VW Concept Microcar Gets 235 MPG 507
Hugh Pickens writes "Volkswagen is bringing new meaning to the term 'fuel efficiency' with a bullet-shaped microcar that gets 235 mpg. Called the One-Liter, because that's how much fuel it needs to go 100 kilometers, the body's made of carbon fiber to minimize weight and the One-Liter makes extensive use of magnesium, titanium and aluminum so the entire vehicle weighs in at 660 pounds. Aerodynamics plays a big role in its fuel economy, so the car is long and low, coming in at 11.4 feet long, 4.1 feet wide and 3.3 feet tall with a coefficient of drag of 0.16, a little more than half that of an average car. The One-Liter could have a sticker price of anywhere from $31,750 to $47,622, and VW plans to build a limited number in 2010."
Big Deal! (Score:2, Informative)
If VW want to impress, they will have to do a hell of a lot better than that.
Re:I call Gimmick (Score:4, Informative)
Well it's actually a two-seater, though the person in the back seat isn't going to have a lot of leg-room I'll grant you...
Re:I call Gimmick (Score:3, Informative)
In other words (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Big Deal! (Score:5, Informative)
A better picture [physorg.com] might help put things into... perspective.
There's no way in hell something like that will ever be able to enter regular traffic.
photo not yet slashdotted link (Score:5, Informative)
The main article is slashdotted, here's the summary article [wired.com] for the "Totemcrappen" which has a picture. Notice the priceless licensence plate which is Leet speak "Wobbly".
Interestingly the car was desinged 6 years ago but the 2012 was the release date as the prices would fall far enough to manufacture it. But they decided to roll is out 2 years early.
Re:built-in coffin (Score:5, Informative)
Good catch! the Messerschmidt got 125 miles per gallon and carried 2 people (top speed was 50, but that was cookin' back then, and still is plenty in the city).
Re:Why not just make it a moped? (Score:3, Informative)
"Oversize" in the motorcycle world would be more along the lines of a Honda Gold Wing, which weighs 400 pounds *more* than this car. The car is closer in weight to a full-size cruiser like a Harley Softail or Yamaha Raider, and even then the car is *still* about 10% lighter.
Re:Vaporware? (Score:2, Informative)
The Smart4two is a small 2 seater with room for very little other than passengers, and in the gasoline version it gets 36 MPG, which is shit considering the car that comes with it. There are several competitors in the 36 MPG range that have 4 seats and room for luggage and groceries and diaper bags and such.
The diesel version is a slightly different story but then, so is the diesel version of everything else.
Re:Convincing one of safety of small vehicles. (Score:5, Informative)
Even if it has a crumple zones, I could see it being sent flying across the road like a hockeypuck, or it's lack of mass being unable to stop the forward progress of the impacting vehicle after the impact.
Why does it need to physically stop the other car? I don't think I'd mind being sent across the road like a hockeypuck, as long as each change in velocity (... probably collision-induced) is gentle enough to prevent damage to my body. I couldn't care less if the truck that hits me has enough forward momentum to go across America.
As long as it has crumple zones (remember---what you really care about is the acceleration of your own body (which gives the force on you), and that's inversely proportional to the distance you have to travel, given an initial and final velocity), I don't see how it's any less safer than a bulkier car with identical length of crumple zone.
I recently rode in a coworkers SmartCar, and while it seemed like a great car, I realized that if were were rear ended, we'd be killed. There's about a foot between your back and the back of the car. Less than that of a Jeep Wrangler. My biggest fear would be having to stop quickly on the highway and the guy behind me doesn't stop in time.
That should be fine---with your small mass, the other guy will simply end up pushing you forward.
Now, it's a different question if you were stopped right in front of a cliff (either one that stands as a wall or one where the ground disappears beneath you), but in the normal traffic conditions, you will either get pushed forward by yourself, or as you are pushed forward, you will hit the car ahead of you. In either case, assuming that the passenger compartment is strong, the mass of your car itself has no bearing on safety.
Anybody have any good arguments for justifying these ultra-light cars (VW, SmartCar) to those that do equate a certain size=safety measure?
Well, tell them about how "safe" SUVs are, with its frequent rollovers. If that doesn't convince them bigger != safer, well, I do think the gene pool would benefit from their decision.
Re:How much does it cost??!! (Score:5, Informative)
Let's discuss the hypothetical non-hybrid Civic DX sedan with 34mpg @ $15,010 and the American average 12,000 miles a year.
$24,706 dollars spent in fuel over ten years at $7 a dollar gasoline.
total cost = $39,716
Not to mention the Honda Civic can haul you, your family and your stuff at that price, this VW? Nope.
We won't even get into the cost of money and the lost value of paying the high up-front charges of the VW option.
Re:How much does it cost??!! (Score:5, Informative)
That's where the fallacy lies - do the math.
How about we actually put pen to paper on this one and figure out exactly how much money we would save in fuel costs each year :
I am going to be generous and work with easy numbers - $4 gasoline, 1,200 miles per month.
Start with a relatively easy to find 40 mpg car :
1,200 miles / 40mpg = 30 gallons * $4 = $120 per month.
Crank that up to one of those Volkswagon TDI or a hybrid getting 50 mpg :
1,200 miles / 50mpg = 24 gallons * $4 = $96 per month. Saved about $25 per month.
And now for this ultra-cool one man car made of recycled SR-71 parts at 235 mpg :
1,200 miles / 235mpg = 5 gallons!
5 * $4 = $20 total fuel costs for the month. Which sounds great, except it's only saving about $75 per month, assuming the production models get the same mileage as their hand made prototype - which isn't going to happen.
Let's pretend they get them in viable quantities getting 120mpg, which is still crazy good, right?
1,200 miles / 120mpg = still only 10 gallons, which is only $40. Pretty awesome!
Except compared to a current Prius or a VW TDI, you're only saving $55 a month.
It's because of the way the 1/x curve flattens out on the tail end, after about 40-50 mpg it really doesn't make much of a difference. The dollar difference between 40mpg and 120mpg is the same dollar difference between 17mpg and 21mpg, again - because the curve of 1/x is so high below 20mpg. Get down into the 9mpg-11mpg range and difference for every 1mpg = $40.
Want to make a killer difference in our gas consumption, engineer a way to make the current 500 million cars already on the roads today get 3 more mpg, because I figure 1/3rd of the cars on the road are in the sub 20mpg range.
I already figured that one out too - tire pressure during the winter. I used to think that the gas stations used different formulas in the winter (which they probably do) which is why my gas mileage went from 21 in the summer to 17 in the winter (which wasn't why.) My most recent car has air pressure sensors on the tires so I noticed that during the winter months the air pressure in the tires dropped from 35psi to about 28psi (cold air shrinks) - when I pressured up my tires to the suggested 35psi, my gas mileage went right back to 21mpg. How many people go the entire winter without adding air to their tires (well ... it doesn't look flat and it had plenty of air in August, air isn't leaking out ...) and spend their entire lives thinking the reason they get crap gas mileage in the winter because of the 'winter gasoline formula'? Bingo.
Re:What year? (Score:4, Informative)
If it has less than four wheels, though, it's not considered a car, and the safety standards become much, much lower.
Four wheels, the safety standards have been going up. That's part of the reason many manufacturers are making 3-wheelers - nobody would pay $100,000 for a stripped out single-seater car, just so they could get something that could get extreme fuel economy. 3-wheelers only make sense for legislative reasons, not practical.
Re:built-in coffin (Score:5, Informative)
Of course, statistics can be misleading. In this case, the vehicle actually got 285mpg in a test run. However, thus run was at 45mph rather than a more typical 55mph; there's 1 1/2 times the aerodynamic drag at 55mph. Rolling losses will be higher by 1.2x. Let's say an overall 1.4x higher, since aerodynamic drag dominates at higher speeds; converting, we get 203mpg. Next, this wasn't a normal drive cycle, but a person trying to optimize their ride. Let's be generous and only cut it to 180mpg. It's a diesel, and diesel is about 15% more dense than gasoline, and emits about 15% more CO2; cut it to 155mpg for a gasoline-equivalent. The production version is going from a 1 cylinder to a 2 cylinder mild hybrid, since the 1 cylinder has poor acceleration. This won't hit it as much as normal, since the car operates on an acceleration/coasting system of maintaining sped, but it should at least hit it a little; let's say 145mpg. The production version is also going to be getting heavier, since this version omitted all of the standard things like airbags and so on. Let's say 130mpg to be generous. And if they widen it to make it more stable (it's quite narrow), it'll get more aerodynamic drag and go lower still. Same if they try and reinforce that frame and skin -- carbon fiber is great, but they're not using much of it, and magnesium (which makes up the bulk of the frame) is even weaker than aluminum. And if they try to make it more affordable by, say, swapping the carbon fiber and magnesium for aluminum and kevlar or fiberglass or whatnot (it's current projected *subsidized* price is, if I recall correctly, something like $40-60k USD), that'll drop further still. Also, since it only has a rather limited regen capability, its city mileage will be lower than its highway mileage.
Now, even with all of this, it's still one darned efficient vehicle. It's just not as impressive as the original claims. It's easy to manipulate numbers to try and make a vehicle look more efficient than it is. For example, with the Aptera. You generally see two numbers for it: 230mpg and 300mpg. Both are bogus. 230mpg was what the Mk0 got at 55mph. However, it too was a shell, and was not as safe or full of the things needed to meet legal requirements as the Mk1. It was also a diesel. Converting to the Mk1 pre-production model, its charge sustaining mileage went all the way down to 130mpg. However, they generally cite 300mpg, under the excuse that most people don't go on long trips very often, so it'll usually run just on electricity, which they don't count. It's still misleading; many people I've talked to thought you could go cross-country on 300mpg. Nope, not without charging every hundred miles or so. Mind you, Aptera is hardly alone in doing this; virtually all of the PHEV makers do it, and some are a lot worse offenders than others. I remember seeing an article about an SUV that got "150mpg". If you look at how they did their numbers, they were assuming that only something like 1/7th of its miles ran on gasoline, and only counting the gasoline.
In short: before you believe inflated mileage claims, look into the numbers.
On the subject of Aptera vs. 1L car: it's interesting the approaches taken by Aptera and the 1L car. The 1L car doesn't take streamlining as far. They move the rear wheels close together, but not so far as to make it a three wheeler. They lift the rear a little off the ground to eliminate ground turbulence, but not nearly as much as the Aptera -- nor do they use cabin air to fill in their wake. Overall, their drag coeff is 0.19, compared to 0.11 for the Aptera. However, while Aptera decided to make one significant compromise on efficiency -- requiring side-by-side seating to make it more acceptable to the general public -- Volkswagen did not. Their tandem seating arrangement reduces frontal area. While there are some downsides to tandem seating, it would be interesting to see a vehicle that takes a combined approach, with the extreme streamlining of an Aptera, along with its hig
Re:photo not yet slashdotted link (Score:5, Informative)
The WOB on the license plate stands for Wolfsburg, which is where Volkswagen headquarters are. The L 1 stands for 1 Liter, which is the amount of fuel the car uses for 100km. Hence, WOB - 1 L.
Now if only I could figure out how many Rods to the Hogshead that is...
Re:built-in coffin (Score:2, Informative)
Re:built-in coffin (Score:4, Informative)
Pardon, metric gallons? The only "metric" gallon that I'm aware of is the 1985 legal definition of the British Imperial gallon that defines it to be 4.54609dm^3.
Re:Big Deal! (Score:2, Informative)
The problem with mpg is that it's inverted in terms of gas saved.... say you changed your driving habits in each vehicle and saved 1 gallon during the commute. That is, you saved about $4.10 in gas per day for each of the three vehicles. In terms of mpg, the mileage change looks like this:
SUV - 12.5 mpg -> 14.3 mpg (1.8 mpg improvement) Sedan - 25 mpg -> 33 mpg (8 mpg improvement) Hybrid - 50 mpg -> 100 mpg (50 mpg improvement)
So even though the amount of gas and money saved in each car was exactly the same, at first glance at the mpg figures it looks like the hybrid did 28 times better than the SUV.
There's no inherent bias in MPG vs. l/100km. It's fucking math, man. You're creating a fictional problem where none exists. That hypothetical that illustrates the "problem" is ridiculous. While it's possible one could drive an SUV such that you save 1 gallon on your commute, there's no chance in hell you're going to be able to jack a hybrid up from 50mpg to 100mpg unless "change your driving habits" means "got out and pushed it halfway".
Re:Just drank a fifth of vodka; dare me to drive? (Score:3, Informative)
What the hell crazy world are you living in that you need to reference Eminem when talking about a fifth of liquor.
Eminem sucks, and anyone who's ever been near anyone drinking knows a fifth is not really an honest fifth of liquid, it's 750mL. And a handle's not really a half gallon, it's 1.5L. And a pint isn't really a pint, it's 375mL, which is the most wrong of them all since it's about 100mL shy of an actual US pint.