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."
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why not just make it a moped? (Score:5, Interesting)
A moped with rider has a much, much higher coefficient of drag, probably more frontal area, and no protection from the elements, to boot.
Also, here in Ohio, a moped is legally defined as a motorized bicycle limited to 20 MPH, with a maximum of 1 hp and 50 cc displacement. This has almost 9 hp and 300 cc displacement, and is designed to go a lot faster than 20. ;)
Re:built-in coffin (Score:5, Interesting)
This is reminiscent of the car built by Messerschmidt after WWII [youtube.com]. It was really an enclosed motorcycle with exactly the same form factor.
A "Manhattan Project" (Score:5, Interesting)
I totally agree.
Neal Boortz, a local talk show host that tends to sway conservative where I live, keeps railing on how the U.S. needs to have a "Manhattan Project" to explore for oil and develop domestic resources. He says that within three years, if we really focus our time, effort, energy, money, and our brightest minds on it, we could wean ourselves off dependence on foreign oil by replacing it with oil from domestic sources.
I can't help but think, if we're going to gather our time, effort, energy, money, and brightest minds, why can't we come up with a "Manhattan Project" to wean ourselves off of oil entirely?
I'm so tired of the U.S. taking a technological back seat to the rest of the world, but it looks like we're about to yet again. Let other countries develop, test, and build the products while we sit back and get further behind. That way, we'll have yet more industries we can't compete with and yet a higher trade deficit.
Convincing one of safety of small vehicles. (Score:5, Interesting)
I look at a vehicle this small and wonder what would happen if it was hit by a 3000lb vehicle. 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.
What arguments does one use to convince laymen that these tiny vehicles are safe? My gf wants to get a volvo SUV, but when I even mention a Corolla/Tercel/Yarvis, she likes that they are fuel efficient, but is concerned about being hit by any full size vehicle (not just a Hummer/SUV).
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.
Anybody have any good arguments for justifying these ultra-light cars (VW, SmartCar) to those that do equate a certain size=safety measure?
Re:Convincing one of safety of small vehicles. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I call Gimmick (Score:3, Interesting)
1 - It's a 1 person car
2 - It's going into limited production
3 - Marketing is talking about it 2 years in advance
1 - No. Its a two-seat car. You know. Like all those other penile extensions out there.
2 - You did get that one right. Still... Again with penile extensions. How many Porsches and Ferraris are made each year?
3 - Actually - it is 4 years in advance since they were planing to push it out in the market in 2012. But carbon fiber price dropped enough so they can start making it 2 years earlier.
Apparently they don't want to massproduce this, just enhance their brand, without actually jeopardizing their relationship with Big Oil(TM)
You do realize its the same company that made those small economic VW Beetle cars?
And all those Golfs later on...
I'd rather an improved Volkswagen GX3. (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd rather see VW work on an improved version of the GX3 concept. If they enclosed it for better aerodynamics and reduced the engine power from the concept's 125 bhp, they'd be able to eke out much better mileage than the measly 46 mpg of the prototype. There really wasn't any need for a 1.6 L engine in the GX3. They could have gone with the engine from the Lupo 3L, which was a 1.2 L inline three cylinder TDI engine that made 61 bhp.
Of course, the first thing they should do is bring the Lupo 3L back to life and bring it to the US.
The Lupo 3L weighed about 1830 lb, and the GX3 weighed about about 1260 lb, so you can see that the Lupo 3L engine would still give quite interesting performance in the GX3 chassis, and the fuel consumption, with a new aerodynamic, enclosed chassis for the GX3 should enable that configuration to easily reach at least the ~80 mpg of the Lupo 3L, and probably even better that figure by a good margin, while offering the advantages of side-by-side seating.
Re:Convincing one of safety of small vehicles. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Vaporware? (Score:5, Interesting)
When some new gas saver comes out (like the smart4two), do people really line up to purchase it?
The waiting list for the smart is close to a year.
Europe is not the US. (Score:5, Interesting)
More people in the world with high disposable incomes drive on roads where American SUVs are in a small minority. Here in the UK SUVs have been making inroads which have come to a sudden halt as fuel approaches $3/liter. On the other hand, the sales of class A,B and C vehicles - microcars, minis and superminis - are rising fast. Expect European roads to look rather different in 2010, when the first of the new technologies really start to reach the market.
The guy who wrote the article did not get this - quoting US gallons is pretty irrelevant. 1 liter/100km, or miles per UK gallon, are appropriate because that is where they will be used.
Re:Convincing one of safety of small vehicles. (Score:1, Interesting)
Anybody have any good arguments for justifying these ultra-light cars (VW, SmartCar) to those that do equate a certain size=safety measure?
The altruistic argument: By riding in a smaller vehicle, you reduce the likelihood of injuring or killing other people you may hit.
The "overly trusting of the marketing department" argument:"Volkswagen says the One-Liter Car is as safe as a GT sports car registered for racing. With the aid of computer crash simulations, the car was designed with built-in crash tubes, pressure sensors for airbag control and front crumple zones."
The appeal to economics: With all the money you save on gas, you can buy a really bitchin' health plan.
My "gut reaction" argument: Suck it up and quit perpetuating the ridiculous culture of fear in this country. If gas was still 99 cents a gallon, we'd all be riding in tanks right now in a perverse highway arms race waged between every motorist on the road. As it stands, people are now buying scooters and motorcycles in record numbers due to gas prices. This vehicle is hardly near the two-wheelers in terms of risk.
Re:Big Deal! (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem with mpg is that it's inverted in terms of gas saved. Pretty obvious if you think of it as a fraction: miles / gallon with the gallons on the bottom, meaning any comparison wrt gallons consumed is inverted. That is, as the amount of gas consumed gets smaller, the any changes in gas consumed are exaggerated and appear bigger.
e.g. say I have a 100 mile daily commute. If my SUV got 12.5 mpg and I switched to a sedan which gets 25 mpg, I went from burning 8 gallons per 100 miles to 4 gallons - a savings of 4 gallons.
If I then switch from a the sedan to a hybrid which gets 50 mpg, well 25-12.5 = 12.5, while 50-25 = 25, so you'd think I'd be doing twice as well switching sedan -> hybrid as I did switching from SUV -> sedan, right?
Unfortunately no. The hybrid uses 2 gallons on the route, meaning I've gone from burning 4 gallons per 100 miles to burning 2 gallons - a savings of just 2 gallons. In fact, just based on this simple example, you can see that short of going purely electric, it's impossible to save as much gas / money as you did switching from the SUV to a sedan. 8 -> 4 was a 4 gallon savings. To save another 4 gallons, you would need to go from 4 -> 0.
Put another way, 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. It really didn't, it's an illusion created by having gallons in the denominator of mpg. A 1.8 mpg improvement in an SUV is equal in fuel savings to a 50 mpg improvement in a hybrid.
Most of the rest of the world lists fuel economy in terms of liters per 100 km for this reason. If we compared all the above in gallons per 100 miles:
SUV = 8 gphm
Sedan = 4 gphm
Hybrid = 2 gphm
Microcar (235 mpg) = 0.425 gphm
3145 mpg = 0.032 gphm
Changing cars:
SUV -> Sedan = 8 -> 4 = improvement of 4 gphm
Sedan -> Hybrid = 4 -> 2 = improvement of 2 gphm
Hybrid -> Microcar = 2 -> 0.425 = improvement of 1.575 gphm
Microcar -> SAE winner = 0.425 -> 0.032 = 0.393 gphm
Changing driving habits:
SUV = 8 -> 7 = improvement of 1 gphm
Sedan = 4 -> 3 = improvement of 1 gphm
Hybrid = 2 -> 1 = improvement of 1 gphm
It's similar to the situation with pollution controls on newer cars. The cleaner the newer cars are, the less benefit you get from making them even more cleaner. Your emphasis should instead shift to getting the older dirtier cars off the road.
Re:Convincing one of safety of small vehicles. (Score:3, Interesting)
The physics of collisions dictates that the final velocity is weighted in favor of the larger mass (momentum balance). So the larger mass experiences a small velocity change, while the smaller mass "bounces" and actually experiences a greater velocity change than its initial speed relative to the road. So if the crumple zones were identical in length, the bulkier car experiences smaller accelerations than the smaller car. (This is for vehicle-vehicle collisions. Vehicle mass does not matter as much in vehicle-barrier collisions since most barriers are designed so their effective mass is >>> than any vehicle.)
Re:built-in coffin (Score:3, Interesting)
A lightweight car can be just as safe as a heavy one under certain circumstances. Unfortunately, hitting a larger vehicle is not one of them. Here in the U.S., with all the behemoth SUVs driven by morons yacking away on their cell phones when they should be paying attention to their driving, chances are good that if you hit something in an L1, it would be a larger vehicle.
Re:Convincing one of safety of small vehicles. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Convincing one of safety of small vehicles. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:built-in coffin (Score:4, Interesting)
Or get a Trabant [wikipedia.org], or a Lastun [wikipedia.org] and a good life insurance. Trabant has the advantage it will run on anything even remotely flammable, and the Lastun has the advantage that is so light that you can push it with one hand when you run out of gas, or you can use it as a shopping basket. Both cars can carry 4 people.