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.

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

[pohl]

Amory Lovins, in his excellent TED Talk on Winning the Oil Endgame [ted.com], makes an argument that weight savings need not lead to descreased safety. An example that he cites is a hand-built McLaren that has a couple of woven carbon-composite cones in the front that absorb the energy of a crash. Well worth a listen.

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

[Scootin159]

Worth mentioning.... the aforementioned McLaren was designed by Gordon Murray... the author of the article. He's also been a very successful designer in Formula One.

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

[Sensible Clod]

Mod parent up! Not only is the 12-year-old McLaren F1 still one of the quickest and fastest cars ever built, it does it without resorting to 4 turbos [wikipedia.org] and 1,001 horsepower simply by being lighter.

Not only that, but Murray also worked to finalize the design of the (already nearly complete) Caparo T1 [wikipedia.org], which is even quicker (0-60 in 2.5 seconds), and with less horsepower than the F1. How? It weighs about half a ton.

A different hybrid drive train can lower weight

[VernonNemitz]

Current hybrids include storage batteries that weigh a lot. They can be replaced with a much lighter flywheel that also has a higher efficiency than batteries, at storing and releasing energy (and also works with regenerative braking). Do not confuse this with other decades-old ideas of using flywheels to fully replace the car engine; we cannot make them strong enough to hold energy for 300 miles of travel. But we can easily make them able to hold enough energy for a few bursts of rapid acceleration. The only reason a smallish car has a 100HP engine is to get rapid acceleration. Any hybrid can replace that with a much lighter 15-20HP engine, which produces plenty for cruising at a fixed speed, plus some extra to charge up the storage unit for the desired rapid acceleration. A hybrid that uses a flywheel might weigh about the same as the ordinary car, but it will get better gas mileage because of the smaller engine.

Re:A different hybrid drive train can lower weight

[rcw-work]

The only reason a smallish car has a 100HP engine is to get rapid acceleration. Any hybrid can replace that with a much lighter 15-20HP engine, which produces plenty for cruising at a fixed speed, plus some extra to charge up the storage unit for the desired rapid acceleration.

I'd size it a little bigger than that, unless you can really cut down on weight. 70mph up a 15% grade is 4.7m/s of vertical lift. If the car weighs 1000kg, that's 61hp [google.com], not counting air drag or rolling resistance.

Re:A different hybrid drive train can lower weight

[Eivind]

15% grade is insanely steep. 70mph up such a grade is VERY fast. Consider that the start putting up signs warning about steep grades at anything above like 7-8% (depending on the length though, a very short grade may have no signs even if steeper) At that speed and grade you're climbing 900 feet/minute. Yeah 15-20 may be a little low, but certainly much less than 100hp should do for a 1 ton car.

Geo metro only has a 51 Hp engine

[taharvey]

My Geo Metro has a 51Hp engine, gets 50 MPG, and cruses at 75 MPG on the highway. I live at 9000 ft elevation and commute down a mountain to 4500 at steep grades. It goes as fast as you'd want to on mountain roads with 3-4 passengers. Yes its no drag racer, but it goes from pt. A to B efficiently and reliably. Besides it cost me 1/10th of a hybrid and gets the same milage. We love it.

Now imagine making it lighter and hybrid. No Doubt 20 Hp is sufficient.

Re:A different hybrid drive train can lower weight

[SEAL]

They can be replaced with a much lighter flywheel that also has a higher efficiency than batteries, at storing and releasing energy (and also works with regenerative braking).

I think you need to look up precession [wikipedia.org].

This is the reason flywheel energy storage is not used in vehicles. The flywheels turn at super-high rpms, amplifying this issue. AFS Trinity (formerly American Flywheel Systems, I think...) worked on the AFS-20 as a prototype flywheel car back in the mid 90s. They never got it working. The problem is that when you are driving, and you turn, precession causes a large amount of friction against your flywheel bearings as it resists the turn.

Last I heard, they were working on magnetic bearings, instead of physical ones, but there's been little progress released to the public so far.

The main advantage of a flywheel is that it can handle rapid charge / discharge, but ultracapacitors are another way to gain that benefit without the disadvantages of flywheels.

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

[Knuckles]

the bugatti Veyron you link to runs FASTER than F1 cars.

Wrong. It is faster in a straight line than F1 cars in racing trim with all their wings and winglets. The goal in F1 is to achieve the fastest lap time on a track with bends and corners, and therefore F1 cars have an insanely high cw of ca. 1, to generate an immense amount of aerodynamic downforce that is needed for fast cornering.

Away from the track, the BAR Honda team used a modified BAR 007 car, which they claim complied with FIA Formula One regulations, to set an unofficial speed record of 413 km/h (257 mph) on a one way straight line run on 6 November 2005 during a shakedown ahead of their Bonneville 400 record attempt. The car was optimised for top speed with only enough downforce to prevent it from leaving the ground.

-- Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]

On a real track or road, with full aerodynamic gear, an F1 car would smoke the Bugatti. For an idea of what an F1 can do, see this comparison [youtube.com] of Formula 1 Car vs Ferrari 550 Maranello vs Fiat road car.

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

[nick_davison]

The problem is America picks heavy and cheap without bothering with the safe.

Take a look at this picture [bridger.us]. Same speed. Same impact.

The Mini crumpled its whole engine bay. A total write-off. But the passenger compartment is barely touched.

The F-150 has a beautifully intact engine. It's unfortunately inside the cab where the people-puree would be oozing out.

Add on pickups having a consistently 20% higher fatality rate per million miles driven and you suddenly realize that stupid engineering combined with being in a hulking great target that can't get out of the way really doesn't compete with a small, light, quick to accelerate car that's simply not where the accident happens in the first place.

Case in point: About two weeks ago, my wife was in her Mini Cooper S in a parking lot, looking for a space. A Dodge (oxymoron if ever there was one) Ram (ah, far more accurate) reversed out without looking, straight at her. Had she been in an SUV, the back end of the Dodge would have gone through the side of it before the idiot had time to react and hit the brakes. The Dodge would have been trashed, she'd be dead or in a coma from the injuries. In the Mini, he put her foot down and was somewhere else while her SUV driving friend in the passenger seat asked, "How the hell did you do that?"

So, given the choice, I'd rather be in a well built car that folds the parts I'm not in when it gets hit, light enough to avoid more of the accidents anyway, than the hunk of American steel that deforms that steel in to right where I'm sitting.

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

[RingDev]

Actually, VW/Audi's new automatic tranny, the DSG (Dual Shift Gate) is only slightly heavier than a traditional manual tranny and is more efficient.

It uses 2 clutches, a split fly wheel (inner and outer), and two input shafts. It can always keep 2 gears engaged with only 1 clutch engaged. Up-shifting takes a tiny fraction of a second as the two clutches switch states and the newly disengaged input shaft engages the next gear to be shifted into. Down shifts can take a hair longer, but are still in the sub-second range.

The down side though is that you can't (currently) feed it much over 250 ft-lbs of torque since the surface area on the flywheel is split between two clutches, you'll slip the clutch in no time with too much power and weight. But for a commuter car that isn't going to be taking a tuned engine and hard launches, the DSG is an amazing piece of engineering.

-Rick

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

[quanticle]

good luck finding a modern car with a stick-shift unless it's a sports car or you custom order it.

You do realize that all the "entry level" cars, such as the Hyundai Elantra, Toyota Corolla, Honda Civic, etc. all come with manual transmissions standard, right? On all these cars, getting an automatic transmission is an option that adds to the cost of the car.

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

[quanticle]

When was the last time you bought a car? I bought my '07 Hyundai Elantra last year, and I can tell you that there were at least as many manual on the lot as there were automatics. I shopped Toyota Corollas and Honda Civics too (not as extensively), and they too had plenty of manuals on the lots.

As for incentive packages, I don't think I've ever seen an incentive package for one of these cars that said "You have to get the automatic version", in the fine print.

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

[ceoyoyo]

The crash statistics alone indicate that feeling safer in an SUV is a false sense of security. Could have something to do with many soccer moms not being able to see over the dashboard. That and the tendency to roll over when driven like a sports car.

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

[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

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

[jank1887]

in a car-on-car collision, though, don't forget that there are two kinetic masses that must come to a stop.

I remember a lecture from one of my profs who used to work with the NTSB. He mentioned crash fatality studies where moving from a car-car collision to a car-suv collision made little change on the probability of death to the SUV driver, but significantly increased the probability of death to the car driver. thus, according to that metric, the bigger vehicle only serves to increase the other person's chance of dying without making you any safer.

Watch this...

[Joce640k]

Smart car crash test...

http://pl.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1NHXiGd0rQ [youtube.com]

Which driver suffered more?

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.

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

[dingen]

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 :)

Gas prices increasing to the point where driving a light, efficient car is the only option is not going to happen you say? I beg to differ. Here in The Netherlands, it's already happening. There has been an extreme increase in gas pricing the past year. You now pay E 1.65 per liter, which is about $ 9.21 per gallon. Yes, you read that right. For a full tank in a small to medium sized car (40 liters), you easily spend over 60 euros. That's $ 100 for a tank of gasoline.

Over here, even in the rich suburbs people are selling their SUV's and buying small cars like Mini's and Fiat Panda's. The number of SUVs sold is dropping rapidly. It was recently in the news that last year, the amount of SUV's sold was only 1/5 of the year before that.

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

[Jeff DeMaagd]

The concerns are real, but I don't know if they're valid concerns when I looked at the actual crash stats. What I've seen in the stats is that SUVs and trucks were statistically more dangerous to ride & drive in than a mid-sized car.

It's the weight and the high center of gravity that play against the safety of the trucks. The mid-sized cars can swerve better and brake faster, and the cars are far less likely to roll over than trucks & SUVs. Basically, while trucks & SUVs can better protect the passengers in the event of a collision, they're more likely to get into collisions.

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

[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

[sunking2]

How the hell do you not know the kind of car your wife drives yet you know what she gets for mileage?

Re:

[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

[llamalad]

Because with greater vehicular mass should come greater driver responsibility.

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

[NeutronCowboy]

In order for the miata to have the same energy-of-impact as the excursion, it would only need to be going 40% faster.

Odd - slashdot managed to eat my post during preview.

In any case, here's the equation you want: E=0.5m*v^2. Know that the weight of a Miata is 940 Kg and that of an excursion is 3261kg. For the Miata to have the same kinetic energy as the Excursion at 30 mph, the Miata has to drive at 55 mph.

Who is the idiot who is driving 55 in a 30 mph zone?

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

[Lumpy]

Who is the idiot who is driving 55 in a 30 mph zone?

most of the dipshits around my neighborhood.

The cops wont do anything, the neighbor guy throws full pop cans at the cars that are speeding and hits them (they typically have a fart can and skyhook wing). He's an ex boxer and huge, the snot nosed brats that get out of their car to have words almost piss themselves when he get's up.

One of these day's i'm going to go over on a saturday and join him in throwing pop cans at speeding cars.

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:I am also an avid cyclist...

[Anonymous Coward]

I bike commute to work, and the only close shave I've had is with the new Gillette Fusion(r) Power razor. Truly, the best a man can get.

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

[raygundan]

I used to bike commute, and my only wreck was with a tow truck. But it was my own stupid fault, not his, and if you're going to go over your handlebars, I highly recommend doing it onto the flatbed part of a flatbed tow truck. Saves the long fall back to the pavement.

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

[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

[Lord_Frederick]

Oh crap you're right! I never thought I would unknowingly make a "get off my lawn" comment. Diapers and a hoveround are just around the corner. /sob

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.

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:

[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:

[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.

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.

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

[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

[takshaka]

If you want to peddle your ass to work, good for you.

Peddling your ass is illegal in all states except Nevada.

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

[0100010001010011]

No. Diesel is popular in Europe because it gets better mileage. Every company and their brother has a diesel vehicle in Europe, if you don't you're SOL in the market. Manual transmission too.

I have a 1998 Jetta VW that can haul 4-5 people. A weekend of luggage and still get 45 MPG. Even with diesel pushing $5/gallon it's still cheaper per mile than any gasser OF THE SAME SIZE.

"Heavier Diesel". You talk about it like it adds 2 tons to the vehicle. A diesel engine may add a few hundred pounds at most.

VW has a PRODUCTION car that they sold that got 78 miles per US gallon. There is nothing more frustrating than hearing about the 'amazing' 30 MPG that some small cars get while in Europe they're doing double that.

Center of mass, manuverabilty

[spineboy]

SUV are much, much worse at avoiding collisions, and are more likely to be involved in accidents per driver miles.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Safety devices in cars are the major reason that fuel efficiency hasn't significantly improved since the 70s. Since the 70s and 80s up to 500 kg have been added to cars in the form of safety devices. For example, a 1979 Honda Civic had a curb weight of 680 kg. A 2008 Honda Civic has a curb weight of 1180 kg. A 1980 Toyota Camry had a curb weight of 1000 kg. A 2008 Toyota Camry has a curb weight of about 1500 kg. This 500 kg rule applies across a broad range of vehicles.

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

[mclearn]

I did a UI course back in 2002 and we happened to be talking about steering wheels as the UI input device. The prof happened to be a Psychology/Comp. Sci. cross, and he went off on a tangent wrt a certain thought experiment:

The hypothesis says: the higher the chance of death, the lower your speed. If the chance of death in a moving car were 100%, no one would drive. If the chance of death were 0, then everyone would drive as fast as the car could go.

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

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: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

[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

[OldeTimeGeek]

Not necessarily, if you design the cars in the right way - with a strong inner shell and everything else disposable.

A good example of this is an F1 car - they are designed with crashes in mind. They have strong central component to protect the driver with everything else breakable to take energy away from the tub that the driver sits in. Take Robert Kubica's accident in the 2007 Canadian Grand Prix, for example, After contact with Jarno Trulli, his car hit a bump, lifting it and rendering him unable to steer. His car hit a safety wall at approximately 28G decelaration and then tumbled down the track, finally coming to rest against another safety wall on its side. Most of car was strewn along the track, but the tub protected the driver. He not only lived to race again, but suffered little injury.

Noted, these are very, very expensive cars, are single seaters, don't have doors (making the carbon-fiber tub that the driver sits in much easier) and not really designed to run on the street, but the concept of sheddable body around a strong central area still could apply

Of course this makes the car more costly to fix which will annoy insurers and leaves a nasty very sharp mess on the street if you use the baked carbon fiber that they use on F1 cars, but if you want to make cars lighter and still protect the driver and passengers, it's worth looking at...

Re:Why the safety assumption?

[Bill_the_Engineer]

The SUV safety myth was created by marketing pure and simple.

Unfortunately it's not a myth, and it wasn't created by marketing.

The crash compatibility topic (big car vs. small car) was first brought up by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety in a 1998 news release that stated:

The basic findings reinforce whatâ(TM)s long been known about vehicle size and occupant death rates. As vehicle weight decreases, the number of occupants killed in crashes increases.

and

Lighter vehicles have higher occupant death rates in two-vehicle crashes, and within each weight class, cars and pickups have similar occupant death rates.

Here is the link http://www.iihs.org/news/1998/iihs_news_021098.pdf [iihs.org]

Re:Why the safety assumption?

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

And of course you're inferring a causal relation from a correlation. None of those quoted statements take into account specific circumstances. Do people speed more in smaller cars than in large SUVs, thus leading to more accidents? Are people more likely to switch lanes more quickly in smaller cars than in large ones? Smaller cars also accelerate faster than SUVs, so at intersections the small cars will be the first into the intersection after a light turns green. None of these things are taken into account.

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.

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:Seriously?

[truthsearch]

Lighter SUVs flip over easier. How could you prefer any SUV when it's far less safe? Minivans and station wagons at least have better crumple zones to protect you in a crash. Even those half-SUV/half-car things use car frames with proper crumple zones and have a lower center of gravity.

Re:

[Silver Sloth]

People are still buying SUVs

Well, err, they are but sales are falling. As an example, this quote from the NYT [nytimes.com]

Ford, which last month abandoned its long-standing goal to be profitable in 2009, has been hurt by the shift in U.S. consumer demand toward smaller, fuel-efficient vehicles and away from large trucks and SUVs.

Ford relies heavily on sales of its SUVs and full-size pickup trucks in the U.S. market, but the U.S. demand for the large vehicles has been shrinking for several years and the declines accelerated in the last couple of months as gas prices rose above $3.50 per gallon.

It's a question of weight ratios

[bugnuts]

... but how many coconuts can an SUV carry?

Re:It's a question of weight ratios

[Opportunist]

American or Japanese?

Two things

[truthsearch]

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?

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.

Re:Two things

[fizzup]

Actually, the Kammback [wikipedia.org] is better than a teardrop, aerodynamically and functionally. It's more aerodynamic, because it still has the same smooth flow as a teardrop, but it doesn't have all the surface drag. It's more functional because it's shaped more like a box.

We're already seeing lots of them. Expect more.

Because it's actually better

[Moraelin]

Because basically a long time ago, someone discovered that you can cut off the tail of that teardrop, and the air flow will still be largely the same. Only this time without the added mass and drag of that teardrop tail.

And especially if you read the RTFA, weight is a big problem. Increasing the car's weight with a useless tail would negate any aerodynamic benefits anyway. If you save, say, 0.5 litre per 100 km in aerodynamic drag with a tail, but pay 1 litre per 100 km to move that extra weight, it's not worth it.

Kammback

[raygundan]

A truncated teardrop with a flat back (like the Prius or the Insight) is actually more aerodynamic than the teardrop. It's called a Kammback [wikipedia.org], and it's named for the gentleman who noticed that if you chop off the back of the teardrop, the air keeps flowing the same way, except without the drag of sliding along the surface of the parts of the teardrop you just chopped off.

Re:Two things

[kryptKnight]

Who are these designers that aren't familiar with the teardrop shape?

This is kinda tangential, but a raindrop (which is considered the ideal aerodynamic shape) is shaped like a slightly squashed sphere rather than the traditional teardrop shape.

For comparison, the drag coefficient of a water droplet is 0.04, a Honda Prius is 0.24, an H2 Hummer is 0.57 and an open parachute is 1.75. Smaller numbers represent less drag, obviously.

Here are a couple articles about cars that have been designed to be shaped like water droplets, one from Mechanical Engineering Magazine [memagazine.org] and one from from Popular Science [popsci.com]

The Saturn Philiosophy

[everphilski]

"If it can be made out of black plastic, make it out of black plastic!"

(I had a crack in my radiator - sure enough, part of the manifold for the radiator was made out of black plastic as well. Surprised the engine block itself isn't black plastic, at times.)

Weight and cost savings. Nothing new (my car is a '97 Saturn; alive and well with 160k miles and between 30-40 MPG city).

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

[PrimeWaveZ]

I'm just saying...

It might be helpful.

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

[CastrTroy]

What about not driving absolutely everywhere? I see a lot of people drive from my apartment complex to the convenience store next to it. Total time to walk is about 2 minutes. When you add up going to the underground parking, starting your car, exiting the underground parking, waiting for traffic to turn onto the main road, drive down 30 feet of road, and then wait for traffic again as you drive into the parking lot of the store. It takes more time to just get to the store than if you walk. Sure that short drive isn't going to cost too much in gas, or cause too much harm to the environment, but the whole attitude of having to drive absolute everywhere is just terrible.

Surprising

[Nodamnnicknamesavial]

So aerodynamics and weight make a difference when trying to propel an object?!

This is going to revolutionize everything!

Maybe if we drove cars in space we wouldn't have those pesky problems.

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?

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:Partially right...

[Pope]

I like being able to see OVER traffic.

This amuses me to no end, and I've heard it repeated from people at the Budget rental place as well as talking heads on TV. What possible use is seeing over traffic if you're still stuck in it? Are you following too closely and not paying attention to your surroundings or something?

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: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: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...

[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: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.

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.

Re:Who knew?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about most American cities, but where I live gas would have to be $10 a gallon for years before it would be concievable to move close enough to work to walk or ride a bicycle. 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. Further, companies are more than willing to send their employees to other locations ad hoc with little regard to their personal needs. I was once next to a man on a plane who took an 8 hour flight to work every monday and flew back every friday because his was a specialized field and the company wanted him to work somewhere far from home.

Re:Who knew?

[akadruid]

I work in London, UK. Gas is $10 a gallon.

Our public transport is OK, not great, but it costs $15/day and takes 45 mins on the train, compared with $35 fuel, $15 congestion charge and $25 parking to drive - for 1 hour 50 mins.

(And the housing beyond insane - you could not buy a home of any sort for less than $1 million within 30 miles of my office)

You will get this eventually in your big US cities. LA is the size of London, and starting to run of space to build 10 lane highways. New York is probably already like it.

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.

Lotus Elise

[Quila]

The original Lotus Elise got almost 30 mpg with 1.8l, 120 hp, and it was a high-performance car.

Put a little 1 liter, 60 horsepower engine in there and it'll probably get 50 mpg, but have regular car performance.

The secret? Weighing only about 1,650 lbs.

Re:Lotus Elise

[lpaul55]

Sure, but what you save on gas you'll spend on oil. ;-)

Regenerative Brakes

[hardburn]

Hybrids get their benefits in two ways: reclaiming power that would otherwise be lost during braking, and the fact that electric motors have a flat torque band. You generally can't do either that with an internal combustion engine alone.

However, there are a few ways to do both the above without an electric motor. One way is to have a flywheel connected to a CVT on the drive shaft. When you hit the brakes, the flywheel spins up. You can then release that power again when you accelerate. The flywheel will also act as a gyroscope, so you need to have some way of tilting it so you can go through corners with it spun up (which has the side effect of increasing handling). This method is being put on F1 cars soon.

The other way is to have an air compressor, which again is run off the drive shaft when you hit the brakes. On acceleration, the compressed air could either run the drive shaft, be dumped into the intake to increase boost, or dumped into the exhaust manifold to eliminate turbo lag. This is probably easier to design than a tilting-flywheel system, though it won't make handling better.

The compressor could also run off turbines using inlets around the car's body that are opened when braking. This particular use is probably illegal for F1 and other types of race cars (which often ban variable body shape systems), but could easily be used in road cars.

Both the above don't require any particularly exotic materials (though carbon fiber or nanotubes would be nice for the flywheel), and shouldn't be as heavy as an electric motor/battery system.

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: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.

Create a new thing: A Commuter Car

[starglider29a]

Life forces me to commute. period. Gas > $4.00. Too bad. I drive a 25MPG car because I have a few kids, one of which is 6', and 20 stone. I can't have a SMART car. I drive too far for an electric. I can't afford a Hybrid (see number of kids) What i NEED is an additional vehicle. A commuter only vehicle.

1. One that I only drive to and from work, maybe grab a 12-pak of Diet Dr Pepper®
2. One that has ONE seat, maybe 2 in tandem for carpooling, thus a narrower front for lower drag coefficient, maybe a tripod
3. One that gets a55-load MPG, on regular gas
4. One that is enclosed against rain, maybe even snow.
5. save weight by removing the automatic transmission, power steering, power brakes, Bose Stereo, the GPS, the air bags, spare tire. Make the tank small enough to weigh little and still get me through the work week without refilling
6. Actually, remove ALL safety features except the brakes and the brake lights! Save weight. no OnStar, no Lojack, no side curtains.
7. Cut us some slack on emissions. Yes, commuters are the bulk of the problem, but not if we are burning half of the fuel that we would have been.
8. it has to be CHEAP! Like $2000. Cheap to insure. Cheap to replace panels if we bump each other. Easy to park.
9. if you want to get REALLY froggy, give us tax breaks, or our own LANE on the freeway. Watch people buy em like hotcakes.

Ok, so I just described a 1982 Suzuki, full face helmet and a rain suit, except for the 3-wheel stance.

My point is really this. We need a small, commuter-only vehicle, unfettered from the legal burdens that add weight and reduce gas mileage. And yet still capable of highway speed and 200 mile range. Take an F1 car, make it 3-wheeled with a Jet cockpit. End of problem. It's not rocket science...

To chop weight, get Rid of all the Crap in Cars...

[tjstork]

If you want to give up weight in cars.

a) get rid of the catalytic converter
b) shorten the tailpipe and shrink the muffler
c) get rid of airbags
d) get rid of power heated super seats
e) get rid of side impact safety beams

that right there gets you some good weight savings.

Water Powered Car - no joke!

[Adeptus_Luminati]

With gas prices sky rocketing, I'm surprised more people aren't paying attention to inventors who have *already* created water powered cars that actually run. People, this isn't about 1 or 2 fringe scientists coming up with some hoax in their basements; this is something being discovered, built and used by people all over the world already. From US to Japan to Australia and beyond, if you don't believe me, just watch the videos below.

"A closed mind is a good thing to lose"

Main Website: http://waterpoweredcar.com/ [waterpoweredcar.com]

Videos:
Genius US Inventor (water car): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZOsOB3z3IE [youtube.com]
From Australia: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXzK-zrWDgI&feature=related [youtube.com]
Water Car Inventor Murdered -news channel report: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6yRn4IAsrU&feature=related [youtube.com]
Ford Conversion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-piMEZ2WcQU&feature=related [youtube.com]
From Japan: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1OWDcWoXHs&feature=related [youtube.com]
Company selling water cars: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4mz7MPSquU&feature=related [youtube.com]

WAKE UP AMERICA, your government lies to you! Well, ok, so does every other government, but this particular issue (water car) is worth fighting for.

Re:Water Powered Car - no joke!

[Xoltri]

In case anyone actually believes this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterpowered_car [wikipedia.org] Sorry to spoil your fun.

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.