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Appropriate Tech, 300mpg Car Top 2008 Innovators
longacre writes "While some giggles were floating around about the irony of a Microsoft product (Photosynth) finding itself on the same top 10 products list as a toilet, the true stars of last night's annual Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Awards were innovations of far more consequence. MIT professor Amy B. Smith won the marquis Leadership Award for her work on building simple, low-cost technology to help developing countries. Joining Smith from the appropriate technology field were a group of CalTech students who created all-terrain wheelchairs for the disabled, and a Procter & Gamble exec who developed a water purifying powder for the third world. Aptera Vehicles founders Steve Ambro and Chris Anthony made the cut for their 300mpg Typ-1e, which is expected to hit showrooms by the end of this year. Other winners ranged from the Mars Phoenix Lander team, to the developers of a low-cost cancer test, to the creators of Spore."
300mpg is impressive, but they stopped selling trike's for a reason ( and they now sell quad's in their place ).
That trend with electric vehicles actually worries me, and I can't help but wonder at the safety implications.
Is it really so difficult to keep the drag co-efficient down without losing the extra wheel?
GrpA
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
Single front-wheel trikes are dangerous. Single back-wheel trikes are pratically as stable as a four-wheeler.
As a bonus, this one looks amazing (saw one in person this summer): http://spyder.brp.com/
If you bother to read the blurb for the Aptera, you'll see the 300mpg claim is for a fully charged hybrid.
Unfortunately there was no information on how many gallons of electricity it holds.
Pit this versus a full size truck or even a semi and it has little chance.
And what small economy car do you want to drive head-on into a semi? Frankly, unless it is another semi, you are going to have a very bad day... And even if it is another semi, the day won't be good.
Why does everyone cry "Safety" whenever a small car is introduced. Think of it as a motorcycle with a roof and it becomes much easier to envision driving to work every day. I doubt if I'm the only one tired of the safety cops trying to controll everything I do. Dangerous is FUN.
I'd still question the stability. It depends on the location of the CoP, which can vary depending on the situation the vehicle finds itself in.
Front-wheel trikes are succeptible to issues when braking (CoP moves forward) and turning (CoP moves to the side) at the same time.
Under those circumstances, which are reasonably likely to occur, I agree with you on the configuration.
However, under other circumstances involving stability and under high yaw (eg, braking causes the car to spin, etc, and with less traction on one rear tire than two) I'd still be fearful that the car would flip rather than slide - all that really needs to happen, IMO, is for the back-end to spin around to the front under braking.
Plus you also have the issues related to contact surface area of the rear tire.
I guess I'm talking about the kinds of positions you might find yourself in, that you learn to deal with in an advanced driving course, but whenever you go for three wheels, the first compromise is stability.
The car does look nice though... Like a composite body aircraft cockpit - :)
GrpA
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
Quite true, so long as the CoM is positioned just behind the front wheels. When braking, that puts the CG directly between the front wheels. You're left with the same resistance to rollover, but you have a lower moment of inertia, so it's more responsive. Also, with two wheels at front steering, just like in a normal car, you have similar tendancy toward understeer rather than the extreme oversteer of "delta" trikes.
There was a good article from Road and Track in May 1982 where they tested various configurations; there's excerpts here.
Isn't it enough to know that I ruined a pony making a gift for you?
Not to mention that its roof and door crush strengths are over double the NTSB standard. Composite monocoque structures are nice that way.
The crash test results should put a lot of concerns at rest. Yes, they've been simulating crash tests with the same software that BMW uses, but nothing comforts like real-world tests. They just took the jobs for crash test engineers off their jobs page, so looks like they've been filled.
Isn't it enough to know that I ruined a pony making a gift for you?
I'd like to see what happens to the drag coefficient(and the dent in the wallet of the owner) if that thing gets a ding
My mother in law laughed off the suggestion of damage to the Aptera when it came up in a conversation. She used to work at a place that built fiberglass hovercraft and said that they're pretty easy to repair. This is a 6th generation quilter in her sixties. Besides, composites are a lot more resistant to damage than steel. As for taking out a wheel, do you really think a thin metal skin on your car around your wheels is offering any relevant protection?
In other words, nerds, think about this: If you were at a party
Your insight into the mind of women is stunning. Really.
Isn't it enough to know that I ruined a pony making a gift for you?
by that logic we should all drive tanks so that when we get in accidents our cars survive but we die (crumple zones are designed so that the car absorb the energy from a collision rather than passengers). your attitude is more suited to destruction derby than road safety.
ICE engines are a technological anachronism no matter how you slice it--both environmentally and in terms of energy efficiency. so what you feel is based on irrational beliefs. the only reason hybrids are useful now is because we haven't yet built the infrastructure for plug-in electric vehicles to completely replace ICE vehicles. it's an intermediate phase. it would not make sense to have hybrids if electric propulsion did not have advantages over ICE propulsion.
but all forms of progress, whether technological, cultural, social, or political, there will be a strong rearguard reaction to overcome. therefore it's important to disseminate information and encourage people to take a rational approach to the issue rather than falling victim to knee-jerk responses based on ignorant reactionary attitudes. luckily there are companies out there working to dispel false negative perceptions of electric vehicles as a lot of people still associate environmentally-friendly with poor performance.
It's muchmuchmuch easier to avoid a crash in the first place in a small, maneuverable vehicle than in a big one with a lot of mass. Semi dodges a kid in the road, swerves into another lane with oncoming traffic. Now try to get that huge mass to swerve back into the proper lane. Try the same dodge in a motorcycle, small car or something similar.
The hybrid has 40-60 miles of electric range and a 5 gallon gas tank. The vehicle gets 130mpg in charge-sustaining mode in both 55mph steady-state and in city driving (lower at high freeway speeds). So, I'm sure you can do the math. Base price for the Typ-1e (electric) is $27k, while the base price for the Typ-1h (plug-in hybrid) is $30k. These are, of course, subject to change, but they seem to have roughly stabilized on these values. Like with any new car purchase, expect to add cost for options, taxes, title, and registration.
38K miles a year? Wow. Yeah, that'd sure be a big cut in your fuel bill ;)
Isn't it enough to know that I ruined a pony making a gift for you?
The GP is absolutely correct, though. Americans have this mentality of assuming that crashes are inevitable that's not shared in much of the rest of the world. Hence, a lot of Americans only feel comfortable driving overweight (read: unmaneuverable) armored tanks that make them *more* likely to be involved in accidents. Statistics bear this out; SUVs are more likely to be involved in accidents than small cars.
As for safety: try over double the NTSB standards on roof and door crush strength, modelled with the same crash-survivability testing software that BMW uses, with normal car safety features (traction control, dual airbags... Actually the airbags are among the most advanced on the market -- in-seatbelt curtain airbags), and so on down the line. And I'll take a crash in a composite vehicle over a steel one any day. You ever seen the sort of 100+mph crashes of exotics that people walk away from? It's pretty amazing.
As for your last line, you're completely wrong on all counts. It's a 2+1 seater -- two full sized seats in the front and one seat for a small child in the back. And it has 16 cubic feet of trunk space, which is the size of your typical sedan's trunk. This is not a small car -- just an unusually shaped one. The unusual shape eliminates the presence of a normal backseat in exchange for the aerodynamics to gain its extreme efficiency.
Isn't it enough to know that I ruined a pony making a gift for you?
While this car is impressive, I think the car designed in 1999 and going on sale in a year and a bit is much more amazing.
Just think, the pres of VW got 317 miles per (imperial) gallon driving this thing to a press conference. This is without any batteries or hybrid tech.
I would be happy with a runabout that achieved just half of that.
Below are links if you have not read about it yet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_1-litre_car
http://www.canadiandriver.com/articles/gw/vw1litre.htm
"lying" is a bit of a mis-statement.
We old guys remember the Aero Morgan - a three wheeler with a V-twin light aircraft engine at the front and a single rear wheel. In those days there was no front wheel drive, so it was far less advanced than the Aptera. They used to race these things, in Germany no less, and seeing a whole lot of them going through bends at over 100mph was a slightly worrying sight, but fun. Nowadays you may see one in the UK out on a rare sunny day. The point is, although very niche, they were a well proven design which attracted a devoted following. The Aptera might well do the same.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Why do you need to take your whole family shopping? Can't you buy your Rice Krispies by yourself? ;-) And even if you needed to take the whole family, then you can just take two cars. Mom and kid in the Aptera; dad and kid in the other. The combined 150 mpg is still a LOT better than the average 20mpg SUV.
Very few people need to carry a Ford Living Room everywhere they go.
For those wanting four wheels, Volkswagen will soon have a 1L/100km (240mpg) car.
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
The mixture includes flocculants, which cause suspended solids, heavy metals and parasites to clump together. The resulting "floc" can then be filtered out with a cotton cloth. Time-released chlorine kills bacteria and viruses. Within 30 minutes, about a teaspoon of the powder can treat 2.5 gal. of water. "The visual improvement is dramatic," says Eric Mintz, chief of the CDC's diarrheal diseases and epidemiology section.
A flying car would not even compare to this, not even a flying car that gets 300 miles per gallon. Having grown up with Star Trek (original series) this too me is the closest to Star Trek I have seen. A powder to make water safe. Screw that silly looking three wheeler, this helps the world far more than any vehicle.
I was very surprised not to be able to find mention of it on Wikipedia, even under http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_water_purification
It apparently never made it big in the news which is a disappointment, hopefully this "award" will give it its due
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
[Citation needed]
If you refer to this, it seats two and is hardly by any definition something that seats a whole family. (Not that you claimed that, but somehow it seemed implied) It'll be there in 2010 in limited numbers... Read: "expensive" (It says 20k€ to 30k€ in the wikipedia article)
I don't object with your post, just with that statement. We're far from there.
Also note that a 3L/100km car was in production for years but was scrapped because of low sales :-/
And that's why you're not an economist.