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VW Concept Microcar Gets 235 MPG
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."
So small, light and snug (from the picture), that when you get knicked by a Toyota on the autobahn, it can substitute as your coffin too! Now THAT's eco-friendly.
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
In 2006, this vehicle got 3,145 miles per gallon, and some high-school students last year won a mileage contest by creating a similar vehicle that got mileage in the 1000-mpg range.
If VW want to impress, they will have to do a hell of a lot better than that.
These cars are great if they ever come to market and if people will buy them. We keep hearing about these new and revolutionary cars, but nothing ever makes it to the showroom floor.
When some new gas saver comes out (like the smart4two), do people really line up to purchase it?
Also, I really wonder if a car made from carbon fibre, magnesium, titanium & aluminum will really hit the market starting at $31,750? In addition, what would my insurance be on this?
They want their futuristic car design back.
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)
Blah blah sig blah blah blah irony blah blah
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.
I'm going to be quite honest here. I hate it when company's do this. The media will make a big habub about it and then everyone will forget. When I saw concept car in the title I immediately stopped caring. Unless this car goes into mass production and I can buy it at my friendly neighborhood car dealer then it's useless.
Some Americans weigh that much!
I think someone dropped the ball there. Its a nice idea but it costs too much - they won't sell enough to make a difference to the planet. It needs to be cheap too, so punters will buy them.
Gas companies will start charging $235/g to compensate.
What we need is not more efficient gas-powered vehicles.
What we need is new technology entirely. Clean, efficient, cool technology.
It's really quite sad that we've gained such vast scientific knowledge this past century and we're still using the same basic idea (albeit with more precision) that they were using roughly a century ago.
It weighs 300 kilograms, and the dimensions are 3.47x1.25x1 meters. With that, it would qualify for a microcar class. In some places you wouldn't even need a licence to drive it..
By the time this car makes it into regular mass-production, (if it ever makes it at all), it'll look just like every other car on the road.
Gallons? Miles? Pounds? Dollars? What is all that?
this car was announced and driven from munich to 100km away like 4-5 years ago. Why is this news again?
Due to mileage demands, the quality of vehicles that are "road legal" has been decreasing every year. Where I live, it is now legal to drive those stupid "mini-motorcycles" on residential streets, even though they don't have turn signals or even brake lights, and (because of the position of the rider) are inherently less safe than a kid's unpowered scooter.
Those "experimental" vehicles did not look so UN-roadworthy, in comparison.
This isn't gas-powered. It's diesel-powered. Can you say "biodiesel?"
Also, maybe we're using the same basic idea because it actually works well?
Does anyone have another link? This one is blocked at work because blog is in the url, and I don't have any access to the internet other than work here in Iraq. And I'd really like to see the article! :(
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
It's impossible to solve all the engineering challenges of tomorrow all at once. I think VW wants to learn the engineering lessons from creating the car as much as introduce consumers to something that at least some will think is really cool.
I doubt anybody at VW thinks that they are saving the world with this new model.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
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.
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?
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.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
The main article is slashdotted, here's the summary article 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.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
In one corner: Soccer Mom talking on her cell phone in her Hummer H3. In the other corner: Driver in the VW One-Liter. Guess which one they give up counting body parts on, and which one they're trying to pull out of the vehicle because she's still talking on her cell phone.
Definitely deserves it.
or are you just REALLY happy to see me?
At 660lbs, the driver's weight has got to be a significant factor in the final mileage. Sure, Danica Patrick might get that kind of mileage (her driving habits aside), but I wonder what a fat coach potato such as myself might get - should I be able to fit my ass in the driver's seat at all?
my insights may be modded Funny, but at least some of my jokes are modded Insightful
Be sure to let us know how the NHTSA tests go for this vehicle.
If the vehicle needs to be modified to pass the tests, what sort of milage do you expect to see? I suspect it would wind up with an EPA rating around 60 MPG.
the feed is disrupted."
Does anyone sense a new Knightrider remake in the offing?
Seriously though, if I was allowed to drive on the public roads with 'normal' folks I wouldn't be ashamed of driving this thing, which is more than I can say for many (not all) other gas/energy/whatever-saving vehicles that have been developed so far.
If they can get people to actually want to own one of these instead of an obnoxious gas-guzzler then they'll come out of their niche and enter the mainstream. That would be neat.
The small matter of a lack of storage space would still put many off, I fear, but that's easily solved :)
"Three eyes are better than one" -- Lieutenant Columbo
With petroleum galloping over $140/barrel, it's great news that automakers finally start designing cars that are meant for the real everyday traffic.
The Smart bubble car by Mercedes-Benz was a success because manufacturers took into consideration that in day-to-day commuting less than 2 seats [on average] are occupied, at least in the bustling European cities.
It's good that VW is creating nimble cars with just two positions (the driver and just one "passenger of fortune": spouse, kid, cowerker, grocery). A light design and economic engine complete the picture. I wish we could see more of these little cars, especially with hybrid engines, if that is possible.
"Sum Ergo Cogito"
Mopeds are fuel-inefficient. They're also slow and no fun in the rain or snow.
Right now a gallon of fuel costs more than $ 9 in germany.
I don't understand why they would even bother with making a few of these by 2010 when the appeal of the diesel hybrid Golf seems so much more apparent. Bring out the diesel hybrids already!
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I just need somewhere to go with a midget and a lunchbox.
All kings is mostly rapscallions. -Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Simply kick all the senseless SUVs, Trucks, Offroaders and so on off the streets.
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.
You ride within a steel cage. If you hit a wall at 70mph head on the cage stays intact. Mind you, your organs turn to mush.
Video of smashing into other car
These feats with tiny cars and even using the word "car" in the same sentence as 235mpg is a fantasy I do not need to see or hear again. Has anyone made a car, with all the years of knowledge learned about efficiency..without the alice in wonderland? I know of one..it starts with a 3 main bearing boxer 4 engine, and uses your typical gas station...and its 50 freakin years old. IDIOTS.
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.
Das hier ist der Slashpunkt. Wir sprechen nur English hier - kein andere Sprache.
Und Bork, Bork, Bork!
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Or 38.4 mpg with an American behind the wheel.
I think this is a great design, but the canopy leaves me with one concern. How would you get out of the car if it rolled over? With the one-piece canopy door, you could easily end up stuck inside the car if it were flipped or rolled. And there's so little space inside, you likely wouldn't be able to kick out the glass, since you probably wouldn't have space to retract your legs to make a strong kick.
That said, I think it would be great for over 90% of commutes.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
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.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
For some reason, this car brings the Brazil themesong to mind. See 4 minutes into this clip:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=wa4fdGK8s9o
... was that it looked like a Weeble. Then I saw the license plate. WOBL. Remember "Weeble's wobbles but they don't fall down".
"Yes, I have a Disaster Recovery Plan. It's called my Resume"
If this 2 seater can get ~235 mpg a slightly bigger 4 seater should be able to get ~100-150 mpg I would think.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
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.
Or maybe all weather scooters. Sure, they could be deadly in a collision with a much larger vehicle, but I don't choose my cars or vehicles based on worse-case scenarios. This is basically a modernized 4 wheel Messerschmitt or BMW Isetta, or any other of the various micro cars produced over the years. I ride a bicycle daily, I'm well aware that I could be killed by a Mini Cooper, let alone a Hummer.
See http://microcarmuseum.com/index.html if you want to look at several micro-cars.
Or is it?
http://www.myersmotors.com/
These were being developed/sold in the late 90s, but Corbin Motors went bankrupt well before the prices on gas shot up. Ironically, there is a huge market for their tri wheel enclosed scooter today, they just came in ahead of the game.
http://www.3wheelers.com/corbin.html
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
This car could probably not be sold in the US as it is. We have much stricter safety standards here than in Europe. The Ford KA is pretty popular in Europe and get excellent gas milage, but for the model Ford plans to introduce in the states, the gas milage suffers considerably from all the added weight that comes about by adhering to US safety standards. Things like airbags, reinforced frames etc. The current version in Europe cannot be driven in the States legally. I have serious doubts that this car would meet US safety standards and continue to get such good fuel economy.
Way too high a price and still years away. If they could drop the price severely by just using all aluminum instead of exotic materials and still get a mileage of half that, 117.5 MPG (which would be still pretty snazzy and also hit the x-prize for cars deal), maybe they could get them out on the lots sooner. All these various alternatives the majors are working on are just too darn expensive. 100 grand for a tesla sportscar or "only" 60 grand for the sedan. Nuts. Honda fuel cell cars "lease" for 600 a month and like two hydrogen stations. Nuts. 60 grand for a chevy volt, only jumped 20 grand since they been talking about it and still none for sale. nuts. Perpetual design wanking. We'll see the Chinese and Indians eat the great mileage and cheap car market before detroit, stuttgart and yokohama pull it off. They just don't seem to understand affordable and get it done now, not years and years from now. Look at GM and Ford, they make good mileage cars but don't sell them in the US. GM used to make a decent and modern good mileage car for the US market, the original Saturns, now it is just another ho hum car with medium crappy mileage. Where's the real improvements? Old falcons and darts and valiants got 25 mpg with crappy transmissions and they were solid steel stout vehicles. 35 years later we are still stuck at that 25 MPG plateau, despite apollo moon rocket plumbing and wiring?? They need to study it more and keep throwing concept cars at shows at us?
My idea of a homebrew good mileage car that might work would be if you could get around a 7 speed transaxle for old air cooled VWs (you can mod one to a 5 right now), put that in a lightweight rail buggy with one of the new small Kohler two cylinder diesel engines (or another brand, just small, and not costing mega thousands and have all sorts of exotic controls either). If you want a real body they got them too or it could be fabbed, it is just fiberglass after all.
One nice thing about this car. When you're carrying a canoe on the roof and you get to a lake, you could put the car in the canoe and bring it across as well.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
It would be nice if the USA licensed the design and put it into production as, oh, I don't know, call it a "People's Car".
In WW2, the car companies and even the Navy proper built Airplanes for the war effort.In many cases, as the actual aircraft designer could only build a fraction of the demand, so the government licensed it out to a variety of commercial companies.
And this is a war. Consider the following unchallenged astroturf from Big Oil on fool.com :
BS Astroturf
Note how it conveniently leaves out the part where they extract America's oil from the ground for about $10 a barrel, and sell it to themselves at the global price of $150. Just a small detail, eh?
Nationalize oil production, license this car, learn how to build nuclear powerplants again. Bush/Cheney are drenched in blood and oil, and have their fingers in your ... wallet.
The smart car "bounces" off other cars with its intentionally rigid design so they other car gets more force of the impact because the smart car does not absorb any more than necessary.
Years ago we had a man die in a large truck down 1km from our house from a medium sized car. His massive truck didn't do a thing about the full speed car going thru a typical intersection! The SIDE of the toughest SUV can't save you from the sudden acceleration from a 60mph side impact (your brain actually sloshes in your head.) BTW, the driver had a crumple zone and only got a DWI.
FYI:
The human brain can handle more G forces forward or backward than from the side.
There were less fatal accidents when the speed limit was 55.
Turn-abouts are safer than intersections.
Injuries are much less if you are facing backwards (passengers, mass transit should take note of this... I mean the seats.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
The article says it has drag coefficient of 0.16. That's better than Tatra T77 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatra_T77).
I wonder what have been engineers doing all those years, if it's so hard to beat a car from the 50s.
with two average Americans on board it still weighs more than a VW sedan and gets the gas mileage of a Hummer.
Because we all know that once people are trained, then accidents never happen...
The car can do km/l, weighs 300 kg, is 3.47 m long, 1.25 m wide and 1.0 m heigh. Oh, and it would cost somewhere between 20000 and 30000 euro (according to TFA).
who gives a fuck about them? soon they'll be sucking on allah's dick because the euros are bitches to islam.
In cars like this there can be a substantial difference in mileage between a 130 lb driver and a 235 lb driver.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
So finally that concept I saw at Epcot Center in 1988 is going to get made into a real car! It's about time that model came out...
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/03/0256235&from=rss
for the 2 passenger unspecified wheel config?
i'm assuming they did this for a reason, you know, like to win the x-prize
kinda like how the next gen prius is trying to get a real 4 passenger car with 100 mpg, for that x-prize, by switching to li-ion batteries, and tuning the engine..
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
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 ...
I'd offer the suggestion that Bush's "All options are on the table." drum beat of war comments with respect to Iran, or Israel's recent military exercises have something to do with it, but I'm still grappling with your the implicit "China isn't a factor." reasoning.
Well, VW has already been selling cars like the Lupo 3L, named for the fact that it needs 3 litres of fuel per hundred kilometres. (I.e., three times as much as this one, or 3 times less MPG, but still pretty much half the fuel use of a normal car. And by "normal" I don't mean SUV;) It already makes heavy use of aluminium, btw.
Or, since VW owns Audi, it's probably no wonder that Audi sells the Audi A2 which isn't far off, but has even better (i.e., lower) drag factor. And costs more since it's, you know, an Audi. It's got an aluminium body too, but then Audi uses that extensively for their bigger cars too.
Not everybody buys one, to be sure, but you see a few around at least in Germany. And I see they're still being manufacturing the A2, so it can't be too bad.
Well, you have to also bear in mind that fuel taxes are rather heavy down here, so the price of a tank of gas is higher than in the USA. There always was a healthy market for small cars and diesel cars, and a lot less of a market for SUVs. (Though you see a few of those around too.)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
If you shoehorned a Subaru WRX all-wheel drivetrain into this thing, you'd have some serious acceleration.
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
I have seen dozens of fuel efficient concepts from VW in the past couple of years but so far I haven't seen anything hit the showroom floor, at least not in the states. Flipping through my DasAuto marketing bullshit magazine, I see an SUV and a Minivan. Not exactly a fuel efficient line-up for 2010, if you ask me. The Diesel Jetta is a step in the right direction, but again, it's not on the lots yet.
That being said, I saw this interesting little car floating around the blogohedron a couple weeks ago. I'll let you rtfa, but if this hits the US showrooms in 2010, I suspect it will be a Volt killer. Also, it's not hideously ugly.
Long story short, I am so fucking tired of waiting on this shit. At least in the Golf Twin Drive, Germany is putting some money behind it. As much as I hate corporate subsidies, governments need to make some incentives for getting SUVs and Minivans off the roads, and fuel efficient compacts on the roads because consumers apparently aren't interested, or if they are, the car makers aren't hearing them or don't care.
I had no idea the Smart had such a shitty performance. I used to get 36 mpg from my Chevette, about 25 years ago.
Two of the tractors I use have air cooled diesels, simply outstanding machines. Deutz. The smaller one with a 60 horse engine I can get around two full shifts out of 12 gallons running at heavy working rpms, 2000. The water cooled ones I use (kubotas mostly) tend to start to run hot as soon as the radiators get plugged up with dust and debris, which happens constantly, even with the protective screens in front of them, and they don't get near the mileage even though they are smaller engines. I think they like radiators in cars though so you can get some decent heat into the cabin as part of the reason anyway. The old bugs had some pretty non existent heat, if you were running the stock exhaust, and zero heat if you ran a better power and mileage exhaust. VW had to eventually go to an additional gas run heater for real cold weather use. heh, what we used to do in ye olden hipster days was just clamp a small camping propane heater in there and run with the windows open a little.
And with that said, remember when they were working on ultra light weight ceramic engines? What happened to those? Very little to no size changes when they got hot, meaning they could run them with no piston rings! Stuff like that. Maybe it just costs too much to build them, I really don't know, but they had some working. That's disappeared into the amazing inventions that have disappeared category. Smokey Yunick's engines he built for mileage with still good power, just to show it was entirely possible, gone, poofed, GM offered him toy money for it so he said no and went back to racing.
I like the part of the article where some idiot is driving down the road in a little black POS with his lights OFF.
I'd LOVE to see a gas saver that's not a total death trap. Imagine getting hit at 80mph on the freeway by a truck while you're sitting in one of those. So you're saving on gas but lose your life in the process. What's the point?
Jessica
Instead of pissing around with 200mpg cars that look like coffins and are as practical as a dick on whore, why not spend money on making normal cars get 50 mpg?
..is economically sound. Buying small single meal servings and going to the store or deli or latest cool restaurant for every meal is rather wasteful and overly urban trendy. It makes much more economic sense and green-sense to get your purchases bulk whenever, which is what costco stores are for, so the parent had a point. No one single vehicle fits all situations, the VW in the article is primarily for commuting or cheap road triops with light luggage, and as such would be interesting once they got the costs down a lot more. Mostly here we just use a mid sized sedan that gets in the 20s and can still do a lot of bulk shopping, as in hundreds of lbs, bulk dogfood and catfood, various other stuff, we do combined big shopping trips (and we are both skinny folks here) but occasionally we need a truck, and once in awhile I could get by with a scooter (if I had one). There is just never going to be a one size fits all vehicle, situations are just too different, household and family sizes are too different, etc.
....are going to be constantly in the oil drip/slick section in the center of the lane (if you mean eventually a lot of them will be sharing lanes). With a normal bike you ride to either side of that accident strip.
Forgot that part!
"Do you realize how much money you'd save in fuel costs each year?"
Well, since I currently spend about $2,000 a year on gas (even at $4.60/gal) I'd say that it couldn't possibly save me more than that. Since you could buy a used subcompact in fairly good condition for less than $10,000 it sounds like it would take 10 to 15 years for this care to pay back on the investment. Then again, you never know what fuel prices will do in the future. . .
it's a 40k price tag. This means over the life of the car you will save very little.
Additionally, I live in the southeast. How much do you want to bet there's no AC under that closed, plastic, solar oven.
I can get a yaris for a few bottle caps and a broken cigarette, it will have AC, it's toyota, a make with a reputation for endurance, and it will get reasonable MPG.
I can put the 28k I saved into a mutual fund and roll it over for gas money.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Someone tried to change the article, changing the claim from 282 miles per gallon to 235 miles per gallon. They stated 1 liter per 100 km. When you do the math, it really does come out to 282.1025213 miles per gallon. Here is the math with conversions:
2.54 centimeters per inch, 100000 centimeters per kilometer, 4.54 liters per imperial gallon.
12 inches per foot, 5280 feet per statute mile.
2.54 * 12 * 5280 / 1000000 = 1.609344 kilometers per mile, or the reciprocal,
0.621371192 miles per kilometer (there are 0.62 miles per kilometer).
100 kilometers therefore, are 62.13711922 miles.
1 liter is 1/4.54 gallons = 0.220264317 gallons.
62.13711922 miles / 0.220264317 gallons = 282.1025215 miles per gallon.
Of course, there is likely to be some pesky american out there, claiming he is buying fuel in the puny us gallon. Silly american. Ok, ok, I'll convert for you. My friend google tells me that 1 liter = 0.264172052 US gallons. Assuming a statute mile is still 1 all-american, yankyville mile and not something else (to make sure its uh-merican and not fow-ren), then 62.13711922 miles / 0.264172052 US gallons = 235.2145836 miles per uh-merican yankee gallon. My hope is that clears confusion regarding why the submitter tried to (incorrectly) change the title. He must be some kind of uh-merican or somethin.
What about emissions? I learned recently, to my surprise, that a motorcycle pollutes about 10x as much per mile as a car. Emissions equipment is heavy. A one- or two-cylinder diesel is something that I'd imagine would pollute like hell.
Find free books.
And that captive market is... The US Department of Defense, which is consuming 16 gallons of fuel per day per soldier in Afghanistan and Iraq by their own accounting.
Yeah, yeah, let's blame OPEC.
Warning: This signature may offend some viewers.
We really need to rethink the rules to allow and even encourage vehicles like this. Regardless of the motive technology we are facing an energy crunch going forward so we need the most efficient vehicles for personal transport in terms of Joules/KM. It doesn't matter if you use fossil fuels directly or electricity to power the vehicle, it will still need to be efficient.
This is obviously the design of a very efficient vehicle and a sign of things to come.
Naysayers worrying about being hit by SUVs need to remember that people already drive motorcycles/scooters and even an SUV won't protect you when hit by a Semi. Also as gas hits $10/gallon, your chances of being hit by an SUV will decrease dramatically.
We've been hearing about wondrous super concept cars since the 1960's. And always, ALWAYS the promised land is about 2 years in the future at which time everyone's forgotten or 'market forces' have changed. It's all bullshit. We haven't gotten any further with George Jetson technology of the future in the last 45 years.
A two seat microcar that gets 235 mpg is only about 2.35x the mileage that I could get out of my Bajaj Chetak scooter with a sidecar attached to it. And they each have approximately the same room. But I get to save about $40,000 for no rain protection.
I could have sworn it snowed in Germany. They can't possibly expect people to buy two expensive gas-misers in order to have optimum mileage year-round. That thing couldn't be expected to last a mile on a typical Canadian highway from December through the end of March - 1/3 of the year.
I would also be very concerned about getting into accidents because people don't look for midget microcars as they turn corners or merge lanes. I got around Vancouver for two years by bicycle and got hit 6 times by drivers not checking their blind spots (mostly just ended up on their hood). And that's in a town where it is well known there are many cyclists.
So regardless of how likely people are to survive accidents without injury, what's insurance going to cost on those? How much does it cost to fix an $8000 carbon-fiber monocoque? Sounds like owners will spend more on insurance than Civic drivers will on gas.
And once you get past 50 mpg or so, it really becomes academic. If the price of oil ends up making it prohibitively expensive to operate a car with less than 50 mpg, your personal mode of transportation will be the least of your worries, i.e. how is your food going to get from distant farms to your local supermarket? If people can't afford to drive their cars, guess what trucking companies can't afford...
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
How many m/l is that?
Ya gotta love the comments. These comments illustrate why oil will be over $350 per barrel as Mathew Simmons suggested a few years back. I personally have anecdotally tested this because in the city I live in lots of guys drive around in big pickup trucks. When asked who is going to use less gas, they look over their shoulder at the next guy.
One comment "save you money". So how many people are of the opinion that if gas prices cost them an extra $100 or so per month then they'll just skip going to the restaurant once or twice a month? Is this what its about? I thought if gas prices go up then people should think of using less gas.
VW is looking to produce a vehicle which actually provides the transportation people need and which addresses the issue of dwindling liquid fuel supplies.
A really good article to read can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_megaprojects
They are not forecasting prices, only supplies. The issue is that the supply side looks bleak from 2010 onwards and the price side is already starting to look bleak.
One thing I'll add is that these analysis do not consider the possibility of oil production from the Ghawar field keeling over. This will happen and it will happen abruptly and without much warning just as it did for the North Sea fields. The UK for instance switched from being an oil exporter to an oil importer in 2005. In 1998 the North Sea production peaked and that that time very few people saw the peak coming.
My feeling is Ghawar is peaking now but the real issue is the water cut at Ghawar. When production at Ghawar keels over its going to be ugly. Robert Hirsch figures $500 per barrel is not out of line.
This car was a prestige project of the outgoing chairman of VW, Ferdinand Piëch. He wanted to show that it is possible to build a 1-liter car in the time he is at the company. Later he himself drove the prototype from Wolfsburg (where the head office of VW is located) to a shareholder meeting in Hamburg. And all this was in the year 2002!
Since then the project had been frozen and the real news (which appeared in a German newspaper in September 2007) is, that this car, which was only a concept car, should be put on the marked in the year 2010.
The most interesting bit from the German article answers why this project hadn't been developed any further:
No, what we need isn't more efficient cars.
What we need are cities designed around mass transit, or better yet, a pedestrian lifestyle.
Think outside the box.
In the future, cars may serve the same role that horses do now.
I've been in the mood to buy a more fuel-efficient car like a Prius or other hybred, until I did some simple math.
And, even with one of these amazing 235 MPG cars, the dollars don't make it attractive.
If a car gets 235 MPG, and I drive 15,000 miles per year, at $5 per gallon of gas, that's $320 per year I would spend. The same math with a car that gets 25 MPG would spend $3000 per year.
So yeah, I would save $2600 per year in gas with this ultra-efficient car. However, this car might retail for as much as $30k or $40k. This is probably $10-20k more than an equivalent non-efficient car. I would have to keep the car around for 4-8 years before seeing a return on that investment.
And the Prius with it's 60-ish MPG would take well over a decade.
-David
I'm sick and tired of people whing about "What if that hits an SUV?" as their justification for getting an SUV the same(or larger) the same size in case they crash into someone.
I really hate to break it to you, but no matter what vehicle configuration it is, BAD THINGS HAPPEN in a car crash. No magical $ you spend on an suv will turn a car crash from blood *& guts to rainbows & puppies. Airbags are everywhere now, which does a better job compared to optional seatbelts & no airbaigs of yesteryear's vehicles. You roll your saving throw, and hope for the best.
This would make a great downtown (or airport-to-city) taxi if it has a large enough luggage compartment, and if hopping on and off the thing isn't too difficult.
I don't have stats at hand but I'm guessing that the vast majority of taxi rides are 1-person. Seems to be the case here in Paris at least.
In many Asian countries, short-distance taxis are motorcycles (well mopeds really) who can take 1 or 2 passengers. This hasn't caught on in the West for reasons of safety and comfort. But I can see this type of car delivering the same kind of service.
Hello! I'm a disaster waiting to happen!
In "My Name Is", Eminem refers to a "fifth of vodka". A fifth of liquor was one-fifth of a US gallon, which gallon is 231 cubic inches, or 3.785 L. This would make a fifth 46.2 in^3, or 757 mL. But nowadays, many liquor-regulating agencies have converted to SI and restandardized the fifth at 750 mL. This new fifth would make the gallon exactly 3.75 L
What's wrong with diesel? Rudolph Diesel, the inventor and designer of the diesel engine had it running on vegetable oil. However vegetable oil isn't diesel, by mixing lye to the oil though diesel can be made. So, unlike gasoline, diesel is very much a renewable fuel.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Transport the goods on trains. That's the best you can do anyway.
So how should we transport goods from the train station to where they will be used?
Here in the U.S., with all the behemoth SUVs driven by morons
With high fuel prices people are dumping their SUVs.
yacking away on their cell phones when they should be paying attention to their driving
I almost believe that maybe there should be a law against talking on a cellphone without a hands free set while driving.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I like to think that by driving a very light vehicle I'm keeping other people safer in a collision. That probably makes me a bad American, valuing the lives of others as much as my own.
While I applaud and appreciate your sentiments, you cut down your fellow American by assuming malice where ignorance is most likely the correct attribute for which to assign blame. No one is getting up the in the morning and saying, "today I'm going to be a bad person", but it has never occurred to them that they are endangering everyone else for their own perception of safety. Do not attribute to malice what is better attributed to ignorance.
;)
Value others lives over your own if you want to make a difference.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
If fins were added that were lighted with blinking LEDs then this would be visible to such a degree that the issue would be the accidents it caused.
You roll your saving throw, and hope for the best.
Except that this car, there isn't much room for "saving throw". You'd need to roll 20 about every time with this car on normal roadways.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
See the Aptera typ-1 at www.aptera.com
Sure, you'll have to be a California resident for the first distribution but I'm sure that'll be resolved shortly after they start production. I'm willing to wait for it.
Democrats and Republicans are like AIDS and Cancer, I want neither!
What are you.. a moron?
Whatever options you "take off the table," you will eventually be forced to put back on the table, and actually exercise.
The best way to avoid war is to appear to be ready for it.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
This would include cargo trucks and semi tractor-trailers.
Also, what about mass transit vehicles, such as coach buses, city buses, and school buses?
In your utopian world, will you remove all of these as well?
My point is while your position may seem at first look to be an easy solution, upon closer examination it is completely without merit. Not all large vehicles are "senseless."
This story and most of the current comments are flat-out riduclous. If VW and any other manufacturers want to conduct research for future vehicles, then great. Go forward and do great things. Perhaps it will yield benefits in the future. That is the purpose of research.
However, there are vehicles currently available which get outstanding mileage, are simple to construct and maintain, and do not require change to existing infrastructure.
I am not talking about hybrids or hydrogen.
I am talking about current small diesels. Example: A VW diesel Jetta will get better than 50 mpg highway.
Making more small diesels available combined with an increase in biodiesel production would (in addition with other measures) significantly lower US dependence on foreign oil within a few years.
With gas in excess of $4.00 a gallon, fewer 3000 lb cars will be out on the roads over time. This trend will reduce your exposure to collision with a 3000 lb vehicle. Your purchasing decision helps effect this trend.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Ok, so first Slashdot readers started to decide to skip the article that the summary links to. Now the next step in our evolution is that we post without even reading the summary. Great. I quote, from the 1 paragraph summary that you are apparently too busy to read. . .
"Called the One-Liter, because that's how much fuel it needs to go 100 kilometers"
There you go.
If there are only light cars around, no one get's hit by a 2.5 ton doctor's wife with her Porsche Cayenne.
As a 911 owner, I have to say that the day Porsche released the Cayenne, I was saddened. It is the polar opposite of what Porsche represents. Dark times. It's like in the eighties when Porsche released those front-engine models to imitate the japanese sports cars.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
The problem with trucks *is* the last mile of delivery, where you have city streets, intersections, congestion, pedestrians, etc
Why the fuck are they crowding the interstate highways then? Panel trucks should be the last mile of distribution. Semi trucks shouldn't exist except for small hops between towns that aren't on a railway. Sams Club would do well to re-locate adjacent to train tracks now that gas is so high.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
If you fear islamic terrorists, then they are your master.
Osama bin Laden could easily sway the election, simply by releasing a tape saying "I am Osama bin Laden, and I support John McCain."
He did it for Kerry, after all.
It's been a long time.
F1 drivers have neck braces, helmets, body hugging seats with four point harnesses...etc.
No sig today...
Using a cell phone (ie: puching in digits to dial... not talking) is just about as unsafe as tuning your radio or popping in a cd. If done properly, talking on a cell phone is no more dangerous than talking to a passenger.
As I said in my reply to the post above yours perhaps I should of said driving with the phone glued to the ear, though actually I'd expand that to driving unsafely.
The driver doesn't want to sound rude so they keep talking, distracting themselves from driving.
An accident would be a lot more deadly than being rude. I know, while in a coma in the hospital after I was hit the docs told my family it would be a miracle if I lived. Because someone who never should of been driving hit me my life as been a living hell, so I'd argue with the docs about there being a miracle. As for using a cellphone, it's the only phone I have, I never make a call while driving. I will either make a call before driving or I will a make it when I get where I'm going. And if I receive a call while driving I'll ask the person to wait while I pull over, once not a danger I'll talk. Nothing is as important as life. Well a good quality of life as my is shitty and I wish I hadn't survived.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
(I mean the movie)
Same car.
of course in the USA it only get 20 kilometers to the liter due tot he additional weight of the driver.
I own a BMW 320i, a lovely and fun 2400lbs car from the early '80s. With the ancient 101hp M10 engine it gets a modest 30mpg on the highway. I have plans to put in a newer engine for both power and efficiency gains.
But I probably won't see more than 60mpg no matter what gasoline engine I put in there. These old cars aren't very aerodynamic, so it takes about 20hp to keep moving down the highway at 70mph. Based on the mileage I got, the 20hp figure (which I got from timing how quickly the car loses speed while coasting in neutral), and 135MJ of energy in a gallon of gas, I calculated the average efficiency of my engine and it was around 18% IIRC. Now go look up the maximum efficiency of a gasoline piston engine and you'll see that there simply isn't room to triple that, unfortunately.
... if you hit a school bus with your SUV (or the bus your tanklike SUV), what will happen with the kids? So, you survive, and 10 kids get killed...
What is better? And what is fair? Is that OK when the bus hits you, or not if you hit the bus? There are always traffic participants which are weaker or stonger tahn you. Building bigger guns... ehm... tanks... ehm, cars is not the answer.
In fact both Europe and Japan have developed really efficient small Diesels. My commuter vehicle has a tiny 1.5 liter 3 cylinder turbo intercooled Diesel engine, basically half a V6, seats 5 European-size adults, gets 45 miles to the US gallon at 65-70 mph, and tops out at over 110mph. But I cannot see that it would sell in the US, because all the American visitor notices is that the engine vibration is more than in his SUV or van, and the 6-speed automated gearbox is not quite as smooth as an energy absorbing slushbox. Your Kohler generator engine is way behind Daihatsu, Mercedes or VW technically (after all it has to run on inferior fuel and withstand other abuse, and be cheap to repair, I am not knocking it) but it would only sell to the converted.
It has taken sixty years to persuade the US consumer that bigger and more powerful is always better. How long will it take to persuade them to buy a Toyota Yaris, a Suzuki Swift or a Hyundai i10, in their Far Eastern/European engine variants?
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Compare:
http://blog.wired.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/2008/07/02/vw_one_liter_concept01_2.jpg
http://memimage.cardomain.com/member_images/4/web/2416000-2416999/2416491_569_full.jpg
cb
Oooh! What does this button do!?
Well, right now today you would sell the heck out of them if you could get them on the car lots. Around here now I am seeing very prominent signs in the windows of vehicles at the car lots emphasizing some alleged bragger mileage, like "30" mpg. If you could put 40 or 50 up there and it not be consumer fraud I don't think you'd have much trouble selling them. I know I went last year and snagged an old beat on datsum diesel pickup because I knew they got fantastic mileage, but those sorts of vehicles are rare here. And we've had demand, it has been there, but none of the car companies has been able to address it fully, toyota has a backlog for priuses for instance. And no one has electric vehicles yet, nothing between a glorified golf cart or an exotic sportscar. They keep saying americans only want giant crappy mileage vehicles, when the reality is that is primarily what they produced and put on the lots so that's what people wind up buying, because they have no choice at all, that's all there is for the most part, even though it sort of "looks" like there are choices.. I see a ton of smaller cars on the roads, and people are keeping them running, but you look at the car lots and very few of them are in the lines at the new car dealers, and it has been that way for some years now, the public has been buying up the smaller more efficient vehicles, but the millionaire bosses at the car companies just can't seem to see what is reality in front of their faces and kept pushing out the huge monsters, even as they closed plant after plant and are going bankrupt. Those guys who make the big decisions are all so rich they just didn't "get it" on the economy at all, out to lunch, clueless, the same as their majority big rich shareholders, so they had no realistic corporate governance. They just so much didn't "get it" on the worsening economy and the need for affordable vehicles and vehicles that got better mileage that I guess they just assumed that it wasn't getting bad or something. At least that is all I can figure out, just a near total disconnect with what non-millionaires have been going through. Apply the same to the big union bosses and still working union workers, they make so much more than the median here they don't get it, even with their business crumbling around them. I was in the UAW in the 60s and it was like that, both management and rank and file out to lunch, you just couldn't get nary a one of them folks to see Japan coming on strong, it would bounce off their brains and they would dismiss it, I tried, I really did, to get some acknowledgment of the situation to sink in there, eventually gave up and quit that work I was so disgusted with the lack of vision and no apparent long view on things, and it looks to not have changed one single bit. Those people in that business in the US just can *not* use some normal data and business analysis acumen and extrapolate more than a couple years into the future worth beans, they just can't. Henry Ford was the only one who could near as I can see.
Go die in a flaming jihad.
Post tenebras lux. Post fenestras tux.
and used 0,89 Liters at 72 km/h on average.
All in here:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/VW_1-Liter-Auto
(only in the German version of this Wikipedia article)
This seems like VERY old news.
With gas already $5/gallon in some parts of the country (paid 4.89 yesterday), how many SUVs do you think will still be on the road at six dollars a gallon, much less the ten bucks the news keeps telling us we "should" be paying?
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
"Volkswagen is bringing new meaning to the term 'fuel efficiency' with a bullet-shaped microcar that gets 100km/l. 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 300 kg. Aerodynamics plays a big role in its fuel economy, so the car is long and low, coming in at 3.5 metres long, 1.2 metres wide and 1 metre 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 like my coffee the way I like my women - roasted and ground up into little tiny pieces.
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.
Excellent explanation
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.
I really need to tell you about this "fall mix"...
best autumn ever.
Come /.'s there's a whole world out there for you to be smart and nerdy about!
Most people seem to miss an important prefactor in decelerating:
F= m*a
Having a long, heavy car will give you a smaller acceleration (simplest assumption: a = 1/2 * v^2/l, l=lenght of car), but you will have a lot more mass involved and therefore lot's of force acting on the structure of your car.
Therefore, a smaller, lighter car structure can withstand a higher deceleration (not much higher inititial velocities though, there's that pesky square).
Of course, there are two problems: The mass of your body is always constant, and the forces acting on that part of the system/car will be higher (yet another reason to stay/get lean!). However, a working internal safety concept (airbags, etc.) can offset much of that.
The other is that if you are the heavier counterpart in a full-on crash, you will decelerate less, as the resulting heap of trashed metal will travel in your initial direction.
However:
First, in this case you just killed (most certainly) the other party.
Second, when you hit an immovable object (Bridge, (large) Tree, House, an SUV will be utterly destroyed, while the lighter car might sustain it.
Third: Protruding hard objects are most certainly going to be pushed right through a SUV as there is no way that they can stop that mass, while a Smart will be stopped.
The suject of accident avoidance has been brought up already, so I won't comment on that. I very much prefer the fuel-efficency and not being a almost-guaranteed lethal danger to the other drivers.
---Happy german Smart-driver since 2002---