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

Popular Science ^

[Recovering_Democrat]

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 Wheels are faired in, side-cooling air inlets open only when necessary, and even the keylocks have been replaced by a proximity unlocking system.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

[Paradox]

This car is an interesting design study. There probably is no market for it, but I dont think they thought there would be. Like another poster said, the exotic materials probably dont account for that much in terms of final MPG, I think they just decided to go all out.

If I were retired, and just drove around my local neighborhood, I would consider such a vehicle if it was cheap enough, but for everyday driving on the roads I drive on, ferget it.

[Sacajaweau]

I'm a female in WINTERY NY: When I bought my last car, the first question I asked was: "How much does the car weigh?". The second was "How many cylinders?".

The salesman was stunned. Why in God's name were those specs of utmost importance.

We went for that "test ride" and he started to tell me about the stereo, blah..blah..blah.

He finally looked at me and said: "You don't care what kind of rinky dink features the car has, do you?.

I smiled and bought the car after a 24 hour thought process.

Six cylinders and 3011 pounds....enough power and weight to help keep me safe!

Sac

[Recovering_Democrat]

Where do you put your date?

Why, on my lap of course. ;)

[Wolfie]

Of course, at purchase time you have to specify, in case of an accident, whether you prefer to hosed off the pavement, or scraped up with a shovel.

[mikrofon]

Somehow the license plate number (WOBL-1) seems appropriate...

[Barnacle]

Good point! Very perceptive.

[mamelukesabre]

My experience has been that a motorcycle that gets 50MPG typically generates around 35 to 55 HP and has a top speed of a little over 100MPH. And a motorcycle such as this will generally weigh well under 500 pounds without the rider. Granted, even a modestly powered bike such as this will out-accelerate nearly every "normal" car on the road, but not cars in the same class as a corvette.

The only exceptions I know of are Harley Davidsons, which get excellent gas mileage compared to other bikes their size. A large harley will get around 45MPG. These bikes are very heavy, some are nearly 700 pounds, and they generate much less than 100 horsepower if the engine has not been modified.

I've been thinking about possible explanations why motorcycles seem to be gas guzzlers for their weight and power output. One is that they are usually not very streamlined. Also, they tend to run at very high RPMs. Mine cruises on the interstate in high gear at around 5 thousand RPMs, I think. I know the redline (or "do not exceed" limit) is at 10,500 and peak power seems to be around 8000 RPMs and many bikes are higher than that. The engine RPM theory would make sense with the harleys since harleys run at much lower RPMs than most other bikes.

[RckyRaCoCo]

let's give it a new name

call it the "roadpizza"

[RightWhale]

That's right. My most recent car purchase also. 4 wheel drive, motor, brakes, 3600 pounds, room for the bass fiddle. It came with some other stuff, who cares.

[RckyRaCoCo]

This is a better way to travel in style:

Now your talking. CNN(I mistakenly tune in every now and then)over the weekend had a story on a small jet that will be available soon. I believe they said the engines only weigh 70 lbs....but performance is impressive.

[supercat]

Magnesium for those who don't know it's properties generates it's own oxygen in a fire.

How does it do that? Magnesium is an element--nothing more. Are you perhaps referring to magnesium's ability to decompose water into hydrogen and oxygen (the oxygen immediately combines with the magnesium; the hydrogen gas is given off until it finds oxygen elsewhere)?

[cva66snipe]

How does it do that? Magnesium is an element--nothing more. Are you perhaps referring to magnesium's ability to decompose water into hydrogen and oxygen (the oxygen immediately combines with the magnesium; the hydrogen gas is given off until it finds oxygen elsewhere)?

I'm not certain it's been 20 + years since I had classes on it. But water on a magnesium fire is a big mistake it will explode and intensify greatly in strenght. It will burn underwater as well. It reaches temps into the 5000F range. One way to fight it is to fog it but I wouldn't want to try it. You can do the same with a deep fryer but you have to know exactally what you are doing. On ships protocol in a magnesium fire Or Delta fire is jetison over the side as it will burn to the bottom if you don't. As one fireman said in here the only thing workable usually is sand.

[cva66snipe]

Can you help me out with post 71? It's been a while since I went through my last class.

[supercat]

But water on a magnesium fire is a big mistake it will explode and intensify greatly in strenght.

As I said, magnesium will decompose water. Unless you're trying to burn it underwater, though, that's different from "producing its own oxygen". BTW, does jettisoning a burning aircraft pose any risk of a hydrogen explosion above the surface, or is the hydrogen too diffuse at that point to pose a problem?

[cva66snipe]

BTW, does jettisoning a burning aircraft pose any risk of a hydrogen explosion above the surface, or is the hydrogen too diffuse at that point to pose a problem?

Not sure we never had a delta fire and I wasn't a flight deck crewman. I was a fire fighter while the ship was in port or in the yards not during flight opps. Flightdeck had a specially trained fire fighting crew of its own at sea. I've was told if you tossed a helo it would keep on burning even on the sea floor. Better I guess to have a surface blast risk than a hole burned down to the 6th deck. We did have cranes for that purpose and the guys wore asbostos suits. A demenstration grease vat fire and a cup of water poured on it is something you don't forget though :>}

[brat]

Can you imagine being in that thing with the usually army of aggressive SUVs on your tail? No thanks.

[LloydofDSS]

>>Don't know about the rest of the car, but this isn't very impressive. A normally aspirated Ford small block has no problem approaching 1hp/lb.<<

There is a huge difference between designing an engine for maximum power to weight ratio and designing one for maximum efficiency. 264 mpg is nothing to sneeze at.

[LloydofDSS]

>>This tiny car is the same color as the wet road and the driver doesn't have enough sense to turn on his headlights just as every full sized vehicle has in the picture. <<

When you are trying to impress everyone, including the news media with the fuel mileage, why in the world would you turn on the headlights? It is obvious there is plenty of daylight in the picture. The idea that headlights improve safety in this situation is bazaar.

[Nowhere Man]

Didn't Messerschmidt product a similar car (it had 3 wheels) after World War II that looked like the cockpit of an ME-109 fighter? That's what it reminds me of.

Cute, but get a real car, how about a '68 Buick Wildcat, 4900 lbs of pure American car. B-)

[LloydofDSS]

>>I wonder how a 8.5 HP engine would perform driving that car throught the Rocky Mountains. I bet it would burn up.<<

Bzzzt, wrong. Big powerful engines with poor cooling systems burnup, not little low power engines. This vehicle would be pretty useless on hills of any kind. It will slow down dramatically on any hill.