Posted on 08/06/2002 2:08:25 PM PDT by 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 Wheels are faired in, side-cooling air inlets open only when necessary, and even the keylocks have been replaced by a proximity unlocking system.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 constructionthere's no separate cylinder headand 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 gearboxmagnesium housing, hollow shafts, titanium boltsto 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 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.
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
Why, on my lap of course. ;)
Somehow the license plate number (WOBL-1) seems appropriate...
call it the "roadpizza"
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.
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.
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?
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 :>}
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