Thin Car Travels Far (235 Miles Per Gallon Vehicle, Can Travel Up To 70 MPH)

To listen to automakers snipe about tightening fuel economy standards, you'd think it impossible to squeeze more miles from a barrel of Extract of Arabia. This, of course, is not the case, particularly if you design a vehicle expressly to drive far and drink little.

Forget power, space, and speed: Volkswagen AG's latest idea-on-wheels does not address the requirements of the average American family driver. What it can do is travel more than 100 kilometers on a single liter of fuel. Translation: 235 miles per gallon.

The car's designers combined highly tuned aerodynamics, exotic materials, and a 0.3-liter diesel engine to achieve 0.99 liters per 100 kilometers. The project, the brainchild of engineer Thomas Gänsicke, is an engineering exercise and therefore has rather whimsical features. Most noticeable are the car's canoe-like proportions: It's 4 feet wide and 11 feet long. Occupants sit tandem, the passenger straddling the driver's seat, both wedged under a 4-foot-long gullwing canopy.

Three video cameras eliminate the mileage-reducing wind drag of rearview mirrors. Wheels are faired in, side-cooling air inlets open only when necessary, and even the keylocks have been replaced by a proximity unlocking system. The resulting coefficient of drag is 0.159, compared with 0.30 or so for most production cars.

The slinky carbon-fiber bodywork covering the magnesium frame is just the beginning of the unobtainium-based technology used throughout. The front suspension is a combination of titanium, aluminum, magnesium, and ceramics and weighs less than 18 pounds. The single-cylinder four-stroke engine has monoblock construction—there's no separate cylinder head—and is all aluminum. Fuel is atomized directly into the cylinder at 28,000 psi. Two overhead camshafts operate the one exhaust and two inlet valves. The fuel pump is magnesium, the exhaust system titanium.

The engine produces a thundering 8.5 horsepower and weighs only 57 pounds. It conspires with a 6-speed gearbox—magnesium housing, hollow shafts, titanium bolts—to pinch miles from the diesel fuel. The transmission shifts electronically, killing the engine when an onboard computer foresees an inkling of fuel savings. A starter-generator, with energy stored in nickel-metal batteries, rekindles the engine as necessary.

Because the electric motor only restarts the engine, the 1-liter car is not a hybrid. Gänsicke explains that if fuel economy wasn't paramount, the motor could be used to increase horsepower and torque by 30 percent. "But that's not the effect we wanted." In fact, he's not terribly specific about performance, other than to say that top speed exceeds 70 mph and that it's "not very quick in accelerating."

It can, he promises, "swim with the usual traffic." Who better to emphasize that point than Ferdinand Piëch, chairman of VW? For the most recent board meeting in April, Piëch drove the 1-liter car from Wolfsburg to Hamburg, 110 miles, averaging 264 miles per gallon on the way. That works out to an ultra-miserly 0.89 liters per 100 kilometers.

Of course, "0.89-liter car" doesn't quite have the same ring.

SIZING UP THE SMALL FRIES
How VW's 1-liter machine stacks up against the shortest-wheelbase vehicle on American roads today, the Mazda Miata.

VW 1-Liter Car

Length: 143.7 in.
Width: 49.1 in.
Height: 43.7 in.
Weight: 588 pounds
Peak Power: 8.5 hp
Fuel Capacity: 1.7 gal.
Mileage: 235 mpg

Mazda Miata

Length: 155.3 in.
Width: 66.0 in.
Height: 48.4 in.
Weight: 2,387 pounds
Peak Power: 142 hp
Fuel Capacity: 12.7 gal.
Mileage: 29 mpg

If it's so easy to get that kind of gas mileage, then why does an average (american) motorcycle only get around 50 miles per gallon or less, and a so called "bullet bike" only about half that?

The short answer is that fuel efficiency is a much lower priority to motorcycle riders than speed, acceleration, road comfort, and engine smoothness. Bear in mind that a bike now getting 50 mpg or less has anywhere between 80 and 110 horsepower-- or more. Nothing short of a dragster will accelerate more quickly than a modern sport bike, but this power comes at a cost. The engine must be relatively heavy, and the gas consumption high. A special gasoline efficiency project vehicle, however, is going to have to make some sacrifices.

As I mentioned, an athletically trained human being on specially faired bicycles can pedal at over 70mph-- albeit for a very short time. Cruising speeds, however, can be well over 40 mph for extended times. This speed is all possible with a power source that never exceeds 1 horsepower, and even comes close to that for only brief periods. Most of the time even trained athletes can produce only 1/2 to 2/3 horsepower, or something less than 600 watts.

These bicycles give some idea, then, of what is possible even for a very weak power source through reducing wind drag and keeping a vehicle light. Such measures can be taken with materials no more exotic than fiberglass and aluminum. One constructs a fairing to cover the bicycle, and a frame sufficient to suport a rider and the fairing will weigh in at less than 30lbs.

The gasoline requirements for a small combustion engine that delivers comparable power are very low. Even an engine that produces 3 hp or so, an engine that triples the maximum human effort, would use very little gasoline. Yet this power would be more than sufficient to drive a light, faired vehicle at road speeds. A vehicle something like a two-seated recumbent bicycle, with a fiberglass fairing and an aluminum frame supporting a small engine would easily double the fuel efficiency of a small motorcycle weighing several hundred pounds with relatively poor drag characteristics. That already would put this cheap vehicle at well over 100 mpg. Without having calculated anything carefully, I'd say 150 mpg would be easily reachable.

The exotic materials on this experimental car help, but the lion's share of the result can be produced with conventional materials. The primary requirements are a light vehicle with very good drag characteristics. This is possible without the need to visit the materials science lab.

Cheers.

The car's designers combined highly tuned aerodynamics, exotic materials, and a 0.3-liter diesel engine to achieve 0.99 liters per 100 kilometers

Now,the report does not mentioned what kind of driver this so called car supposed to have. If you trow in a couple of lard asses about 250 pounder each(provide they fit in that shoe box), mind as well forget about even taking off! That damn thing won't even move from stand still, better yet start pushing mind you, if you want go places.

This must be a joke...I am a big guy(6'3" and about 275 lbs., and if you think about it I wont be able to fit my shoe in that econobox!

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