving in, you are effectively blinding them to what is on the other side of you, which could lead to accidents (which might also include you).

Re:In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[berashith]

This made me laugh. There is quite a range of types and sizes of cars in between giant SUV and sub-compact. There are also now giant SUVs coming in hybrid flavors, which I would think help to satisfy some people in your position of actually needing the Utility provided in these beasts. The problem where all of society fears lighter weight cars due to the number of giant cars is brought on by the millions of 110 pound women who will never carry more than a few gallons of milk "needing" to drive SUVs.

Re:In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[Thomasje]

I find it hard to believe that a few air bags add 500 kg to the weight of any car. Rather, in the eternal bigger-is-better orgy, car manufacturers feel compelled to make every iteration of any model a bit bigger than the previous one. That 2008 Honda Civic, for example, is larger than a 1979 Honda Accord, and let's not even talk about the fact that the smallest engine you can get it with (in the U.S.) is a 1.8 liter 145 hp monster...

Re:In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[somersault]

I carpool to work every day, in my tiny 93 accord

Heh.. only an American (okay, there's also Canadian, Mexican or Australian) could make such a statement :)

In the UK Accords are 'family' sized cars towards the large end of the spectrum. I know the 93 version is a little smaller than a modern Accord, but it's still pretty big by our standards. If you want a proper example of tiny, consider the original Mini, or more modern "super minis" - which are actualy still larger than the original Mini. I'd hate to see one of them get into a fight with an SUV..

Re:In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[Anarke_Incarnate]

My personal belief is that it is a sense of entitlement for the elitists who can afford things to demand preferential treatment. Oh, the evidence is there, but hard to compile into a scientific theory :)

Re:In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[Sancho]

This made me laugh.

Giant SUV hybrids tend to get 2-3mpg more than their non-hybrid counterparts. They're a joke. And lots of midsize cars don't get much better gas mileage than SUVs. I drive a pickup truck which gets 15mpg. My wife drives a midsized GM car (I forget the model.) She gets 3mpg more than my truck.

The options for efficient cars really are pretty limited, and those which do exist are pretty highly sought after these days. There are waiting lists at all of the major dealerships within a 50 mile radius of me for any car which exceeds 30mpg.

Re:In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[dave420]

So you attribute the weight gain to safety features? Are you seriously saying the *only* difference between a 1979 Honda Civic and a 2008 Honda Civic (29 years apart) is the safety equipment?? Not the size, or the engine, or the electronics, or any of the other thousand non-safety-related improvements made to production cars?

Re:In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[swillden]

What happens if you put a spear sticking out of the steering wheel aimed at your chest?

Sales of hacksaws would increase dramatically?

Re:Partially right...

[mhamel]

The funniest part of the "seeing over the traffic" rant is mostly that it is an ego trouble. What if the others also want to see over the traffic? They'll get a higher car? Then what?

You have to understand that getting a higner car to see the traffic has the effect that everybody around you sees less of the traffic.

It harldy sounds like a solution to me.

Re:Partially right...

[prefect42]

I like being able to see OVER traffic.

And there's the reason I end up staring at bumpers in my (33 US mpg) Corolla.

I'm entirely unbothered by what you want; having cars that are taller than average for the purpose of getting a better view is antisocial.

Re:Why the safety assumption?

[Wavebreak]

Playing somewhat of the devil's advocate here, but it's been pointed out several times that increases in vehicle weight are directly caused by extra safety features. I'd say this is a prime example of correlation not equaling causation. What you're looking at is lighter vehicles that are lighter due to being older and lacking safety features, thus being less safe. Higher death rates aren't a function of weight, but a function of safety features (that is, the lack thereof). It simply happens that those safety features make a vehicle heavier, hence the correlation of lighter = less safe.

That doesn't mean that lack of weight is fundamentally unsafe, just that we need to reduce the weight of all those safety features (and the rest of the car, while we're at it) without compromising, uh, safety. Probably a tall order tho.

Re:In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[Sancho]

I think it speaks to what's on everyone's minds lately.

We discuss mileage a lot because we want to trade in one of our vehicles for a more efficient car. The specific discussion which lead to me finding out what kind of mileage she got was when we were discussing which vehicle to trade in. Since I'm not hauling nearly as much stuff as I used to, I assumed that my truck would be the thing to trade in. Not so, as it turns out.

Re:In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[element-o.p.]

The problem with this approach is that the light cars need to be at approximately the same height as the vehicle they hit.

More specifically, it's not the SUV's I worry about so much, it's the huge jacked up pickup trucks where their bumper is at approximately the level of my head in the Talon TSi I used to drive. All the crush space between my bumper and me will do me absolutely no good if the first thing to hit the other vehicle is my windshield pillar because the rest of the car goes *under* the other vehicle...

Re:In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[name_already_taken]

It seems to me that there's got to be a reason that pedestrians have the right of way.

"Right of way" is a myth. I've heard from numerous law enforcement officials that there's no such thing.

The exception is where boats are concerned, and in maritime law the smaller craft always has to get out of the way of the larger craft. Perhaps pedestrians should be considered negligent if they don't jump out of the way of cars.

Maybe it's that in exchange for being granted the privilege of driving an automobile on a public road these drivers assume responsibility for remaining in control of their vehicles and are accountable for the consequences of failing to do so.

Ok, apparently you missed the part of the post you were replying to about the accident being caused by mechanical failure. Say you buy a brand new car and on the drive home, some tiny defect you weren't aware of causes an accident. Under your reasoning, you should be thrown in jail. Following your reasoning, as a driver you're responsible for knowing the exact location and condition of each atom that makes up your vehicle at all times, right?

You get in a Mazda Miata, drive off the road at 30mph, you run through a mailbox and crash into a light pole. You do the same thing in a Ford Excursion at 30mph, you go through the mailbox, pole, ... Bigger car = more potential for harming others.

Perhaps we should extrapolate on your logic. Just think how safe the roads of the future would be if when someone applies for and passes the test for a semi truck license, we simply preemptively arrest them for murder.

I'm all for smaller, safer cars, (realistically almost nobody really needs a Ford Excursion) but let's try to remain sensible.

Re:In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[flyingsquid]

-light

-safe

-cheap

Pick any two.

You can make a safe, lightweight car, such as a Formula 1, but it's going to cost you. Carbon composite isn't cheap. You can make a safe, cheap car. Just add a few hundred pounds of metal to the frame to strengthen it. But your fuel efficiency is going to be lousy. You can make a light, cheap car. Just strip away the frame until there's almost nothing left, but if you get into a serious crash, it's gonna be a coffin on wheels. There are other compromises too. Comforts like well-padded seats, and sound insulation that keep noise down, also result in increased weight. A larger engine is going to increase weight. And so on.

That's not to say that we couldn't find some relatively inexpensive, safe ways to improve mileage. We may not be able to fill the highways with cheap cars that get 50 mpg and survive like a tank in a crash, but shaving a few mpg off every new car produced over the next 5 years would do a hell of a lot to reduce consumption and emissions. And of course the other question is, are there other ways to get to our destination other than driving?

Re:In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[afidel]

That's why those vehicles are illegal, but try getting a cop to actually enforce those laws instead of mild speeding violations!

Re:In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[The_Wilschon]

I think the big problem is not the rich suburban types. They can ditch their SUVs when the price goes high enough. It's those who are driving older vehicles because a 10-year-old used car was all we could afford 5 years ago, and are still on a grad student salary (or whatever low salary), so can't afford to buy a new one, even if we sell the old for its full $500 value. Many many people simply can't afford to switch, and soon won't be able to afford not to switch either. Before long, the only vehicles that will be in our price range are the gas guzzling SUVs being ditched by the rich folk.

Re:What about 10% weight savings in the driver's s

[jimicus]

How about this. You force people to walk more, and you solve two problems at the same time :)

Depending on where you are in the US, this may require significant building work.

"Significant" meaning "Redesign lots of towns more or less from the ground up".

Re:In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[Steveftoth]

You can have light, safe and cheap, but you also probably won't get fast, luxurious, or large. You can easily get small, light, cheap and safe, but people don't want that. They want the extra room for their family, they want the extra DVD player in the seat back for their kids. They want to crank the AC during the summertime to sub zero temperatures. They want motorized windows.

These are all things that people could easily give up and would reduce weight while not reducing safety. Reducing the weight of a car is easy, but trying to sell it is not. For awhile now cars have seen more and more luxury features in low end cars, while seeing the same or slightly reduced fuel economy.

a wise asian once said...

[krystar]

A wise asian person (me) once said(5 seconds ago) that you don't need a sledgehammer to put a thumbtack in the wall. likewise, you don't need to commute to work by yourself in a 5000pound 6 person SUV. sure you may need your 6 person suv people carrier when you and your buddies go out, but not when you're commuting to work. we as commuters need to realize that the size of the car should reflect the number of passengers. why isn't there anything in the market for a 1 or 2 person enclosed commuter car with a 500cc engine? a commuter vehicle doesn't need to go 0-60 in 5 seconds and have a trunk capacity of 100 cu ft. it just needs to go 0-60. commuters in europe and asia have already realized this with submini's and kei cars. why are us americans so thick in the head?

Re:In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[CodeBuster]

All the crush space between my bumper and me will do me absolutely no good if the first thing to hit the other vehicle is my windshield pillar because the rest of the car goes *under* the other vehicle

In fact, this is precisely why heavy trucks (the ones with air brakes and separate detachable trailers) have a safety bar on the rear on the trailer, to prevent the underside of the trailer deck from being the first solid object to contact the windshield pillar of the typical passenger car in a rear end collision. The safety bar was added to reduce fatalities which occurred because of the height difference in rear end accidents (usually the fault of the passenger car drivers following too closely). The lifted SUVs and pickup trucks that are commonly encountered on southern California freeways present many of the same dangers to more typical passenger cars.

Re:Watch this...

[raddan]

You completely misunderstood what the parent poster is saying. He's saying that SUVs cause more of a problem than they solve. If everyone were to drive cars (and thus collide with each other, in cars) the probably of death as the driver of the car would be the same as the probability of death for the driver of the SUV in SUVscar collisions. However-- and this is the important part-- the probability of death increases if you are driving a car and you are hit by an SUV. Thus, SUVs increase the net likelihood of fatal vehicle collisions. This should make sense on an intuitive level. More massive object at the same velocity == harder to stop.

Is everyone ignoring

[coupdetat]

the obvious stupidity of Professor Murray's statement that removing 10% weight will reclaim what advanced hybrid systems do? So by those calculations, I suppose I'm losing something like 35% gas mileage when I have one fat passenger in my Honda Fit? Of course, I'm talking about Hybrid Synergy Drive and not GM's pathetic "mild hybrids" that hardly beat a 4-cylinder. Clearly lighter cars is a good thing for efficiency. But let's not get our information from someone who lost his grip on reality. The 10% figure is nonsense.

Re:In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>Giant SUV hybrids tend to get 2-3mpg more than their non-hybrid counterparts.

A Chevy Suburban (the first giant SUV that came to mind), according to EPA city numbers and the anecdotal reports of owners, is around 15 mpg. If it were available in a hybrid, and got only a 3 mpg improvement, that would be 20%. 20% of an SUV's consumption is a lot of gas.

>They're a joke.

Well, there is the lipstick-on-a-pig aspect to improving the drivetrain on a giant SUV. But if there's anybody out there who actually needs one, I'd rather he or she were driving a hybrid.

Re:Watch this...

[Timberwolf0122]

Small car=less crumple zone=faster acceleration=more stress on the occupant. A heavier car will de-accelerate less and so reduce the g force on the driver, try rolling a 1lb ball into a 2lb ball and see which one goes backwards.

Re:See: mid/late 80s - early 90s cars

[cayenne8]

"A/C and DVD players can just be in expensive highly taxed models of vehicles. Everyone with more sense than money can do without them on the way to work. Certainly not every luxury has to be forgone, but some should be expensive. Some should be highly taxed."

I can assure you, living in the SE of the US, like in New Orleans, AC is not a luxury...pretty much a necessity if you wish to arrive at work, or anywhere else, and not look like a sweat soaked beggar. Most professional offices kind of frown on that.

Hell, down here...you turn on the AC at home basically in early April...and it really doesn't go off again till November.

the word stupid comes to mind

[TRRosen]

Weight has very little to do with the efficiency of a modern car. Most energy is lost to wind drag. then you have rolling friction which is not nearly as effected by weight any more due to much better bearings and firmer tires (just compare pushing an 1980 car to a new car). The primary area weight will effect is kinetic energy. of course this is what makes hybrids work so well they can store kinetic energy during stopping and release it on take off. By this idiots theory having two passengers (or one big guy) would reduce the milage of a car the same amount (adding 10% to weight - 300 lb to a 3000 lb car) ... Doesn't happen on my car.

problem is, this guy has no knowledge of real world driving, formula one cars spend all there energy accelerating and decelerating like crazy and have ridiculously low drag coefficients. Because of this weight effects them tremendously. Many times more than any average car.

Re:My Fiero would like to disagree

[RingDev]

-How's that Fiero work out for carpooling?

Good enough to car pool my neighbor and I on a 60 mile round trip commute. Sure, it's not going to haul 8 people, go rock crawling, haul sheets of 4'x8' plywood, or tow the horse trailer, thus the reason that I also have a Golf TDI, an '87 dodge raider, and a '97 F250 super duty. A car is a tool and I use the best tool for the job. I'm not going to use a nail gun to help my latest IVR application, and I'm not going to use nUnit to fix a squeaky stair.

-Would you be willing to crash test it vs a Suburban?

I'd prefer not to, I'm rather fond of driving it. But I feel no less secure in it than in any other car from the same generation. I'd much rather crash while driving it than driving the other cars I've owned from the 80's. My '06 Golf has air bags, but structurally it performs no better than the Fiero in a front impact. /shrug.

-Where do you put your children?

I put him in a car seat certified for his weight with a 5-point safety harness and seat latching mechanism. Since I don't have air bags there is no major threat to having him in a "front" seat, and with the Fiero's ample crumple zones and space-frame construction, the likelihood of him being injured in that seat is about the same as his spot in the back seat of the '06 VW Golf.

-Rick

Re:In the US no one wants to buy light cars

[explodingspleen]

That is fine if sidewalks are treated as a lane for bicyclists, so that they're *always* wide enough to safely pass other pedestrians, not conspicuously disappearing whenever some person/business gets funny landscaping ideas, not blocked by the tail end of a car in whoever's driveway, telephone poles, or trashcans on trashday. Oh, and if after snow and ice they get plowed and salted. And the corner curbs are all sloped instead of sudden drop offs.

I don't see it as a matter of momentum. The difference in momentum between a tanker truck and a small car is easily comparable to the difference between a small car and a bicyclist. But you try riding down a cracked, icy, telephone pole/trashcan laden sometimes 18" sidewalk with sudden dropoffs and possibly uncovered water meter holes late at night and tell me you wouldn't much rather be riding twelve inches further on your left where the route is actually maintained and kept clear of obstacles.

Go some place like Albuqerque, there are bikepaths throughout the whole city. That at least is a viable solution, although you obviously still have to cross through roads etc. to get to the bike routes. But most places in the world sidewalks simply have not been designed with the foresight necessary to function as bikelanes. I'm guessing from your statement that you've never used a bike as a principal mode of transport.