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;)
You can reserve now, and have been able to for almost a year, but well... get at the back of the line.;) The waiting list is huge. Also, you currently need to be a California resident; it's region-limited until they can scale up.
The first commercial models start shipping in December. I'd expect a slow ramp-up pace. The factory is designed to peak at 10,000 a year. They're also looking at building a larger factory in the south, but honestly, with the credit crisis the way it is now, I imagine that plan is going to have to be put on hold for a bit.
10kWh. We don't know the depth of discharge on the pack, though. The Aptera Typ-1e is rated for 120 miles at 55mph and 70 miles at 80mph. The electric range of the Typ-1h is to be between 40 and 60 miles, depending on driving style. But of course, only the Typ-1e currently exists.
And of course, it's not really 300mpg, as you noted. In steady-state highway driving, the Typ-1h's "charge-sustaining" mileage is to be 130mpg. I hate these bogus PHEV mileage numbers, but they all play that game. It's looking like the EPA is going to certify the 48mpg charge-sustaining Volt at over 100mpg. The worst I've ever seen was a ~21mpg plug-in SUV that was claiming 150mpg under the argument that you'll only drive one in seven miles on it on gasoline.
There are a dozen ways to BS mileage numbers; this is just the latest. Others include comparing gasoline to diesel without adjusting for density, comparing mileages between different drivecycles, treating low speed hypermiling trips as though they're representative of long-term mileage figures, comparing english gallons to US, and on and on down the line.
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.
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.
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.
Once again, this is why people who don't know anything about a topic shouldn't comment on it.
Earth's oceans, especially the Pacific, are truly massive heat reservoirs, and changing how they interact with the atmosphere can strongly affect the atmosphere's temperature in the *short term*. In the long term, the planet is still dominated by its radiation balance, of course.
The linked article was describing, quite accurately, how the early part of this year was in La Nina conditions. El Nino is caused by the weakening or reversal of the Walker circulation (an atmospheric flow around the Equator). The Walker circulation helps encourage the upwelling of cold waters in the eastern Pacific, so El Nino conditions prevent more of this cool water from reaching the surface. As a net change, the equatorial Pacific ends up much warmer on the surface, raising atmospheric temperatures. In La Nina conditions, the situation is reversed; a stronger Walker circulation encourages more upwelling, and thus colder surface (and hence atmospheric) temperatures.
This has *absolutely nothing* to do with the planet's long-term temperature, which even a six year old looking at a graph could recognize through the year-to-year noise.
Now, if you *really* want a breakdown of how it ranked (records since 1880), here you go (remember that the first half of this year was in strong La Nina conditions!):
January: 31st warmest February: 15th warmest March: Warmest for land on record, 13th warmest for ocean April: 13th warmest May: 8th warmest June: 8th warmest July: Tied for 5th warmest August: 10th warmest September: Tied for 9th warmest
I think it's cute how people like you think that the IPCC is either unaware of or deliberately ignoring papers like this;)
Seriously -- read the report some time. It'll be educational for you. There's something like 50 papers referenced for just sunspots alone. If it A) has to do with global warming, even tangentially, and B) was published in a peer-reviewed journal in the past 10-20 years, odds are it's in there.
Science does not work in a manner of "this one paper says one thing about one aspect, so it must be God's honest truth!". The amount of research out there is pretty staggering. It is... let's just say "unfortunate" that the popular press has a habit of picking up one work or another and sensationalizing them.
Arctic sea ice extent during the 2008 melt season dropped to the second-lowest level since satellite measurements began in 1979, reaching the lowest point in its annual cycle of melt and growth on September 14, 2008. Average sea ice extent over the month of September, a standard measure in the scientific study of Arctic sea ice, was 4.67 million square kilometers (1.80 million square miles) (Figure 1). The record monthly low, set in 2007, was 4.28 million square kilometers (1.65 million square miles); the now-third-lowest monthly value, set in 2005, was 5.57 million square kilometers (2.15 million square miles)./I.
To report values now, from *October*, during the refreeze is just bloody ridiculous. Yes, different years melt and refreeze at different times; there's a lot of spring and fall fluctuation. What matters are the maximum and minimum extents.
FYI, arctic sea ice normally low in years after El Nino winters and high in years after La Nina winters. Winter of 2006-2007 was in El Nino conditions, leading to the record 2007 melt. But winter of 2007-2008 was in a strong La Nina. The fact that we got the second lowest ice extends on record despite this is incredibly disturbing.
Hmm, here's a thought -- let me bounce this off you. If we think about this incrementally, we can picture that the car is having to do work equal to the work done by gravity in the same time period. So, if we picture that gravity moves the car down for a second, it seems we could think about the car's engine doing the same amount of work in the opposite direction to offset it.
w = f * d. f = kg * 9.81m/s^2 d = 1/2 at^2 a = 9.81m/s^2 t = 1 d = 1/2 9.81 * 1^2 = 4.91 w = (kg * 9.81m/s^2) * 4.91m = 48.2kg*m^2/s^2 = 48.2 joules * mass, every second.
Now, let's go to incrementally smaller time periods. What if we consider gravity doing work over half a second (instead of a whole second) and then the engine undoing that? Acceleration remains the same, so force remains the same; distance gets cut to a fourth. Hence, work gets cut to a fourth - 12 joules * mass, every half second. But that's a different power than 48.2 joules * mass / seconds; that doesn't work! This solution seems to converge down to zero power, and thus zero energy consumed, which we know not to be the case.
Sorry, got my terms a little backwards. Still, how can you mathematically represent the total driving situation, wherein:
* It takes energy just to sit still (no distance moved) on an upslope, relative to the cosine of the slope compared to vertical. * You can't do just the opposite -- recover energy sitting still on a downslope.
To elaborate: we have an acceleration, 9.81m/s^2. Let's pretend we have lossless gecko-foot tires and are trying to drive straight up. To hold still, we'd need an equivalent acceleration from the engine, 9.81m/s^2. f=ma; force = kg * 9.81m/s^2. So we have a force, but it's being applied over zero distance, so there's no work. This means there's no change in kinetic energy, which is what we experience. However, the engine still has to run to create that force; if the engine stops, the force disappears and the car falls. The engine still takes energy. How do we model this energy consumption? Let's just assume that the drivetrain is 100% efficient; actual losses can be factored in later.
I'm going to need to think about this one for a bit.
And you instead discover that it's driven by a somewhat butch, middle-aged woman, right?:) That's the stereotypical PT Cruiser driver around these parts.
Out of curiosity, would you say that this car (Aptera Typ-1) looks angry or happy? It's got a bit of a smile line, but the headlights and "nostrils" look kind of devious to me and almost make the smile look like an evil grin.
Not to mention that it's diesel, and diesel is a 15% more dense fuel than gasoline. Also, is that 49mpg rating revised-EPA or NEDC? NEDC is more lax, and is more similar to the old EPA mileages.
Trying it both ways many times, I found that the car lost speed faster when in gear than when in neutral, so I've taken to using neutral. Yeah, it's burning some fuel, but it's burning fuel at idling levels; I'd rather have that than the extra engine drag from the car turning the engine over that fast.
However, unlike my overall trip mileage from driving at different speeds, I haven't studied this scientifically, so I can't give any solid conclusions on it.
I know it seems like that should be the case when you just look at the equations -- after all, energy = work * distance. Yet it doesn't seem to work this way in practice. Have a rocket thrusting straight up and it suffers gravity losses ("gravity drag"); 1G of accel off the pad means you go absolutely nowhere. Have a car on a slope and it behaves like described; in fact, you can be idling on a steep enough slope and go backwards instead of forwards. The energy needed seems proportional to the cosine of the angle. Have an electric car on a slope and the same thing happens. Gravity losses are a real thing.
Even if there's no fuel being injected, you're still making the drivetrain turn the engine over, doing repeated compression/expansion cycles. Free wheeling takes the engine out of the picture.
Meh, I just can't wait to go electric so I don't have to bother worrying about this sort of stuff. Sure, there's *some* difference in efficiency between different RPM and torque levels, but for the most part, you're pretty much just facing the linear scaling of rolling losses and the quadratic scaling of aerodynamic drag.
One thing I'm curious about, and would be interested if anyone has an answer: what's the most efficient way to climb hills? Fast or slow? Fast means working the engine a lot harder, which is generally advised against for efficiency reasons, but slow would seem to imply greater gravity losses. I.e., picture using only a small amount of gas while sitting on a steep slope and having your car go nowhere; all of the power from the engine is going into overcoming the force of gravity, and you're gaining no height.
I can confirm that in my Saturn, optimal highway fuel efficiency is 55 to 60mph. I've tested this quite extensively. If you follow hypermiling discussions, for most people, their experience is quite similar. If I drive my Saturn at 80mph, I get about 30mpg. If I drive at 55-60mph, I usually get just over 40mpg. On a good trip, if I combine it with shifting into neutral for downhill runs, follow large slow-moving vehicles (no, not tailgating; I always keep a safe distance), and so forth, I've gotten 45mpg out of it. This is repeatable and has been determined over dozens of documented fillups.
In city, I haven't been able to collect good data about whether my city hypermiling techniques are helping significantly or not because my partner does most of the city driving on the same vehicle, so it messes up my numbers. I don't do the dangerous things like shutting off the engine or doing breakneck turns, but I do accelerate slowly, look way ahead and take hills into account, coast to red lights, time lights, take turns at moderate speeds, and avoid roads with stop signs. Given that I use my brakes only a fraction as much, I *should* be getting significantly better mileage, but unfortunately, I have no way of knowing.
In California, natural gas is somewhat baseload. For example, the SEGS solar plants (currently the world's largest) are combined cycle natural gas/solar. The natural gas burns stronger when the sun is weak or set.
Wind tends to actually be a little *stronger* at night than during the day. Geothermal and nuclear are both more baseload than coal as they have little incremental cost.
Aluminum is significantly weaker than steel. Magnesium is far weaker still. You generally use things like aluminum and magnesium in places where you don't need significant structural integrity. If you're taking a steel vehicle and just swapping structural elements out for aluminum or magnesium without reengineering the vehicle, you're weakening it.
FALSE. Germans don't use gallons. YOU are the one who is making elementary & obvious mistakes, because imperial gallons have no relevance to the 3-cylinder Lupo 3L that I am discussing.
It does have relevance when it's the British press that's the source for numbers like 90mpg. The Lupo 3L gets 78 US MPG on the NEDC. That is, 3.0L/100 kilometers, its official drivecycle rating, is 78.4048611 miles per US gallon. Have google do the conversion for you if you don't believe me.
It doesn't matter what you "can" get in particular driving styles. My old Saturn with failing seals and a creaking engine "can" get 45-50 mpg if I drive it like a glider. What matters is what you get in normal operation, which is what drivecycles are for. The NEDC is the standard European drivecycle, and it's more lax than what the EPA uses nowadays.
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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 ;)
You can reserve now, and have been able to for almost a year, but well... get at the back of the line. ;) The waiting list is huge. Also, you currently need to be a California resident; it's region-limited until they can scale up.
The first commercial models start shipping in December. I'd expect a slow ramp-up pace. The factory is designed to peak at 10,000 a year. They're also looking at building a larger factory in the south, but honestly, with the credit crisis the way it is now, I imagine that plan is going to have to be put on hold for a bit.
10kWh. We don't know the depth of discharge on the pack, though. The Aptera Typ-1e is rated for 120 miles at 55mph and 70 miles at 80mph. The electric range of the Typ-1h is to be between 40 and 60 miles, depending on driving style. But of course, only the Typ-1e currently exists.
And of course, it's not really 300mpg, as you noted. In steady-state highway driving, the Typ-1h's "charge-sustaining" mileage is to be 130mpg. I hate these bogus PHEV mileage numbers, but they all play that game. It's looking like the EPA is going to certify the 48mpg charge-sustaining Volt at over 100mpg. The worst I've ever seen was a ~21mpg plug-in SUV that was claiming 150mpg under the argument that you'll only drive one in seven miles on it on gasoline.
There are a dozen ways to BS mileage numbers; this is just the latest. Others include comparing gasoline to diesel without adjusting for density, comparing mileages between different drivecycles, treating low speed hypermiling trips as though they're representative of long-term mileage figures, comparing english gallons to US, and on and on down the line.
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.
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.
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.
I mistyped the closing tag. That wasn't intentional.
Bright, colorful uniforms indeed.
I love the fact that they're bluescreening in an Aptera Typ-1e electric car as a "flying car" ;) Hey, saves you money on props...
Once again, this is why people who don't know anything about a topic shouldn't comment on it.
Earth's oceans, especially the Pacific, are truly massive heat reservoirs, and changing how they interact with the atmosphere can strongly affect the atmosphere's temperature in the *short term*. In the long term, the planet is still dominated by its radiation balance, of course.
The linked article was describing, quite accurately, how the early part of this year was in La Nina conditions. El Nino is caused by the weakening or reversal of the Walker circulation (an atmospheric flow around the Equator). The Walker circulation helps encourage the upwelling of cold waters in the eastern Pacific, so El Nino conditions prevent more of this cool water from reaching the surface. As a net change, the equatorial Pacific ends up much warmer on the surface, raising atmospheric temperatures. In La Nina conditions, the situation is reversed; a stronger Walker circulation encourages more upwelling, and thus colder surface (and hence atmospheric) temperatures.
This has *absolutely nothing* to do with the planet's long-term temperature, which even a six year old looking at a graph could recognize through the year-to-year noise.
Now, if you *really* want a breakdown of how it ranked (records since 1880), here you go (remember that the first half of this year was in strong La Nina conditions!):
January: 31st warmest
February: 15th warmest
March: Warmest for land on record, 13th warmest for ocean
April: 13th warmest
May: 8th warmest
June: 8th warmest
July: Tied for 5th warmest
August: 10th warmest
September: Tied for 9th warmest
Spring: 7th warmest
Summer: 9th warmest
January to July: 9th warmest
I think it's cute how people like you think that the IPCC is either unaware of or deliberately ignoring papers like this ;)
Seriously -- read the report some time. It'll be educational for you. There's something like 50 papers referenced for just sunspots alone. If it A) has to do with global warming, even tangentially, and B) was published in a peer-reviewed journal in the past 10-20 years, odds are it's in there.
Science does not work in a manner of "this one paper says one thing about one aspect, so it must be God's honest truth!". The amount of research out there is pretty staggering. It is... let's just say "unfortunate" that the popular press has a habit of picking up one work or another and sensationalizing them.
No, and they're being *deliberately* misleading. Arctic sea ice this year hit the second lowest level in recorded history. Last year was the lowest.
Arctic sea ice extent during the 2008 melt season dropped to the second-lowest level since satellite measurements began in 1979, reaching the lowest point in its annual cycle of melt and growth on September 14, 2008. Average sea ice extent over the month of September, a standard measure in the scientific study of Arctic sea ice, was 4.67 million square kilometers (1.80 million square miles) (Figure 1). The record monthly low, set in 2007, was 4.28 million square kilometers (1.65 million square miles); the now-third-lowest monthly value, set in 2005, was 5.57 million square kilometers (2.15 million square miles)./I.
To report values now, from *October*, during the refreeze is just bloody ridiculous. Yes, different years melt and refreeze at different times; there's a lot of spring and fall fluctuation. What matters are the maximum and minimum extents.
FYI, arctic sea ice normally low in years after El Nino winters and high in years after La Nina winters. Winter of 2006-2007 was in El Nino conditions, leading to the record 2007 melt. But winter of 2007-2008 was in a strong La Nina. The fact that we got the second lowest ice extends on record despite this is incredibly disturbing.
Because we can't get legally married in the state that I live in, but we are legally "domestic partners" in the state of Vermont.
Later this month, we're planning to fly to California to get legally married there... who knows whether Prop 8 will overturn it, though.
It also turns the engine over faster and thus imparts more drag. The difference in drag is perceptible.
Hmm, here's a thought -- let me bounce this off you. If we think about this incrementally, we can picture that the car is having to do work equal to the work done by gravity in the same time period. So, if we picture that gravity moves the car down for a second, it seems we could think about the car's engine doing the same amount of work in the opposite direction to offset it.
w = f * d.
f = kg * 9.81m/s^2
d = 1/2 at^2
a = 9.81m/s^2
t = 1
d = 1/2 9.81 * 1^2 = 4.91
w = (kg * 9.81m/s^2) * 4.91m = 48.2kg*m^2/s^2 = 48.2 joules * mass, every second.
Now, let's go to incrementally smaller time periods. What if we consider gravity doing work over half a second (instead of a whole second) and then the engine undoing that? Acceleration remains the same, so force remains the same; distance gets cut to a fourth. Hence, work gets cut to a fourth - 12 joules * mass, every half second. But that's a different power than 48.2 joules * mass / seconds; that doesn't work! This solution seems to converge down to zero power, and thus zero energy consumed, which we know not to be the case.
Drat.
Sorry, got my terms a little backwards. Still, how can you mathematically represent the total driving situation, wherein:
* It takes energy just to sit still (no distance moved) on an upslope, relative to the cosine of the slope compared to vertical.
* You can't do just the opposite -- recover energy sitting still on a downslope.
To elaborate: we have an acceleration, 9.81m/s^2. Let's pretend we have lossless gecko-foot tires and are trying to drive straight up. To hold still, we'd need an equivalent acceleration from the engine, 9.81m/s^2. f=ma; force = kg * 9.81m/s^2. So we have a force, but it's being applied over zero distance, so there's no work. This means there's no change in kinetic energy, which is what we experience. However, the engine still has to run to create that force; if the engine stops, the force disappears and the car falls. The engine still takes energy. How do we model this energy consumption? Let's just assume that the drivetrain is 100% efficient; actual losses can be factored in later.
I'm going to need to think about this one for a bit.
And you instead discover that it's driven by a somewhat butch, middle-aged woman, right? :) That's the stereotypical PT Cruiser driver around these parts.
Out of curiosity, would you say that this car (Aptera Typ-1) looks angry or happy? It's got a bit of a smile line, but the headlights and "nostrils" look kind of devious to me and almost make the smile look like an evil grin.
Not to mention that it's diesel, and diesel is a 15% more dense fuel than gasoline. Also, is that 49mpg rating revised-EPA or NEDC? NEDC is more lax, and is more similar to the old EPA mileages.
Trying it both ways many times, I found that the car lost speed faster when in gear than when in neutral, so I've taken to using neutral. Yeah, it's burning some fuel, but it's burning fuel at idling levels; I'd rather have that than the extra engine drag from the car turning the engine over that fast.
However, unlike my overall trip mileage from driving at different speeds, I haven't studied this scientifically, so I can't give any solid conclusions on it.
I know it seems like that should be the case when you just look at the equations -- after all, energy = work * distance. Yet it doesn't seem to work this way in practice. Have a rocket thrusting straight up and it suffers gravity losses ("gravity drag"); 1G of accel off the pad means you go absolutely nowhere. Have a car on a slope and it behaves like described; in fact, you can be idling on a steep enough slope and go backwards instead of forwards. The energy needed seems proportional to the cosine of the angle. Have an electric car on a slope and the same thing happens. Gravity losses are a real thing.
Even if there's no fuel being injected, you're still making the drivetrain turn the engine over, doing repeated compression/expansion cycles. Free wheeling takes the engine out of the picture.
Meh, I just can't wait to go electric so I don't have to bother worrying about this sort of stuff. Sure, there's *some* difference in efficiency between different RPM and torque levels, but for the most part, you're pretty much just facing the linear scaling of rolling losses and the quadratic scaling of aerodynamic drag.
One thing I'm curious about, and would be interested if anyone has an answer: what's the most efficient way to climb hills? Fast or slow? Fast means working the engine a lot harder, which is generally advised against for efficiency reasons, but slow would seem to imply greater gravity losses. I.e., picture using only a small amount of gas while sitting on a steep slope and having your car go nowhere; all of the power from the engine is going into overcoming the force of gravity, and you're gaining no height.
I can confirm that in my Saturn, optimal highway fuel efficiency is 55 to 60mph. I've tested this quite extensively. If you follow hypermiling discussions, for most people, their experience is quite similar. If I drive my Saturn at 80mph, I get about 30mpg. If I drive at 55-60mph, I usually get just over 40mpg. On a good trip, if I combine it with shifting into neutral for downhill runs, follow large slow-moving vehicles (no, not tailgating; I always keep a safe distance), and so forth, I've gotten 45mpg out of it. This is repeatable and has been determined over dozens of documented fillups.
In city, I haven't been able to collect good data about whether my city hypermiling techniques are helping significantly or not because my partner does most of the city driving on the same vehicle, so it messes up my numbers. I don't do the dangerous things like shutting off the engine or doing breakneck turns, but I do accelerate slowly, look way ahead and take hills into account, coast to red lights, time lights, take turns at moderate speeds, and avoid roads with stop signs. Given that I use my brakes only a fraction as much, I *should* be getting significantly better mileage, but unfortunately, I have no way of knowing.
In California, natural gas is somewhat baseload. For example, the SEGS solar plants (currently the world's largest) are combined cycle natural gas/solar. The natural gas burns stronger when the sun is weak or set.
Wind tends to actually be a little *stronger* at night than during the day. Geothermal and nuclear are both more baseload than coal as they have little incremental cost.
Aluminum is significantly weaker than steel. Magnesium is far weaker still. You generally use things like aluminum and magnesium in places where you don't need significant structural integrity. If you're taking a steel vehicle and just swapping structural elements out for aluminum or magnesium without reengineering the vehicle, you're weakening it.
California uses *less* coal than the national average. They have one of the cleanest generation mixes in the country. California's energy mix is:
30% natural gas
20% coal
19% hydro
13% nuclear
11% renewables
7% cogeneration
Nuclear and hydro are even more baseload than coal.
And you keep piling the mistakes on!
FALSE. Germans don't use gallons. YOU are the one who is making elementary & obvious mistakes, because imperial gallons have no relevance to the 3-cylinder Lupo 3L that I am discussing.
It does have relevance when it's the British press that's the source for numbers like 90mpg. The Lupo 3L gets 78 US MPG on the NEDC. That is, 3.0L/100 kilometers, its official drivecycle rating, is 78.4048611 miles per US gallon. Have google do the conversion for you if you don't believe me.
It doesn't matter what you "can" get in particular driving styles. My old Saturn with failing seals and a creaking engine "can" get 45-50 mpg if I drive it like a glider. What matters is what you get in normal operation, which is what drivecycles are for. The NEDC is the standard European drivecycle, and it's more lax than what the EPA uses nowadays.