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."
I call Gimmick (Score:1, Insightful)
3 points.
1 - It's a 1 person car
2 - It's going into limited production
3 - Marketing is talking about it 2 years in advance
It's a gimmick to make the company appear eco-friendly, without actually offering anything for the average consumer.
Apparently they don't want to massproduce this, just enhance their brand, without actually jeopardizing their relationship with Big Oil(TM)
Re:Big Deal! (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not just make it a moped? (Score:1, Insightful)
It's hardly shocking that if you strip the weight off a passenger car you can run up the mileage.
The reason these things don't usually make market is that
A) you can't make them that small and have them meet passenger car safety standards
B) you end up using a lot of exotics in your design to strip weight down and that runs the price up
End result is you end up with a "car" that's roughtly the mass (and passenger capacity) of an oversize motorcycle, but costs as much as a mid range luxury car. Hardly an appealing prospect for all but the most dedicated mileage enthusiasts.
Re:Big Deal! (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow man, you're hard to impress. Considering that most cars on the road only get about 20 - 30mpg I would say 235mpg is still pretty good. The article also points out that that they could produce 1,000/year of these to start with if they wanted to, whereas the vehicle you linked to seems to be no more than than a one-shot trophy winner. Don't get me wrong, they're both very cool concept cars, but I don't think one should be sneered at just because it doesn't meet your particular standard.
Also, is it just me or do both of these look like something someone could buy at the local adult store rather than drive down the street in?
Re:How much does it cost??!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Once we all start driving fuel efficient cars.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep you nailed it. The gas prices we're seeing have less to do with scarcity, and more to do with a captive market - well, that and the fact that the majority of oil producing countries are literally overrun by the OPEC cartels, which is what inevitably happens when you stick a trillion-dollar business in a 3rd world country.
I agree, we don't need fuel efficiency, we need a whole new form of fuel. One that doesn't shackle every civilized nation to every uncivilized oil producer.
Re:Vaporware? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't find that depressing at all. As nice as H2 sounds on paper, when it comes down to it, we're already using the ideal fuels for transportation. Liguid hydrocarbons have far superior energy density compared to other options, they're liquid at room temperature, stable, require no special containment, are basically insensitive to temperature extremes, and very scalable.
Until there's and alternative that does nearly as well in all these categories, i think the most feasible eco-solution is finding ways to displace conventional petroleum (biofuels and whatnot)
Re:Convincing one of safety of small vehicles. (Score:3, Insightful)
Besides, getting a bigger vehicle for safety reasons is only excaberating the problem, because now you're the big vehicle on the road everyone else is worried about.
Re:A "Manhattan Project" (Score:3, Insightful)
OK we have a problem it's not really oil but we need cheap to free energy. Look at it this way most 3rd world countries want to have an American or eu standard of living, and there is no way without destroying/subjugating them you can stop them from trying to get there since it's driven by the desire to have your children better off than you were. What does that boil down to energy use per capita. At present fission is our only known method to get that energy without oil. Other methods are fine spend plenty of time researching them etc etc etc. But start building hundreds of cookie cutter fission based power stations.
No Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
If there are only light cars around, no one get's hit by a 2.5 ton doctor's wife with her Porsche Cayenne.
It's really time for it. And by the way, if your car is extremely light, an much heavier opponent in an accidend would push your micocompact away instead of crushing through it. Especially if the microcompact is made of an robust security cell (see the Samrts Tridion Security Cell) or a Formula One like cage of carbon fiber like the VW 1L. I assume there are almost no more secure big cars around as these compacts are.
Re:Convincing one of safety of small vehicles. (Score:5, Insightful)
How big is a Formula 1 car, and what does it weigh?
Ever seen some of the crashes that those F1 drivers just walk away from?
Re:Convincing one of safety of small vehicles. (Score:5, Insightful)
These absolutist arguments are pointless.
Yes, there are times when you can avoid, and times when you cannot. This does not make it useless to favor avoidance over resilience.
You need to carry out a more complete analysis. Being able to avoid accidents in some situations will result in fewer accidents, and will result in some of those accidents being less bad. Being less crash-worthy (but please note that many SUVs, despite their size, are extremely unworthy in a crash!) will result in some of the remaining accidents being worse. To decide what's better, you need to see if the latter overcomes the former.
Most people feel helpless on the road and therefore feel safest with massive amounts of passive protection at all times, but I don't think this is actually the best way to go. Not the least because carrying all that extra passive protection around with you costs a huge amount of money, especially at $4/gallon.
Re:How much does it cost??!! (Score:3, Insightful)
I drive a pickup, which is about as bad as it gets in terms of gas mileage. It's a 2002 model, and it has about 68,000 miles on it, which translates to about 4,000 gallons of fuel that it's used thus far. At $4.00/gallon (far above the average cost of gas over the period I've owned it), that's $16,000. I paid about $19,000 for the truck after all was said and done, so even if this new car had *no fuel cost at all*, it still wouldn't break even until after it had been driven 90,000 miles, and again, that's with gas at $4.00/gallon. More realistically, it'd probably be about 150,000 miles or so before break-even. The comparison with my truck is about the most favorable one that can be made on the basis of fuel costs - there's no way this car could pay for itself with fuel savings as compared to something that already gets decent mileage like the Civic you mentioned.
But that's not all. My truck got rear-ended by a car going about 20 mph two years ago, and while the car that struck me suffered thousands of dollars' worth of damage, I got out of it with a bent back bumper that cost about $80 to have pulled straight again. That same strike in one of these VWs almost certainly would have totalled it because, aside from the severe frame damage that likely would have occurred, carbon-fiber bodywork is so horribly expensive to fix, when you can even find someone that can do it competently. Because of that, count on insurance costs being ridiculous for this vehicle. Also, I noticed "air-conditioning" being conspicuously absent from the list of amenities - there appears to be a cool/warm temperature control for vented air on the console, but not much more. I'm sure VW will have good luck selling a $40K vehicle without A/C.
There's a lot more that goes into making a car salable than just great mileage.
modern engines in lighter cars would be a start (Score:5, Insightful)
235 MPG is impressive, and this concept car is *really* cool looking, which is a rare thing when it comes to super efficient, futuristic concept cars. While I really doubt will see cars like this on the road anytime soon, this car does bring to mind some things, though, particularly in the weight department. If we took our current engine technologies (not even hybrid) and put them in much lighter cars, we'd likely be able to have cars average close to 100 MPG without any special work.
Compared to light cars in the 1970s, our cars are much heavier (1000-2000 pounds heavier on average), but produce much, much more power from the same amount of gas than engines in the 70s did. Not to mention they are now better looking than the boxes of the 70s.
Basically all the extra efficiency our engines now have is pretty much wasted by the fact that we're hauling around so much extra weight. If we lighten our cars a bit and then stop this silly addiction to "power" (really acceleration), we'd be a long ways closer to practical cars that get 100 MPG right now. That'd pave the way for mass appeal of cars like this VW concept.
Re:No Problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Big Deal! (Score:3, Insightful)
How about making the skill requirements for a driving license strict enough that you don't need to drive a tank to be safe on public roads ?
Re:built-in coffin (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure what the big deal about safety is. Indy car drivers walk away from 200 mph crashes, and their cars are 1500 pounds, about half the weight of a standard American car. Safety doesn't come from weight alone, it comes from engineering for safety. The car will be safe, or unsafe, depending on how it's engineered.
In any case, looks much less dangerous than a motorcycle, and tens of millions of people drive those. Looks like it will easy to park in the city, too.
Re:Big Deal! (Score:2, Insightful)
Since most people here are more comfortable with kWh than fluids, let's look at this from an electric perspective: A liter of diesel contains chemical energy which is equivalent to about 10kWh. One liter per 100km is 10kWh per 100km, or 100Wh per kilometer. An average person on a bicycle can sustain an energy output equivalent to 100W, which results in roughly 20km/h. That's 100Wh/20km or 5Wh per kilometer.
1l-Car: 100Wh/km (10km/kWh)
Bicycle: 5Wh/km (200km/kWh)
On the other hand, the car doesn't take 5 hours for 100km, which brings me to my pet peeve: Making a car go faster to reduce travel time is wasteful. Steady but slow traffic is more energy efficient than going fast and slowing down often. To reduce travel time efficiently, reduce the time needed in slow areas. Observe how long it takes you to get to/from the highway and how long you're on the highway. Planners need to work much harder on keeping the traffic flowing in urban and residential areas. Instead they're slowing traffic down on purpose, for safety reasons. Traffic flows which avoid stops altogether would do wonders for fuel economy.
Re:A "Manhattan Project" (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:built-in coffin (Score:2, Insightful)
Or better yet, teach people not to be idiots while driving. All these safety systems are making cars heavier, but with less benefit than if people just drove safer.
I doubt this microcar will even be sold in the US (except as a grey market import) due to safety regulations. European safety regulation is more lax, thereby getting lighter cars with smaller engines with similar performance. Engines around 1.0 - 1.5L are common in Europe, but in the US only a handful of car engines are smaller than 2.0L.
Re:36 mpg? (Score:3, Insightful)
And the Geo Metro XFI [fueleconomy.gov], with an engine the same size as the one in the Smart, got 46 mpg about 15 years ago. And the Honda CRX HF [fueleconomy.gov] got 45mpg with a 4 cylinder engine 20 years ago.
Re:Big Deal! (Score:2, Insightful)
and cupholders. It needs more cupholders.
Re:built-in coffin (Score:3, Insightful)
The efficiency letdown may not be the worst of it though, I'm not sure how many people would appreciate this aspect mentioned in the original Canadian Driver article [canadiandriver.com]:
it might be tough to convince someone to climb into that sort of a backseat at the start of your first date, that sounds more like a medical exam than a trip to the movies
Re:Young jedi... you have much to learn. (Score:4, Insightful)
I must disagree. In my experience, people who are considering or who already own SUVs due to their perceived safety generally think that, in the event of a two-vehicle accident, the other guy is essentially on his own. If he gets the worst of it due to having a smaller car, it's his own fault for not having also bought an SUV. I've never heard anyone say "I've never thought of that!" after being asked about the other guy in a hypothetical accident.
Re:No Problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Simply kill larger vehicles the way they killed the station wagon, and the way they're trying to kill the motorcycle. Just make it more expensive to buy, more expensive to license, more expensive to insure, more expensive to operate.