http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPQIizRp9ck

It has a bigger engine to meet Americans’ expectations for power. That’s fine. It still has a pretty small engine. And how much mileage does this little car get? 38 mpg. In that weak little car? 38? That’s it? Where is all that fuel going? My Toyota Echo gets 40, and that thing has twice as many seats and at least 3x more storage space.

Then there’s the transmission. Instead of a normal automatic, they rigged up this weird automated manual transmission, which is built like a standard, but has a computer-controlled clutch. It’s said to be pretty jerky when shifting, which you’ll be doing a lot of with that 6 speed. that’s not going to be comfortable in traffic, which is what this city car was meant for.

Then there’s the price. For less of a car, I expect to pay less. Not with this thing. The US price is over $13,000. What?? That’s the same as the Honda Fit. I COULD BUY A TOYOTA YARIS for $9,800. And that Yaris is faster, bigger, cheaper, better fuel economy, and twice as many seats as this SMART.

In conclusion, the Smart car is anything but. And yet there are over 1,000 American suckers on the waiting lists. They probably want it to be the first and make a fashion statement or something. To me, this cars says ” I’m too stupid to buy a Toyota Yaris or a Nissan Versa or a Honda Fit, which are all better and cheaper than this hideous thing.” The Toyota Aygo is coming to the US next year, and it’s going to smoke this thing in every way imaginable.

Correcting my loser self. You increase performance and efficiency by reducing weight.

I forgot to mention weight as a contributing factor to rolling friction. Rolling friction is equal to a friction factor multiplied by the weight of the vehicle.

Reduce the weight and you reduce the friction and thus the efficiency (and performance). Cars are heavier than they need to be. Aluminum, earths most abundant metal, has a stronger strength/weight ratio than steel. This material would be a good choice, but most structural and crash test engineers know that they are capable of designing something lighter, stronger and more impact resistant.

There are other ways of counteracting the friction due to the weight of a vehicle. Race cars have downforce. Airplains rely on aerodynamic lift. A car with dynamic aerodynamics, though admittedly unusual and perhaps expensive, could generate both downforce and lift according to vehicle stability demands. On a long straightaway, an aerodynamic flap could adjust to produce lift, thus reducing the vehicles effective frictional weight. You would want to consider tradeoffs between such gains and reduction in trajectory C_d. Conversely, during maneuvering and high-speed turns, a control system could relay a signal to cause the flaps to produce downforce. It could all be made to work seemlessly and look pretty cool, though the concept may sound overcomplex. That it may truly be.

More on recapturing energy, seamlessly and simply.

You need a way of storing useful energy in the most applicable and critical forms to a vehicle.

A hybrid uses a battery. There are other types of “batteries” or energy storage devices, though.

I’ll list a few to get your creative juices flowing:

Capacitors, various Gas Tanks/Resiviors and gasses, Hydraulic Accumulators (all sorts), Springs (all sorts), Gravity.

Any and all of these can be practically linked to a continuously variable transmission in much the same way as toyota’s “mysterious synergy drive” (a generator keyed into a transmission with some controls).

Of course, after you design and manufacture your 300 mpg family vehicle, remember, gas prices will still go up. There are many low demand vehicles whose practical use would be practically impractical if most, but not all vehicles got 300 mpg. For instance, vehicles that get 10 mpg. They use the same fuel, and due to a drop in demand for oil (though still inelastic) prices would rise due to this inelasticicty. The guy driving a hummer would now be paying about 20 bucks a gallon, and would basically be going nowhere. The boat owner couldn’t afford to port. The truck driver would continue masturbating at gas stations, but he would buy less beef jerky. Industry would slow.

So, is it an irresposible move to do what seems like a good idea? On a large scale, perhaps – even though it could mean our planet’s destruction. On a small scale, I think it would be a fun project. I might get shot though. Sniped. Wiped. Good thing I keep several lock boxes and leave trails.

I digress…

So what is our alternative??? Proprietary alternative fuels! We’ve got to make the transition soon, and we’ve got to try to do it seemlessly. Kudos to GM on their Flexfuel idea. That should at least help to facilitate some sort of transition. The Big oil companies are still happy because they have a stake in alternave fuels, stocks stay stable, Arabs get left behind…

In other words, most “fuel-efficient” cars are under-designed to seem impractical, small, boxy and just plain ugly by no coincidence at all. This is done quite intentionally as a means to thwart the feasibilty of something better. The fact is, practical, reasonably sized vehicles can and have been designed with fuel efficiency in excess of 150 MPG.

Think for a minute. Does a fuel efficient vehicle have to look like a golf cart? Wouldn’t something AERODYNAMIC have greater fuel efficiency? It sure would. That’s why sports cars are designed that way – to get the best performance possible from any given amount of power. In fact, most technologies employed on sports cars would serve fuel-efficient cars even better. High flow intake and exhaust, low aerodynamic drag force and the use of turbos all contribute to performance efficiency.

Imagine a sleek & sporty fuel-efficient car. I’m certain there would be a market for such a car. What if it could get you over 150 mpg on the highway? Sound impossible? It’s not.

Let’s look at this problem from a feasibility standpoint.

Objects in motion stay in motion. This is true if you neglect energy losses. The two enemies of a rolling vehicle are Aerodynamic Drag and rolling friction (due to bearings and tire hysterisis). If you focus your efforts reducing these frictional forces, you’ve tackled most of the problem.

So… make the damn thing aerodynamic – a C_d of around .2 – .25 is very feasible. The frontal projection area of a vehicle really depends on the need. Frontal projection area is simply the area of a car that faces the air – what you would see if the car were coming at you. A semi-truck has a large frontal projection area, and a motorcycle has a small one. Aerodynamic drag is directly proportional to this area. Drag is also proportional to the square of velocity. So a car going 100 MPH sees 100 times the drag force as when it travels 10 MPH.

Potential reductions in rolling friction have been overlooked on the whole. Michellin has designed a set of tires that has about 35% greater rolling efficiency than others, and there is still significant room for improvement. Tires capable of higher pressures would also dramatically reduce rolling resistance. Improved hub bearing design is another simple target.

Then there is the power plant and drivetrain. Currently, the internal combustion engine is only about 30% efficient, in good cases. Energy is lost to heat transfer, internal friciton, noise, flow restriction, incomplete combustion, exhaust gas heat & flow… have I left anything out? It would not be difficult for any major engine developer to address each of these issues systematically.

Heat energy can be recaptured using integrated steam systems, turbos, proper insulation. Noise can be reduced using tighter machining tolerances. Friction reductions are realized almost every year; new “stealth” coatings commonly used on high performance engines would do wonders for a smaller engine. Using turbos for instances when a lot of power is needed and bypassing them on intake and exhaust during low demand would save considerable fuel. You don’t need a lot of power to sustain speed, so why would you maintain the same engine displacement? The old concept of the steam engine can be coupled with the common 4 stroke to produce a steam/gasoline hybrid. BMW has done a bit with this, but their approach doesn’t integrate the two systems very well. There is a 6 stroke engine with an additional stroke that uses water to generate steam, both propelling and cooling the engine simultaneously.

ENERGY LOSS TO BRAKING:

This has already been identified with gas/electric hybrids. The concept is simple. When you use your brakes, you basically cancle all the energy used to get your vehicle moving and effectively waste the fuel it took to do so. Hybrids use regenerative breaking to recapture some of this lost energy using electric generators as brakes. Now before we get carried away with adding all kinds of over-complicated systems to any proposed vehicle, consider simplification. Toyota’s synergy drive applied the same concept and is a good example of simplifying a system; it uses regen braking through the transmisison. Older inferior concepts of regen braking actually had independant generators in the wheels – simply a result of the funtional fixedness of some old engineers who were used to putting brakes in the wheels.

Let’s face it. We have the technology. We have the know how. We know how to do it cheap. What we lack is public awareness and congressmen who will effectively represent the people.

The concept of a fuel efficient vehicle now seems undesireable. Their ultimate aim is both supply and demand control of oil. The auto industries and oil / energy companies work in accord to only allow / promote acceptable levels of efficiency and their profits are guaranteed.

In the mid 80’s, Honda made a version of the CRX that got a more impressive 70 MPG, even without hybrid technology. Where are we now. Looks to me like we’re moving backwards.