Meet the Virginia-Built 110MPG X-Prize Car 370
tcd004 writes "Instead of using Detroit engineers or Silicon Valley bitheads, Virginia-based Edison2 relied on retired Formula 1 and Nascar engineers to build its entry for the X-prize. Relying on composite materials and titanium, the team assembled an ultra-lightweight car that provides all the comforts of a standard 4-passenger vehicle, but gets more than 100 mpg. The custom engineering goes all the way down to the car's lug nuts, which weigh less than 11 grams each. Amazingly, they expect a production version of the car should cost less than $20,000." Earlier today, in a Washington, DC ceremony, Edison2 received $5 million as the X-prize winner. Writes the AP (via Google) "Two other car makers will split $2.5 million each: Mooresville, N.C.-based Li-Ion Motors Corp., which made the Wave2, a two-seat electric car that gets 187 miles on a charge, and X-Tracer Team of Winterthur, Switzerland, whose motorcycle-like electric mini-car, the E-Tracer 7009, gets 205 miles on a charge. Both of those companies are taking orders for their cars."
Cognitive dissonance (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nice car (Score:2, Insightful)
I think it's going to have trouble meeting collision safety standards, actually, although it can't possibly be more dangerous than my motorcycle.
Re:Nice car (Score:3, Insightful)
I was going to roll my eyes and say "conspiracy nut", and then I realized this one would be pretty easy to keep off American roads (en masse, anyway): how does it perform on crash tests?
Re:Nice car (Score:4, Insightful)
First off, it's run on E85. That means it gets something like 50mpg and they say "theoretically" the car gets 110mpg in "gasoline numbers." i.e. if you switch it to pure gasoline, you should get 110mpg by some magic due to additional fuel density. (Imaginary, I'm convinced this won't happen; otherwise why wouldn't you just build a gasoline engine?)
At heart, the Very Light Car is a simple vehicle, avoiding the feature creep that has loaded down contemporary vehicles. Design simplicity, low mass and conventional materials result in lower material costs and production time.
Second, they seem to have avoided "design features" ... I don't see a feature list. ABS? Traction control? (things I don't care about). What about suspension? Is this 4 wheel independent? Rear wheel drive or all wheel drive? A heavy Torsen differential or open? All of these things affect the actual handling of the car and its safety. That whole "My Volvo is safe, I don't die when I hit things!" thing is bullshit; my Mazda3 is safe because I can turn HARD into a 120 degree right turn at 30mph without braking and, with tires screeching and wheels scrubbing, the car won't slip or skid sideways or spin or roll over.
If someone cuts me off on the highway, I can A) take a hit to my front quarter and spin; B) brake hard and get rearended by the tailgater, pushed into him, and spin anyway; or C) brake, downshift, floor it, and steer into a nearby opening. (C) is possible in my car; it was not possible in the Cobalt. In my Cobalt, I actually came off the road in a more gentle curve (still kinda tight, but not a hairpin or corner) at 30mph. The back slid a little bit and I had to fight to regain control. In the worst possible place (narrow roads, guard rails, mountains, and one lane going each way... if there was another car coming I would have had a head-on collision). This is not safe; the SUV I was pacing made it, and my Mazda3 can make it at 60mph+ (I've tested the handling elsewhere; no way am I pushing that car that hard on the street) so I know I'm not going to lose control in normal conditions.
That's what I want in a car. A good suspension, good brakes, good responsive steering, and slap some excellent tires on that bad boy. All wheel drive is excellent, Rear wheel drive is also very nice, front wheel drive ... has proven to be a severe safety hazard (loses control in the snow/rain/ice easily if your tires can't handle it; loses control trying to take off into a hard turn, so don't merge into cross-traffic from a stop). The car is safe, now teach the driver to drive, everything from recovery techniques to road etiquette and proper judgment.
Geez people (Score:1, Insightful)
Sad thing being... (Score:3, Insightful)
I had a "Popular Mechanics" magazine from the early 80's that had an article on how to make a 100 MPG car with a spitfire car frame, molded fiberglass, and a Kubota tractor engine.
It's sad that it would take a X-Prize contest with a 10-million dollar purse to get us back to using the technology discussed in a old magazine.
Congrats to the teams. I'm just commenting about the automobile industry as a whole.
Re:Nice car (Score:4, Insightful)
just make sure it has 5 point harnesses and a roll frame and solid anchor points and you should be able to skip the airbags. Really I don't get the "it's light and made of carbon it must be a death trap" thing. Look at an F1 car, they can crash into a car going 50-100mph slower, flip though the air, crash into a tire wall and both drivers get out under their own power and walk back to the paddock, or WRC cars, toss it down a mountainside and the driver gets out and climbs back up, or Peter Solburg in 2004 hitting a Hinkelsteine and going flipping down the road.
It's not hard to make a safe car, it's hard to make a car you can freely move around in and still be safe when it hits a wall at 70MPH, or another car also moving 55mph(110 wall). Strap the meatbags down and it helps a lot.
Re:Nice car (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, but that's the problem with rules and regulations. Every time you write a law, and entire slew of assumptions get coded in.
What you describe may well be perfectly safe, but that doesn't mean the law still doesn't require airbags, for example.
Re:Why (Score:3, Insightful)
it looks like a car, i see 4 wheels, and a steering wheel... what more do you want?
Re:Nice car (Score:5, Insightful)
So you're saying that despite the fact there are hundreds of thousands of them on the roads, the Toyota Prius is neither practical, affordable, nor does it offer any real and immediate savings to the consumer? And before you come back with some trite answer about it being a smug feel-good car, I've got two words for you to consider: Taxi Cab. If the Prius weren't a winner on all three of the metrics you name, why would taxi companies love the things as much as they do?
As for the Edison2, it's a cool concept, but it's still a concept. The thing exists as a one-off prototype with exactly none of the real-world production hassles and economics worked out. It therefore fails your three metrics by default.
Re:Can it meet safety standards? (Score:3, Insightful)
Not trolling, serious question.
Are you saying that only the latest and greatest safety features be present in all vehicles that exist on roads inside countries with universal healthcare? And that anything that doesn't meet the best standards should be fatal in all forms of accidents?
Because, I'm not sure you're going to be successful telling everyone to buy a _new_ car every 2 to 5 years to have the best standards of safety. I mean, the old ones wouldn't be as safe generally and comparatively speaking. Unless you want to tell those that have old cars they need to fit in a mechanism that will utterly kill any occupant in any accident > 5mph.
I don't see any other way to meet your requirements, unless, you were being sarcastic or just doing a little political trolling.
Re:Nice car (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm on real time metering via ComEd in Chicago. At night, I pay as low as $0.01/KwH. It is extremely cheap for me to charge my Tesla Roadster at night.
Re:Nice car (Score:3, Insightful)
So?
If a road is near maximum capacity but still maintaining the speed if you do not maintain speed you become a hazard to other drivers. So the 'safer' option is to give as much distance as you can without encouraging 'lane hopping' drivers. Keeping the speed differential to a minimum is safer than attempting to maintain a following distance which would be safe if traffic was light.
Not really (Score:4, Insightful)
The truth is that weight mainly affects acceleration, outside towns, while aerodynamics affects fuel consumption rather more. That's why the latest hybrids have such interesting shapes, especially around the rear end where the airflow detaches from the body.
As a real world, example, the Econetic Ford Fiesta is now available in the US, meeting full US specs. It produces 120BHP, more than European versions, but the NYT review mocks it for its low power and suggests it is slower than a rowing boat. That's nonsense, but it's the sort of thing rednecks like to believe. It does about 40MPUSG. It would have been hard to achieve that in a 1990 Fiesta, which would typically get around 28-33MPUSG. Yet it is much safer and much faster.
To be blunt, the real problem for economy cars in the US is the US mindset, which so often sees mere size as better than quality engineering. The mindset won't change until gasoline reaches about $5 per USG, and given the number of AGW-deniers among the current crop of Republican candidates, and Koch funding of the Tea Party, it's more likely someone will get invaded for their oil first.
Sorry if this is a bit of a rant, but my point isn't anti-US. It's complaining that the US has many of the world's best engineers who could fix all the problems of peak oil and overconsumption - but their own countrymen won't let them.
Re:Sad thing being... (Score:4, Insightful)
If that were true don't you think one of the over 100 teams who spent millions of their own money would have done that? Its easy to get 100mpg when you gloss over all of the details and rules, but the X-Prize setup many tests to ensure the car actually got 100mpg in many scenarios. Your alleged PM 100mpg car may not even be true.
"While it isn't terribly hard to build a vehicle that will propel itself 100 miles on only a gallon of gas, the X Prize rules call for a car that can carry four adults and sip gas while traversing all kinds of terrain and negotiating real-world traffic. And the car builder must demonstrate that the vehicle can be profitably offered for sale in volumes of 10,000 units in a form that meets federal crash safety and emissions requirements. If this weren't enough, the competition really is a race, because the money goes to the fastest car that can do all of these things."
http://www.xprize.org/news/automotive-x-prize-seeks-100-mpg-car [xprize.org]
Re:Nice car (Score:4, Insightful)
, I'd avoid it if I could, but the fact is that when I do leave a space that would allow me to stop if they went from 60-0 in 1 second, another car passes and gets in that gap.
Then you should back off again. Arriving alive is the goal, it's not a fucking race track.
Re:Nice car (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like deregulating your electric system really worked out for you then.
Re:Can it meet safety standards? (Score:5, Insightful)
Safety standards are one of the main reasons a 2010 Honda Civic gets nearly the same mileage in practice as a 1990 Civic. Although the more modern car has made strides in improving drive train efficiency, it weighs over 600 lbs more resulting in nearly the same fuel efficiency. Things like side-impact beams, air bags, and ABS make cars safer, but they also make them a lot heavier.
Well, no. Yes, airbags and side-impact beams do add weight -- but putting an extra 600 pounds of curbside heft at the feet of safety equipment stretches the limits of credibility.
Compare the 1990 Civic [wikipedia.org] with the 2010 Civic [wikipedia.org]. The new Civic has a wheelbase roughly eight inches longer. The overall vehicle is roughly a foot longer. The 2010 model is about three inches wider, and about three inches taller. The smallest-displacement (non-hybrid) gasoline engine offered for the 2010 model (a 1.6 L straight-four) is the same displacement as the largest engine offered in 1990.
The trim has gotten fancier, the soundproofing has gotten better, the seats have gotten cushier, the engines have gotten more powerful, and Honda has been targeting more affluent buyers. The 2010 Civic isn't heavier because of safety standards; it's heavier because it's quite a bit bigger. The 2010 Civic isn't just an otherwise-identical super-safe variant of the 1990 Civic -- it's a different car.
Re:Nice car (Score:3, Insightful)
Time and time again I hear this nonsense. Yes, all things being equal a rear-wheel drive car is more capable. If you're a very competent driver. I'd argue that 95% of the world's driving population is not competent to the level that RWD provides a benefit over front-wheel drive. As a matter in fact, the handling traits exhibited by RWD make it a greater hazard for many, if not most drivers. People are more likely to lose control in RWD vehicles. All-wheel drive real benefit is getting unstuck and being able to get around in slippery conditions more easily. In terms of handling, while in some cases AWD offers some real advantages but more often than not AWD cars have a strong tendency towards understeer followed, in come cases, by snap oversteer.
The fact is, the car doesn't make a driver. Discounting automotive extremes a competent driver can manage to do well in almost any car. In a panic situation you're not going to be fiddling with gears. You're going to either veer out of the way or brake really hard. If you have time to downshift you probably also had time to brake normally. Most drivers in a panic situation aren't going to have the sense to modulate braking or steer around whatever they're facing. They're going to stop on the brakes and hope the car stops in time. All that talk about handling capabilities brought up as an ego booster is ultimately meaningless.
I want a car with capable handling myself. But there's a threshold at which any additional benefits are irrelevant for most drivers because they'll never be able to exploit them limits. I'm sure there's a lower limit which is a detriment, but what modern car isn't sufficiently competent, especially for a properly defensive driver?
Re:Nice car (Score:3, Insightful)
This is not true. If solar power efficiency improvements maintain, car companies will be able to sell many customers the vehicle and the panels necessary to power it, and wrap it all up in one long term loan.
I honestly hope Google will form a subsidiary and begin constructing geothermal plants as well. The real fear for fossil fuel companies is these mainly passive methods at generating electricity will become widespread to the point that the value of oil collapses, due to all of the energy necessary to dig it out and process it.
Re:Nice car (Score:3, Insightful)
>>>Arriving alive is the goal, it's not a fucking race track.
I agree 100% with you, but I'm afraid you're wasting your breath. A lot of slashdotters think it's also okay to text-and-drive, or phone-and-drive, even though repeated tests show by AAA show that the reaction time is slower than if you were legally drunk
Re:Nice car (Score:3, Insightful)
Seems like the obvious solution is not to replace your car after 5 years. Anyone who does is obviously not concerned with cost (or the environment) in the first place making the whole issue moot.