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Alternative Energy Policies a Boon For Inflatable Electric Car
Brian Stretch writes with a story about the Mini Utility Vehicle prototype from XP Vehicles, an electric car that is partly inflatable. The recent struggles of the auto industry and a political climate that supports the development of alternative energy vehicles have given the car a better chance at actually hitting the market. Quoting:
"Building a car takes many years and tens to hundreds of millions of dollars traditionally. XP is able to cut a lot of the costs and timeframe because its car has 70 percent less parts than a regular car, and the company is using novel materials that require simpler factory devices, and production and manufacturing processes that lower the cost to deploy. ... The seat is inflatable, the dashboard is inflatable, and the internal structure and carrying racks are inflatable, or a mesh suspension. Instead of requiring six-axis robots, XP uses radio frequency welders that look like giant waffle irons. The factory equipment is much less expensive and the car simply has less parts that could fail. The motors are built into the rear wheels in most XP prototypes. The first cars to reach the market will have two rear hub motors and a motor controller, that's it."
It takes certain talent to imagine a boon in inflatable cars...
;P
Just don't buy the upgrade
From TFA:
all of the Lithium is located in countries that are hostel [sic] towards the U.S. - which is a bit of a problem ...
... which I guess means that they only reserve substandard accommodation for their US visitors, whereas everyone else gets 5-star. Rough deal.
Brilliant!
They can expand production facilities cheaply by buying up old whoopy-cushion factories and doing minimal re-tooling! They could even re-hire the old employees, as the same skill-sets would apply!
However, I don't think I'll be the first in line to buy a new "Whoopy-Mobile". It would simply be too embarrassing to deflate at a public parking facility.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
From reading the article, it looks as if the company has put in a lot of thought and effort into making a product that not only is technically advanced but also have developed a marketing strategy and are tailoring their product for a segment- The point about removable chargeable batteries was something that had kept crossing my mind everytime i had seen an article on electric cars and I am glad someone has gotten around to implementing it (I am unsure if anyone else has..if so please feel free to correct me!) . They appear to be getting their basics right and in addition are trying to put in some real innovation (inflatable parts).I hope they get their funding problems sorted. I for one would be rooting for them!
Bolivia is suspected to have substantial stocks of WMDs; especially under Salar de Uyuni
never fear though - this is yet another imaginary product (they have nothing more than a computer rendering ffs), you need not fear that your car will deflate on you any time soon.
RTFA for such gem's as this "What we have discovered is that the insurance industry is not going to let electric cars run extension chords all over the place because you trip and fall" - genius, just pure genius.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Doesn't this sound like a hoax? The CEO is named Redmond. The Car is called the XP. "XP started out with an investment from Microsoft, which offered a majority of its software products and a very large number of its licenses to build some process management." Aren't these some sort of reference to eXtreme Programming and and Windows XP?
Are they going to come out with a Sport Utility model called the eXtreme? Will the next models be called the Vista and the Seven?
. . . maybe this is breakthrough that we have been waiting for on the "Flying Car" front?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
State of Utah has more than its fair share of investment scams:
Here is one of several articles I have seen on the topic:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4188/is_20070107/ai_n17107556/
And after story about the inflatable car, I got the impression that these people were looking to scam investors, and/or the federal govt.
Develop a plan.
Execute it well.
Possibly get bought buy a larger rival. Or, the way things are going... build up resources until a 'larger' competitor with access to markets is bought.
No tears for GM or Chrysler, please; I'm a stockholder and I want to see honest, prudent, and environmentally responsible returns.
Release the Cruft.
God-speed!
They are now too expensive as well, and their work will be outsourced to cheaper waffle irons that are presumably located somewhere in Belgium...
so when we now hear of a car being blown up in an incident it doesn't mean its terror related
imagine you willy being smacked until it bleeds
Inexpensive flying cars finally arrive.
srsly.
The comments here have shown me one thing: it's all in the mind of the buyer. Cars like this don't turn over on a roundabout, neither will they be blown away by the wind. But they won't sell, cause customers (at least in the US) seem to have a different mindset. Most of the commenters seem to want a heavy, typical American concept which consumes a lot, of course. Now maybe it's a hoax, maybe not. But they'd better look at Euro, Asian and African markets for a concept like this. Over here, we've had a number of electric vehicles on the road since 20 yrs. or so. Most of them based on existing small cars. Most of these projects were fairly succes full given their niche market, because people don't mind driving a really small car. Tata (India) will be present in the US market real soon. First with a small car with a classic engine, later on with an air powered car. They have the size, money and production facilities to make this work. Others are coming too. But will they be able to change US' customers mindset?
Better fill it with CO2, and further reduce greenhouse effect.
There are potentially significant safety problems with these futuristic types of car design.
Specifically, when e.g. an inflatable car collides head on with a good-ol-gasoline-based car. The latter has a heavy engine in the front, surrounded by metallic stuctures designed to absorb the force of an impact, thus protecting the passengers. What does an inflatable car do to protect the passengers in these types of collisions?
A big engine compartment and the protection it provides has been an essential component of automobile design for decades, and when developing new car models with new power sources, the lessons learned regarding safety should not be forgotten.
So go ahead and call me a grammar Nazi. At least I'm not the illiterate clot.
The first cars to reach the market will have two rear hub motors and a motor controller, that's it.
You mean there is no batteries ? ;-)
"Sockets are the standard networking API, also useful for stopping your eyes from falling onto your cheeks" zeromq.org
My inflatable date will just love it.
Saved me from posting the same thing.
No, seriously, there's no bloody way I'm getting into a car with a control system running Windows. I don't want the dashboard telling me "A fatal exception has occurred...".
I doubt their ability to build the car, considering that they obviously don't understand the difference between power and energy. From the table in TFA:
-"Available power" given in kWh
-and three rows below a "hybrid power" for the Volt that is completely meaningless, considering that the Volt drives on electric motors and only uses the petrol engine for recharging.
Unless David Mantey, Editor, PD&D has cooked up this drivel on his own. In that case I apologize to the XP Vehicles Inc. crew and David Mantey may considered himself bashed ;-)
C - the footgun of programming languages
Obama is seeing to it that soon we Americans will only be able to afford small Euro cars, too. All Americans except him, that is. He and all the other politicians will still be rolling around in armored luxury vehicles surrounded by an SUV security convoy. Must be nice to be able to flick off every single American and still have them lining up to suck your cock...
I wish them the best, but their project is doomed. The EV market is clearly going towards batteries, the comments in the article about the scarcity of lithium (11th most numerous element in the ocean) are laughable. In current battery costs, only a small percentage goes towards the lithium raw material purchase. At least EVs more or less piggyback off the current electric grid, which obviously couldn't handle transportation demands, but its a start.
The problems with fuel cells are numerous. Where do you buy your fuel cells? How do you get your hydrogen from point A to point B? The problem with these guys is that their project was initiated when fuel cells were 'hot' to those without common sense (government) before they went on to the next brainless strategy...ethanol (oops).
Not only that, commercially recoverable hydrogen comes from natural gas...
Speaking of innovative body construction and drive train technology, here is car which is constructed almost entirely of injection molded parts, and whose biomass powered drive train qualifies it as a zero emissions vehicle.
On top of that, it has that elusive quality that makes a car a hit: style. Within the target market segment, its appeal is undeniable. Best of all, it's not a concept car. You can buy it today.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The web comic Sluggy Freelance ( http://www.sluggy.com/ ) has had an ongoing character for years that developed all sorts of inflatable tech. I was halfway expecting to see the name Dr. Schlock in the article.
Dave.
I'll take free beer over free software any day.
The pictures in the linked article are of a 2003 model MCC Smart. It's been stretched out a bit, they didn't even bother to make the wheels fit into the wheelarches after stretching!
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Economic colonization of middle America by failed coastal states...
I know Windows bashing is frowned on, but I thought Sulphur's post was LOL funny and by LOL I mean a real 'out loud' type.
is this really a need crying out to be filled? I thought a smart car was already plastic hung on a metal frame. Maybe for things like the seats materials science could come up with a durable and rigid foamed substance that was still light but wasn't actually inflatable? Same for the dashboard. Why not a rigid material?
I've been discussing such ideas with a physicist friend of mine for 10 years now! He actually built structures from compressed air for fun.
30cm thick Bridges that can hold trucks using steel cables wrapped (in a pattern) around essentially a balloon. Towers.... etc.
Some company even made an inflated airplane WING! yes-- a balloon airfoil for a wing. truly impressive-- (BTW they use a fair amount of structure in the balloon-- but its less material and weight than anything conventional.)
They should do more with tension structures and crash design. A good material scientist should help find the proper material for the impact areas--- if it doesn't burst/cut/tear on a crash then one can let out air in a controlled fashion - we were thinking this exhaust air could be transferred instead of lost to something like an air bag or some sort of safety foam or even to lift the driver up above the crash zone. We didn't find a material scientist to discuss this with.
Me, I thought if the shell was in panels or at least a little flexible the car could actually change shape slightly at different speeds. well it sounds cool anyways-- probably not worth it given the small range in speed; however, it would allow a factory to make many customized shapes without all the hard work.
--
Wheel hub motors are a PROBLEM however. When exploring those we decided there is a problem with the bearings; the load on the bearings from essentially having a flywheel in the wheel; the weight and forces from a flywheel in the hub; etc. Turns out to be better in our opinion to NOT put motors in the wheels of a fast moving car. (smaller motor is ok, but then you have speed / power limits-- all 4 wheels helps with the power issue, but then you still have a speed issue; we didn't go further to try to determine how small and light the motor could be and if that was too heavy.) As much as I hate a gearbox, I think a small gearbox is probably needed to keep the motor rpm & inverter in an ideal range. Tesla seems to have concluded similarly.
What I'd like to know is why aren't there any custom motors operating higher than 3-phase around 400V? Would also like to know why we are so low on electronics experts that most are still stuck using DC motors...
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
"The seat is inflatable, the dashboard is inflatable, and the internal structure and carrying racks are inflatable"
A blue screen you just reboot. Replace "Blue Screen of Death" with "I have a flat".
Mind you, many slashdotters already have experience with inflatable racks via their blow-up "girlfriends."
Will this inflatable car have solid steel wheels?
The strongest parts of a car are already inflateable. However, those parts are quite heavy. Inflateable parts are not necessarily lighter than metal parts.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I would rather like to have a RealCar.
I will read the article now.
Je me souviens.
'XP started out with an investment from Microsoft, which offered a majority of its software products and a very large number of its licenses to build some process management. XP is basing its collaborative space around the Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server'
davecb5620@gmail.com
I know Windows bashing is frowned on
Hi, you must be new here. Welcome to Slashdot.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
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... has inflatable tires.
I know Windows bashing is frowned on...
If you see evidence of windows bashing in your inflatable car, you've probably lost your sound system. Check the dash.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Phase 3 -> Profit
I guess we will have to charge for the air to inflate the vehicle's parts!
-PIT
Geeks want to know if this will have any spill over on the inflatable girlfriend market...
...It will be coolest to have a car that's partly deflated.