Supersize The Automobile

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Posted By: Dirt Racer @ 04/05/2008 4:49:10 AM

My father once said that if I could make the "internal combustion engine" 75% efficent instead of only 18-20% that I would have every oil company buying up my patent rights and I would be drinking those umbrella drinks on a sandy beach and watching pretty girls walk by for the rest of my days. My dad was a engineer for a public owned company and did not have the resources to work out this theory but I would sure bet that somewhere somebody has the tools to figure out how to get the internal combustion engine to be way more efficent and not have to worry about exotic materials to save a few pouns here and there. Right now 80% of the energy that forms in the combustion chamber goes right out the tail pipe in the form of heat and 20% is used to move that piston down to spin the crank to turn the transmission to to turn the gears and spin the tires and move vehicle forward.So if you turn the numbers around [80%vs20% ] you now get a car that at 20mpg would get 80mpg and 4dollar gas would take you just as far as 1dollar gas did. But the oil companies probably allready bought the rights from people who have figured it out and someone else is watching the girls go by along with the oilmen since they are getting fat off the profits of you and I having to buy 4 dollar gas and only getting 20 mpg instead of 50 mpg or more.

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Posted By: hudson2442 @ 03/08/2008 4:06:16 PM

I agree with Mr. Lovins. Seems to me it s automatically assumed in many new designs that an efficient and environmentally friendly has to be compact and ugly. With the use of modern composite materials and uni-body structural engineering you could conceivably produce a car that gets very excellent MPG and can still carry 6 passengers in style. You could even have the look of chrome plating without the added weight of chrome plating. You could still have safety and achieve speeds of 100 mph with a smaller hybrid or alternative fuel engine. Although speed is somewhat irrelevant in major metropolitan cities where traffic conditions and laws never allow you to achieve such speeds. The only benefit to added power is when acceleration is considered as a safety feature. It's all possible. I think the argument of price is irrelevant too since in America most people don't own their cars, they lease them. However more factories could lower the costs of modern carbon fiber materials. Right now there is a global shortage of carbon fiber.

Posted By: aj2x @ 02/21/2008 12:35:22 PM
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Clearly the Tata car is designed for its home market, where small size and low price are major design goals. High speeds are not the norm on Indian roads, so aerodynamics don't matter so much, and Western standards of crashworthiness count less than affordability. Still, it's fun to see the little car generating so much interest in the States. Mr. Lovins' points are appropriate to the US market and should be taken to heart by those designing cars for that market.