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Zero-60 in 3.1 Seconds, Batteries Included
FloatsomNJetsom writes "Popular Mechanics has a very cool video and report about test-driving Hybrid Technologies' L1X-75, a battery powered, 600-hp, carbon-fiber roadster that pulls zero-60 in about 3.1 seconds, and tops out at 175 mph. Of course, there are few creature comforts inside, but that's mainly because the car's 200 mile range is meant for the track, not the road. Nonetheless, Popular Mechanics takes the car for a spin up 10th Avenue in NYC. Oh, and the car recharges via a 110 outlet. They also test-drove Ford's HySeries Edge, a hydrogen fuel-cell powered, plug-in series hybrid that, unlike the L1X-75, is unfortunately at least 10 years away from production and nearly 100 mph slower."
How would a bike version do? Existing litre bikes can manage around 2.5 seconds... Or is gravity the limiting factor here, I have hellish problems keeping my front wheel on the ground.
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Why do car manufacturers always quote 0-60 time when quarter mile is what everyone really cares about?
Remember, American car companies are heavily invested in the big oil companies. Which is why we have had shit for gas mileage for so long. It has taken some serious market blow-back to even get the "big" automakers interested in addressing the major shortcomings of their engine designs. Even with that, they have succeeded in getting "laws" passed to bail them out once again. Meaning they are hoping to not have to make cars with efficient gas-mileage any time in the future. As for competition, they just get more laws passed to curb any such from imports. It is easy - like stealing candy from a baby - the way America car companies play the American people.
Expect tons of these prototypes, like usual. But nothing seriously worthwhile in production, ever.
We are talking about an electrical motor here. From the time that you push the pedal to the time that torque is applied should only be on the order of nanoseconds. If you want to decrease the 0-60 time you could make the electrical engine as large as you want and put tons of batteries in parallel so that a current surge doesn't kill cause the batteries' internal resistance to spike decreasing current (though at a certain point you will no longer have traction unless you increase the weight of the car--which will slow your acceleration time down).
The Wrightspeed X1 goes from 0-60mph in 3.07 secs... Not much faster but certainly a cooler looking car. Not to mention that the X1 HAS turn signals..
More info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrightspeed_X1 and http://www.wrightspeed.com/x1.html
10+ years until production makes this a concept car, which is about as much as we can expect from American car manufacturers trying to make energy efficient vehicles.
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
The Killacycle used to be powered by spiral-wound AGM cells, but the producer went out of business.
Since then, it was repowered with A123Systems' LiFePO4 cells. It now does 0-60 in 1.5 seconds and the quarter mile in 8.16.
Electrics need not be slow, and their range is growing by leaps and bounds. The ICE has received its terminal diagnosis; the future is electric.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
Because of it's nature, this type of car would have to be made out of very lightweight materials, and even then, panels as thin as possible. Seeing that the majority of car sells are in the sedan/family models, it wouldn't be reasonable for auto manufacturers to market and produce a car like this - that won't be very safe and crash survivable - on a large scale.
cb_is_cool knows where his towel is.
The performance isn't quite as good, but Tesla Motors was already taking orders last year.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
It's pretty awesome, I'll grant you that, but it'll be expensive to gear up production on this thing (not to mention sell it - I couldn't see any speculation on price in TFA, but I imagine it won't be cheap). I don't see this being sold in any halfway-large volumes until at least after the other side of peak oil. Until then, it's a nice toy, but it doesn't make any econmic sense.
Yes, and in how many days to pass that much energy back into your car. Not exactly a candidate for a quick pit stop, unless they can swap the entire battery pack in 10 seconds.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Just dispense with the front wheel altogether and race a unicycle. All the weight over the wheel, and no way to lift it off.
Or put the wheels side-by-side Segway style.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
There's a reason the TGV is electric
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
Wired had an article a couple of years back about a guy that was making electric race cars. His whole philosophy was that to sell electric cars, you have to make them cool.
t ml
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.03/drag_pr.h
Ben from Popular Mechanics, before taking the test drive, says he's going to "hand the mic over and take this thing for a spin". The next shot is of him driving with the microphone. Hahahah Both key factors continuity and safety are thrown completely out the window so to speak.
I've heard that electricity generation produces more carbon pollution than combustion engine technology. So is this a productive application of technology?
The Tesla that appeared in the last IEEE spectrum issue is also a nice looking car with also good specs when compared to this one.
Some real specifications are here. It's not quite as fast as PM is claminig and it has only half the range.
No price mentioned other than "six figures".
It is caused by the water dropping down, releases ton of carbons. As for wind power, those blades are made of carbon and they just evaporate in the sun. Nasty stuff.
When will people finally get it into their head that the move to electric/hydrogen cars means that you break the direct link between your source of energy, and the energy to put in a moving vehicle?
A wind powered car would be inconvenient, by an electric car whose electricity comes from windpower isn't.
A country like greenland could use geothermal energy to create hydrogen and ship it to the rest of the world.
But yeah, some power plants currently use carbon based fuels, so electricity causes carbon pollution. We wouldn't want to confuse you.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Glad you passed through friend, but don't let the door hit you on the way out ...
Every so often a story pops up like this and I find myself scratching my head. Considering that, in most areas in the world, there are speed limits of some sort, what is the point of having a car that can go 175mph or get to 60 in 3secs -if you can't ever use it-?
Even in places like Germany (i.e., Autobahn), drivers tend not to drive at top speeds, either due to being responsible/safety conscious or, lacking that, because they simply won't be able to (due to other drivers who aren't driving as fast.) Unless you're driving at a racing track for the day, I don't see many places where you could fully take advantage of the car.
It's similar to the people I see driving around London in their Ferraris. Yes, of course, Ferrari make some lovely cars, but when the speed limit is 20mph and you're constantly stuck in traffic, what is the point? I mean, seriously, my bicycle is quicker!
With electric cars, the h.p. rating it typically limited to overheating the motor. As opposed to a motor with brushes, a brushless motor can take as many amp as you will as long as it does not overheat. That means a lot if you only want to accelerate for a few seconds. The same goes for the control electronics and batteries.
So while you may have 600hp to accelerate, you may only have 50hp of continuous power. This may be exactly what you want in a car, but the term may be somewhat meaningless.
Instead of a gas engines power/torque curve vs rpm, a power curve vs time would give us this information.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
When will we be allowed to build a sufficient number of nuclear reactors to power these vehicles? I enjoy the feel of my internal combustion engine, but for the efficiency of nuclear power for electricity, I'm ready to switch.
Free the atoms! Free the atoms!!
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is it that bad seein a hot chick again? if i see a hot chick walkin down the hall i dont say "repost"
When I can buy one of these for under $40K, call me. Until then, this is a neat idea which requires much more development before anyone will be interested.
I'm all for green power, green transport, et. al. But if it costs me more than my house, what's the point? Nobody will buy it because nobody can afford it, good intentions or not.
Now if all automakers would suddenly convert over to pure carbon-fiber bodies, CF production costs would (eventually) plummet to the point where it's the same cost (or cheaper) than steel. But that's not likely to happen anytime soon.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
When considering the full energy cycle of ICE cars vs EV's, EV's are more efficient by a fairly significant amount.
REFERENCE: http://www.evadc.org/pwrplnt.pdf
STFU about slashdot bias.
Should I assume you're trying to be funny? I think I shall, because the alternative assumption, regarding your knowledge of physics, makes me want to cry crocodile tears.
Ten years from production don't mean shit when your company is three years from oblivion.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
... so the batteries were accellerated to 60 mph *together* with the car?
Aha. I deduce that we are not dealing with trolley car in this particular case.
yes, we have no bananas
It's old news (Wow bet you are suprised! ;) ). It isn't the first, and any car that weighs in under 1200 kilos and has 600 HP damned well better pull that kind of time. The Electric Ariel Atom smokes this car. Of course the Ariel Atom pulls sub-3 second 0-60 times (2.8) with a mere 300HP motor. And yes again the key factor is weight: It weighs in at just under half the weight of this car - about 500 kilos. The electric one pulls 3 seconds in the 60 and weighs in at about 700 kilos. The fact that the two variants of the Atom are so close in performance is testament to the impact of the vehicle's weight on the performance of the vehicle more so than power source.
I don't car what your power source is. If you have a car priced at $125,000 with 600HP of power that weighs a mere 1200 kilos you better pull times like this. Otherwise go back to the drawing board. The Corvette Z06 weighs in at a hefty 3100 pounds, has 500 less HP and pulls 0-60 times of 3.2-3.8 with 3.5 being the official result.
Drag racing, especially 0-60 times, is all about power to weight. Source is irrelevant outside of that.
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
Cool, that's close to 2G acceleration.
18m/s^2
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For those of us who are not total gearheads, how is 3.1 seconds for 0 to 60 compared to internal combustion engines? Anyone have a chart of 0 to 60 times for Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche and various types of race cars?
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
yo !! this is really cool/.,,/ The elctric version will soon come for almost everything/,../,.the eco-freindly way/./.But what about the recharge?????? how much does it take to recharge that exotic car????? and how long does each full recharge remains in the car??? but anyways/,,./this is really cool,./,i can't wait to test drive one?>>?/,./,
This car seems a GT1 car.
You actually think Ford is going to dissolve? Did you also think Delta, AA, and USAir weren't going to be around by now?
I saw this on Discovery Channel years ago http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tYgqq3zvlQ
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
The Veyron is the so-called "most expensive production car", so 3.1 seconds would be considered very good. All speed numbers from Wikipedia. Anyone in the world can write anything they want about any subject -- so you know you are getting the best possible information.
Internal combustion charts Ferrari 575M Maranello (not fastest but don't have the booklet) - 4.0 Seconds Fastest Porsche : 911 Turbo (480hp /40torque) - 3.7 seconds on manual / 3.4 seconds on Tiptronic S.
Fastest BMW : M6 Coupe (500hp/383torque) - 4.5 Seconds
Fastest Lexus : GS450H (340hp/torquenotlisted) - 5.2 seconds
*All figures taken from respective manufacturer's product catalogs that were handed out at the Manhattan 2007 Car Show on April 6th.
0 - 60 in 3.1 seconds for an electric car is pretty damn impressive.
127.0.0.1
Two axes of stability is boring. .... adventurous.
One axis of stability is fun.
Zero is
You also have to accelerate the batteries as well as the rest of the vehicle, and of course the more batteries you have, the greater the mass to be accelerated. In fact, it doesn't take a genius to see that once you reach a certain size the weight of the driver is hardly a factor and any increase in power will scale precisely with increase in mass, and hence acceleration will rapidly asymptote to a nearly constant value.
The only way you can really improve this is to either produce batteries and control electronics which can produce more power for a given mass, or improve the efficiency of the drive chain significantly. Modern brushless motors and FET controllers are better than the old systems but there is not a lot more to gain. Battery technology - minimising internal resistance, developing polarisation free chemistry, finding completely reversible cycles that can handle high oxidation rates - is the key to producing high acceleration electrical vehicles.
Unfortunately, such are engineering tradeoffs that long life and high discharge rate rarely go together, and these experimental vehicles seem largely to be about either getting publicity or bragging rights. One thing is certain: factor in the battery manufacture and recycling costs, and they are no solution to global warming. I believe there is a claim that, when total life cost is taken into account, even some small SUVs are actually lower energy impact than a Toyota Prius.
Pining for the fjords
Check out the videos on the White Zombie EV drag racer site.
STFU about slashdot bias.
I'm pretty sure that last time that SUVs are better than a Prius thing came up here, many people did a very good (and reasoned) job of smashing the claims to really little pieces.
As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century,free flow of information is the only safeguard against...
I've seen this claim before. If this is "for certain", then I suppose it should be easy for you to produce some actual evidence to back it up. And please, don't bother linking to this discredited study.
STFU about slashdot bias.
He makes a clear point. Electric cars break the tie to any single fuel type. That means at any point the generation is cleaned up by adding renewables/nuclear even old electric on the road benefit.
You concentrate on the worse case scenario without even looking into it. You can look up carbon content per megajoule of energy today and do the comparison numbers.
You will still produce much less net emissions by using an electric car because of it's much higher efficiency.
Under no circumstance is an electric car producing more net emissions. This long tailpipe argument is an old unsupported red herring.
Until they falter, they can't break the unions.
When the unions are gone, they can do whatever they want. Unions hurt their profitability.
Watch and see. This whole process is to break the unions.
One thing thats been bothering me for a while, is every electric car or hybrid I've seen lacks solar panels. To me that makes perfect sense, quick charge battery's have a short life as well as being as it being difficult to find a charge point and cars like the above use standard connections but obviously the charge time is long enough to be annoying.2 &criteria=solar%20cells&doy=8m4 ass you place three of those on a spoiler thats a steady stream of 54watts to charge your motors and is effectivily 'free' energy, adding something like that as an optional extra and I'm sure it would pay for itself in added range/costs over the lifetime of the car.
I know solar cells have a dubious enviromental advantage but a small set on a spoiler or on the roof (silicon or the new type which is less efficent) would provide a constant small charge during the day, I know most car journeys seem to be work runs or school trips where the car spends a great deal of time inactive. I know that you can buy portable solar cells like the following http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=9690
I never understood why people watch the 0-60 timing and top speed of a car. On the road, what you need is a stable, safe, efficient vehicle.
Noone really want to go 0-60 in 3.5 seconds and reach 175mph, unless they're looking to die, and do it as fast as possible.
You know, putting the wheels side by side just might revolutionize transportation.
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
No, really!
Please add regenerative braking to this car! Get some extra mileage!
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
We all know that 0-60s and the like get the punters in, but the reality is that generally electric cars that focus on this are *atrocious* to drive.
These cars are far too heavy and handle like shit.
The Lotus/Tesla roadster goes some way to making a sensible car that handles well, but even still, its way worse than even a series 1 Lotus Elise.
So yeah, its interesting to see electric cars become cooler, and we should encourage that, but lets not let ourselves be fooled by press releases quoting 0-60s as a benchmark of a well performing motor vehicle.
The big three (I will talk primarily US) are tanking and fast precisely because they never got it on mileage and reliability until the japanese had a solid decade or more advances on them. And for the most part they still haven't caught up. They obviously threw away that market because they didn't give a crap, and are mostly retarded to boot.
I used to have a 74 dart, held six adults, roomy trunk, I tried it once it would actually do 110 mph with the six banger in it, and it got around 25 miles per gallon, with just a fraction of the plumbing and electrical nightmare modern engines are.
Now it is 2007, what do you see? See much diff with US cars other than they cost huge gobs more, about impossible for the average joe to work on them much, and get maybe just a smidgen better mileage, or in some cases worse or just static, no improvements? I'm just talking performance and mileage now, not radar gps equipped DVD playing sensurround airbags stuff, just from the transportation angle, which is primarily what cars are supposed to be anyway. It's like about zilch progress near as I can see.
Nope, the big three US car makers been stepping on their dicks for a LONG time now. On purpose or just top heavy retarded management, no idea (my guess is equal amounts of both, and yep, oil is a profitable commodity, you sell a lot more at 10-25 mpg than at 45-65 mpg), but the results are there to see.
I'll tell you another reason, the top engineers go into racing where it is fun, change can go fast and is driven by engineering, they get paid pretty darn good and are held in high esteem. They are *valued* folks. In the car industry, engineers are way down the list of "attaboys" and paycheck compared to the bloated marketing and managing side, and those folks get "driven" by the vultures who demand ever increasing profits but have mostly no clue about quality. A first year rookie car dealer salesman makes more than an engineer working for years. And I don't want to hear that it's all the unions fault either, they build what they are told to build, they have zero say in how things go in that direction.
I was in the UAW in the 60s,and you could clearly see this coming, at least I could. Of course back then it was the horsepower wars,that mostly blinded folks and oil by the barrel was very cheap as well, but anyone who stopped and extrapolated a few decades out could see gas would get dear eventually and that reliability long range would keep a car company running in the red. Detroit and most of their management and "analysts" missed both of those obvious calls. And they are so obvious, that yes, you might tend to think there was some action on the side to make it that way on purpose, lose some in one industry, gain a lot more in another.
Sort of like "new and improved" bloated operating systems sell new computers, even though the old ones aren't "broken" or "worn out". One hand washes the other with lotsa cash it appears.
Heh, a reverse from slashdot normal computer to car analogy!
yea umm you don't need much to make an electric car go. And you dont need gears and shafts and whatnot. A lot of the guys building electrics put 2 motors in direct drive on the rear wheels, they are pretty light (like 15 to 25 lbs each motor) and then its all hooked up to a mad speed controller. Unfortunately good battery technology is hard to come by for the average builder, which cuts the range at the moment to custom jobs but that will change. For an example there are electric drag cars that put over 2000 ft/lbs of torque to the ground. Also if you wanna overcome loss of traction on launch you don't have to increase weight (there is enuff weight from batteries anyway). You can increase wheel width or diameter or get some launching skills and control it off the line. Good drivers are there for a reason, otherwise you would just use an on off switch instead of a throttle.
Balderdash!
By your line of reasoning, Porsche, Ferrari and Lamborghini should have gone out of business decades ago, since "nobody" can afford those cars, and they clearly require "much more development before anyone will be interested".
Yet, somehow those companies manage to stay in business. I wonder how that is possible?
That's just too cool. Weird name though -- Embr[iy]o?
-- Alastair
Many of these are more-or-less performance oriented vehicles. . .
m l
Tesla Roadster: http://www.teslamotors.com/
Tango: http://www.commutercars.com/
UEV Spyder: http://www.universalelectricvehicle.com/spyder.ht
Wrightspeed X1: http://www.wrightspeed.com/x1.html
ZAP-X: http://www.zapworld.com/ZAPWorld.aspx?id=4560
Silence: http://www.silenceinc.ca/accueilEN.htm
VentureOne: http://www.venturevehicles.com/
Phoenix SUT & SUV: http://www.phoenixmotorcars.com/
Does it run linux?
It's shocking that a gasoline car advocate would add fuel to the fire by igniting an argument with electric car advocates. Maybe he doesn't have the capacity to understand the power of electric vehicles.
No, the whole idea is to have all the pollution happen elsewhere - like at the top of a very tall stack instead of at ground level in the centre of a city. It's the same with hybrids - they are the solution to a city traffic problem and have a different transmission system that has benefit.
As for the SUV thing - yes you can cherry pick stuff and say that a one litre Suzuki Seirra is still an SUV but it all comes down to big heavy vehicles requiring more energy to move about whether they have a tonne of batteries or are just big to look impressive. A minivan with the aerodynamic properties of a brick can carry more people for far less energy than what I would normally call an SUV.
The original AC cobras only ran 5s and mid 4s (0-60)depending on the small or large V8.
No one denies electric cars can be both quick and fast (top end), what we are lacking is a normal commuter car at around 10-15 grand, your very basic transportation model. A new model A or VW bug for the 21st century, the "people's electric". A hundred mile range is more than enough for the vast amount of commuter distances (average is 33 miles round trip in the US), which means you wouldn't need top of the line, 1,000 expensive laptop batteries to pull it off.
My best guess is the Chinese (maybe the Indians) will beat everyone for that market, and be inside that price range, while most of the other guys building electrics are building sportscars way out-side the pocketbooks for most people. Ya, some cool tech gets developed there, but we need the affordable electric,in the common styles, a sedan, a minivan/suv thing and a small pickup.
The website says 8-10 hours @ 220v (like your clothes drier uses).
This video says 45 hours @ 110v -- I suspect that it also uses a lower current so that special wiring isn't required.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
No, they're not the same polyester and carbon fibers that are in an inexpensive fishing rod.
F1 bodies are made out of prepreg, which use aerospace epoxy resins (which are nothing like polyester resins in terms of performance, cost, or availibility). Prepreg consists of various orientation and weaves of carbon fibers pre-impregnated with the above mentoned epoxies mixed under tight industrial process controls. Prepreg is then stored and shipped under refrigeration to the builders who have to use it before its shelf life expires.
Using prepreg is not the same as mixing up some Bondo brand polyester resin in a paper cup and slapping it onto some fibers with a disposable paint brush. It has to be oriented and draped into the mold by hand or by production robotics, then placed in a vacuum bag which in turn is placed in an autoclave. The part then is subjected to a very careful cure schedule consisting of high pressures and a series of specific temperatures for very specific periods of time. The cure schedule depends on the resin formulation and the desired properties of the finished part.
No part of this process is cheap. No part of it is similar to the process used in every-day consumer composite parts, except maybe for the fact that there's carbon fibers and some sort of resin involved. The carbon monocoque of an F1 car has far more in common with an F22 or JSF body than it does with a carbon/polyester fishing rod.
Why would you ever compare this to a production car?
It's a home-built prototype which meets no federal or state safety standards that is designed to accelerate quickly and has no top end (120ish MPH per the manufacturer). It's the same as the last 5 or 10 electric "sports cars" that have been publicized, then pretty much never heard from again, with the exception of the occasional "look at this, we still exist" PR releases.
If I built a light frame and stuffed any decent sporting motor in it, it would smoke this car. Comparing it to production exotic cars makes about as much sense as having a custom built supercomputer, then comparing the performance to one of Alienware's PC's. You'd be pissed if your supercomputer barely outran it. Especially if it only outran it in one test, and only if it's short enough. Against a production car it might win 0-60, and maybe 1/4 mile, but would get creamed in the half mile and beyond by all exotics, and many lower end sports cars.
The article is way off with both the top speed and range estimates, Hybrid Technologies own website list the top speed as "over 120MPH" not 175 MPH, and the range is listed as "over 100 miles" not 200. Do a few 0-60 runs, and that range probably shortens to 75 miles. Race it on a road course and it would probably drop to 20. Recharge time is listed as 8-10 hours on 220V, nothing is listed for 110V.
This sentence no verb.
What was Maddox's priceless comment to the Segway stability solution? "BAM...THIRD WHEEL..."
Why is this not modded funny, people?
I call your fake vehicle and raise you two real ones.
I'm so incredibly BORED with manufacturers bragging about horse power. I mean, think of that in terms of horses, where would you keep them all. 0-60 in 10 seconds or 20 seconds is absolutely fine for our transportation needs. This pursuit of viagra substitute in the form of horsepower is not helping manufacturers focus on more important tasks like reduced pollution, improved safety and "reinventing the car".
my $0.02
Isn't this a little ridiculous? Considering the current problems with energy supplies (Global warming, Oil prices, Middle Eastern politics, Nuclear waste), shouldn't we be focused on trying to make the cars as efficient as possible?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the purpose of cars to get from one place to another?
Is all this extra power actually necessary, or is it just the modern equivalent of beating my chest?
Actually its here now, but it will take that long to drive them to the dealerships.
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
I think if it wasn't for demands for safety systems (side impact beams = heavier doors, etc.), a quieter ride (insulation = blubber), and a more solid/rigid chassis (good for less squeaks and rattles and better handling, but it's still weight), that fuel economy would have improved much more. If you were to watch some models/platforms as they evolved from the late 1980's to the 1990's to the 2000's, you'd typically see a weight gain of 300lbs or more. It's pretty obvious that even though the power did improve, the power to weight ratio got shittier. In light of this, people should actually be a little impressed that they still managed to hold or slightly improve fuel economy numbers in comparison to earlier generations... I'd suspect a current powertrain would yield a lot better results if you were to swap it into an older and less bloated chassis.
Now if technology would allow for mass production of lightweight laminate composite chassis, then we could really make a leap with performance and economy.
As for any current problem with American cars... It's the interiors. They're actually on track and may even actually be better than foreign makes with engine/body/handling stuff. (Look at reliability numbers and similar stats. I don't get why folks are still stuck with arguments that haven't been valid since the 80's-90's.) Improvements really have been made, but that fails to impress with cheap plastic and clumsy trim that pops off when you get inside. It's the bean counter skimping bullshit that kills the deal.
My Jeep only gets about 200 miles to a tank...what's the big deal?
I think it is quite likely that carbon fiber could become an affordable building material. What we need is to create mass production techniques for the material. Currently, high end carbon fiber race cars are built by hand. I believe that there has already been progress on this front.
Boeing is building its new 787 out of carbon fiber, using a type of mass production technique. Also, I recently heard of a company named Fiberforge that seems to have the beginnings of viable mass production techniques. Their method is to first lay the fibers in the proper directions using something akin to ink-jet printing, and then apply the resins. Once they have made the sheet, they use heat and pressure to form the sheets into various shapes. I saw a sample object, with the shape of a hollow hemisphere. When you tapped on the hemisphere, it made a sound like a metal bell.
Carbon fiber cars have the potential to be far safer than steel cars. With the right engineering, we should be able to make cars that crumple in the optimal way during a crash. With the above production techniques, we should be able to modulate the thickness and strength over different areas of various car components to achieve a high level of occupant protection. It is simply a matter of good engineering.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
It used to be fun to see electric vehicles tangling successfully on the performance end of the spectrum.
Now, I think the golf cart myth is pretty well shattered and there's only so much market for toys.
So, how about a 4 seater that's priced reasonably (under 30K), can tangle on the freeway, and has enough range to not make you worry about having to fit in a recharge during a busy day of commuting, picking up kids, running errands, etc...
Whoever does this first makes billions. People are very practical and will favor electric cars when they work in their lifestyle simply due to the fact that they will feel newer longer, and cost so little to maintain.
What you're forgetting is one very very important thing: Headon collisions.
They very rarely happen in F1, but they happen a lot in real life.
2 cars hitting each other headon at 75mph each still gives you a 150mph impact.
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
In general, all the technology for EVs is there except for the fuel cells or energy-dense batteries.
The other elephant in the room is cost. Car companies like GM, Ford, and DCX don't want to risk making EVs or hybrids available that are much above existing vehicle costs. Parts manufacturers can't or don't want to afford to sell them the specialized, low-volume, EV/hybrid-only parts at high-volume commodity prices.
Toyota bit the bullet and paid to commoditize their technology to some degree. They are very vertically integrated as owners of Denso, a huge and diverse car parts manufacturer.