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Hungarian Electric Car Splits Into Two Smaller Cars
Lanxon writes to mention that Antro, a Hungarian car manufacturer, is developing a new electric car that can split into two smaller cars. Antro plans to have it on the market by 2012. "The environmentally-conscious company started research back in 2002 and, with backing from various local sponsors, has invested 1.5 million euros in market research and development of a working prototype. The Antro Solo concept is a three-passenger car, with a hybrid drive and solar cells on its roof that the company says could generate enough electricity for up to 20km a day at city speeds. Futuristic looking in itself, the grander plan for the car is much more audacious: Antro intends to allow users to be able to connect two Antro Solos to form a six-passenger Antro Duo. Or perhaps more interesting still, owners of a Duo could split the car into two smaller Solos should Mum have different weekend plans to Dad. Or if they divorce."
Sounds like they watched this old Australian film: Malcolm
No.
It can do up to 20km per day with just the charge it can get from the solar panels. Its internal power source is a "conventional" hybrid.
No gas tank size is specified, so it's not clear just how far it can go without refueling.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
1. >129 mpg by design. I'll be interested in seeing whether it can actually reach that.
2. Seats three. Center seat is slightly forward, and it looks like the steering wheel is in the center. Which will make getting in and out a royal pain for the driver.
3. Nominally, it's 3.2 m long. When two of them are mated up, the combination is 4.8 m long. Where's the other 1.6 m going? Is the front of the second car going to fill up the rear of the lead car? Or does the combination look like the two cars are humping?
I'm not seeing any room in that design for crumple zones, roll bars, that sort of thing. Which makes me suspect it could never pass safety standards in the USA.
How in hell do you change the tires on this thing?
If they can get it past safety standards, and the price is reasonable, and it doesn't turn out to have the general quality of the Yugo, it might be a moderately useful vehicle for a family.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I'm dubious. Let's be generous and say that the roof is 2 sq.m. Insolation at the earth's surface is about 1 kW/sq.m, meaning you've got a whopping 2kW you can collect. With really good and really expensive solar cells, you're looking at 30% efficiency (yeah, space-grade go to 40%, but are brutally expensive.) So your 2kW becomes about 650W usable. That's less than 1hp continuous.
... you can drive 20km per day using just solar. Maybe.
So if you have a super-efficient drivetrain, and you never exceed 20kph, and you only drive on flat terrain, and you always have the solar cells pointed directly at the sun
I've done the "solar cells on the roof" calculations more times than I care to recall. The power contribution from the small available area is insignificant compared to a 10-30kW power requirement for a vehicle. Any time I hear "solar cells on the roof," I know it's done to make people feel good. If they're using less-efficient but much-cheaper single junction polycrystalline silicon cells, your conversion efficiency is only around 5%. Your 2kW incident power becomes 100W usable. To put that in perspective, a healthy person can go to the gym, put the exercise bike in "power" mode, and crank out 70W for several hours.
No, that was what caused the first ejector seat to be invented.
That rule fell for its own error in logic a looong time ago.
The error was, that the ideal is efficiency! Simplifying it to "simplicity" is on oversimplification, causing loss of purpose. Because too simple means harder again. Because in that case, you actually lose efficiency.
You might not know this but the Keep It Simple, Stupid (KISS) principle is that if you are given two ways of doing something equally well you are usually best off choosing the more simple way. It's not "lose all functionality because simple is always better". In other words, unnecessary complexity is bad - necessary complexity is, well, NECESSARY!
The other part of the philosophy is that, in general, you are better off with several simple components instead of one monolithic device. This is related to the idea of object-oriented programming.
Yes, over-simplifiing is a bad thing but there is nothing in KISS that says you should over-simplify, just that you should only do just enough to accomplish your goal. Embellishing and making your product over-complex is to be avoided.
Sapere aude!