But Why Does It Have To Look So Ugly?

[alexander]

Reading the other thread here on electric cars, i remembered my peeve and things stopped making sense again.

 

So last year i was going to buy a new car, i looked at quite a few cars, i really wanted a nice clean car, eventually ended up settling on a Mazda 3 (2.3, stick, love it), but the reason i went with a non-hybrid and not an electric car is mainly due to my peeve with them, why the hell are they so damn ugly.

 

So why does the term Hybrid, or Electric turn a car into an ugly beast? What, does the term electric mean that you can drop all the sleek engineering, stop worrying about aerodynamic drag coefficients, and build a really ugly box on wheels? Ofcourse this does not apply to the fully electric lotus, X1 and Tesla Roadster, but they are all 80k+ cars, i was going to spend no more then 25.

 

You know, in the age of aeronautic design principals, where every .1 of a drag coefficient translates directly into efficiency, why is it so damn difficult to design ONE car that will be appealing, both visually externally, comfortable internally, and pocket-friendly, because you know what, people, when looking for a car are not only looking for the highest mpg, but also a car they can feel comfortable in, and all the damn hybrids fail horribly!

 

I mean, Prius, ugly, Zap cars, uber ugly, Zenn, uuugly, GEM, ugly, Reva 2, gah, pointless, why why make cars that appeal to the visual perception and make people want to buy them because they look good, they run well, they pollute a lot less?

 

Which got me thinking, if a hybrid gets a 50 miles per gallon, if you decrease its drag coefficient by a couple of points by designing a sleeker body and lowering the car, change to using thinner tires with an auto adjusting camber suspension, lighten up the car as much as possible by using polymer body panels where possible, make things easily replaceable, easily serviceable, use as little as you need inside for comfort, i mean some firm foam-filled bucket seats with cloth lining (basically like my maza seats, they are not super expensive, pretty light and they are damn comfy), make it plug in, coat the roof sections with the latest paint-like photovoltaics and use latest biodegradeable battery technology, how much more world-friendly would this car become, and how much one would increase that "mpg" value, and cetainly increase it's buyability?

 

Really is it possible to design such a car with a price tag under 25k? I think it is, let's discuss it here...

[Zythryn]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder;)

The drag coefficient of the Prius is .26 which is much better than most cars. Personally, I like the look of it.

I do understand your point about many electric vehicles. A large part of the reason, imo, is that most people that tried to build EVs started with what was available. Golf Carts!

Few companies outside of the Detroit 3 actually had the cash (at one time) to gamble on new technology and do it from the ground up.

Tesla took the plunge and came up with a beautiful looking Roadster and their Model S is looking pretty darn nice as well.

The Volt is a bit 'blocky' for me, but it is a heck of a lot better than a golf cart:)

I think you could build a highly efficient vehicle under 25k. But once you mention

" make it plug in, coat the roof sections with the latest paint-like photovoltaics and use latest biodegradeable battery technology,"

I think you toss the sub 25k pricetag right out the window.

Someday, the price of that will come down, but I don't believe you could do that anytime soon.

[jab2]

Tesla took the plunge and came up with a beautiful looking Roadster and their Model S is looking pretty darn nice as well.

Alexander, how did you miss the Tesla. Maybe you did not shop long enough. :hihi:

 

I agree, the Tesla is an absolute beauty.

[lemit]

I just did a search for used alternative fuel vehicles in my area. I was amazed by the quality and price.

 

If I say much more, I'll appear to be advertising, so let's just say that the cars I found look just like the gasoline-powered cars I found in the price range, except that there weren't pickups and off-road vehicles. But there were SUV's.

 

I think if you look carefully you can find something you would be willing to be caught dead in, to paraphrase.

 

--lemit

[alexander]

Alexander, how did you miss the Tesla.

clearly you guys didnt read my post, quoting myself

Ofcourse this does not apply to the fully electric lotus, X1 and Tesla Roadster, but they are all 80k+ cars

 

lemit, the only ones i have found (available in the US) look ugly, they are either rebuilt ford focuses, priuses or the hybrid fusion, which is ok, but i was shooting for more fully electric vehicles mostly, hybrids, yeah there are some hybrids of arguable nature out there, like the lexus hybrid that gets worse gas mileage then the same car with a v6, but i digress, for under 25k, i have not found one car that looks decent. And Prius and Focus are border line... still boxy

[Zythryn]

I did read your first post. In one breath you state EVs and hybrids are ugly, then you mention the exceptions.

It seems you have answered your own question. They DON'T have to be ugly.

If you are looking at conversions, a company out of Seatle is converting 2009 RAV4s.

[alexander]

I didnt answer my own question, i said readily available hybrids. Nobody is going to go spend 140k for a tesla roadster as a daily driver, really, how many people do you know that use a ZR1, or a fully tuned out 350z or a gtx or a viper or an exceige as a daily driver? My point touches first of all available vehicles, not order now, get it in 6 months, and secondly in 25K mark rav4 is 21.5 msrp and that company will charge more then 10k for a conversion, i'm sure (though i cant say that i have found what you are referencing here)...

[Zythryn]

Alexander, I apologize, but in your OP nowhere did I read 'readily available'. You complained that:

... the reason i went with a non-hybrid and not an electric car is mainly due to my peeve with them, why the hell are they so damn ugly.

 

This seemed to imply that your peeve with [all of] them was that they [all] are so damn ugly.

Now, if you would have said 'Some of them are ugly', I would have agreed with you. Although not in the case of the Prius, as I don't feel that is an ugly car. Obviously you do, which is fine. Beauty is a very subjective thing.

As for building an efficient sub-25k car. I think it can be done, depending on how efficient you want it to be.

I don't think you can go pure EV if you want comfort and street legal. Which leaves hybrid tech.

Although the Prius already is sub 25k, perhaps you could make it less, to you, ugly without negatively affecting the efficiency. Not to far a stretch I would guess since it meets most of your requirements.

Personally, if you make it lower to the ground it becomes less appealing to me. But since we are working with your definition of beauty/appeal, it is entirely subjective.

Are thinner tires generally wider? That may be an issue to overcome.

 

How much do polymer body panels cost to make?

I think you would need to skip the PV as well, as that would be cost prohibative. The bio battery tech may work as you would need a relatively small battery. However, anytime you use the term 'latest tech' you are generally looking at a higher cost. I would suggest using last years technology to bring the price down.

[Zythryn]

From scanning, polymer's seem to be a great solution. There are a few areas where steel is still superior, but no reason polymer's couldn't be used much more than they are. This would likely be a great way to increase efficiency. The resulting car would need to use the same panels as other models, or be of high enough sales to bring the cost down below that of standard metal panels. But from the little scanning I have done, the price can be much lower than metal panels given a high enough quantity:)

[alexander]

Are thinner tires generally wider?

It really depends, generally if you are changing a car out to low profile tyres, you would use a larger diameter and slightly wider rim. It generally hardens the ride, and low-pros and super low profile tyres are a lot more expensive and dont do all that well in snow. Personally, prius is really border line, at the time, there really was not a hell of a lot of incentive to go with it, there really wasnt a big reason, and the other problem is, every few years you have to change out batteries, which costs 5-7grand, and thats on top of your regular maintenance, etc. I was looking into upgrading a prius, but it would cost me around 17K to get it to a car i would like to actually have. turn it into a plug in hybrid with a biodegradable battery pack, a change of the main battery to a biodegradable battery and a carbon fiber roof with a molded in solar module built in. Those would get the car to drive me to work and back on battery power alone and get my average gas mileage to probably around 150 miles/gal, which would actually be appealing... but that would bring the price of the car up to 40k, not the money i could really spend on a car, even today... but certainly something i might be looking into in the future...

[Zythryn]

It really depends, generally if you are changing a car out to low profile tyres, you would use a larger diameter and slightly wider rim. It generally hardens the ride, and low-pros and super low profile tyres are a lot more expensive and dont do all that well in snow.

Good information, thanks for the info. A harder ride 'tends' to indicate less friction between the tire and the road, so I suspect the added width doesn't overwhelm that aspect.

Personally, prius is really border line, at the time, there really was not a hell of a lot of incentive to go with it, there really wasnt a big reason, and the other problem is, every few years you have to change out batteries, which costs 5-7grand, and thats on top of your regular maintenance, etc.

 

If by every few years you mean 3-4 years, that is not the case. If by every few years you mean 11-15, you may have a point. As for the costs, if you are in California the cost to replace the battery anytime in the first 10 years would be 0. In all other states I believe there is a 7-8 year warranty. So even if the batteries did need to be replaced prior to that, it would be at a cost of 0. Also, if you do need to replace the battery outside of warranty, the cost is about $4500.

I was looking into upgrading a prius, but it would cost me around 17K to get it to a car i would like to actually have. turn it into a plug in hybrid with a biodegradable battery pack, a change of the main battery to a biodegradable battery and a carbon fiber roof with a molded in solar module built in. Those would get the car to drive me to work and back on battery power alone and get my average gas mileage to probably around 150 miles/gal, which would actually be appealing... but that would bring the price of the car up to 40k, not the money i could really spend on a car, even today... but certainly something i might be looking into in the future...

 

I don't see why you would add a solar module at this time. The amount of power it would generate would be negligable. You could easily do away with that expense and loose almost no efficiency.

Ditto with the carbon fibre, isn't that pretty pricey? Especially for a custom job? For cost and weight I would go with plastic panels.

[alexander]

A harder ride 'tends' to indicate less friction between the tire and the road, so I suspect the added width doesn't overwhelm that aspect.

 

not really, harder ride because there is a lot less tire to absorb the variations in the road. Friction is hopefully the same or more then your normal tire, but the alloy wheels are generally a bit lighter, which all evens out at the end.

 

If by every few years you mean 3-4 years, that is not the case.

it used to be 3-4 years, but they have since switched to a different battery, which makes the battery life a lot longer. and yeah 5 grand, i was close enough...

 

Ditto with the carbon fibre, isn't that pretty pricey?

It is... but there is a reason why toyota is going to be putting solar cells in the roof of their cars :hyper:

 

Hymotion battery pack is the way to go start though

[alexander]

ooh just found a fully electric that doesnt look 1/2 bad and starts at 25k... Aptera

[CraigD]

So last year i was going to buy a new car, i looked at quite a few cars, i really wanted a nice clean car, eventually ended up settling on a Mazda 3 (2.3, stick, love it), but the reason i went with a non-hybrid and not an electric car is mainly due to my peeve with them, why the hell are they so damn ugly.

...

I mean, Prius, ugly, Zap cars, uber ugly, Zenn, uuugly, GEM, ugly, Reva 2, gah, pointless, why why make cars that appeal to the visual perception and make people want to buy them because they look good, they run well, they pollute a lot less?

As others have already noted, beauty and ugliness are subjective qualities – personally, I found the 2000-2003 notchback Priuses (Prii?) boring, the 2004+ hatchback’s snazzy.

 

A car esthetics basic I learned as a kid drawing 3-angle views of imagined cars the 1970s, and 1/6th scale Plasticine models as an art major in the 1980s (I had a penchant for convincing my teachers that more or less technical stuff should be considered art project work) is that lower wheel diameter to vehicle height = more ugly. This aesthetic spells trouble for high-efficiency vehicles with large compact to midsize class interior space like the prius, since to save unsprung and total weight, they have small-diameter wheels. Consider the 3 attached tumbnails of a 2006-ish Prius with its wheels crudely scaled up and down by a factor of 1.5 and 0.75 below. If anything, the 2009+ model, with its raked window line, makes the small rear wheel/large rear quarter panel even uglier that the 2008, with its lower rear window.

So why does the term Hybrid, or Electric turn a car into an ugly beast? What, does the term electric mean that you can drop all the sleek engineering, stop worrying about aerodynamic drag coefficients, and build a really ugly box on wheels?

As Zythryn noted,

The drag coefficient of the Prius is .26 which is much better than most cars.

The 2010 Toyota Prius reduces its [math]\mbox{C}_{\mbox{d}}[/math] to 0.25, one of the best of all commonplace autos, and significantly better than alexander’s Mazda 3’s also respectable 0.29. My source for [math]\mbox{C}_{\mbox{d}}[/math] data is the wikipedia article “Automobile drag coefficient”. Interestingly, from this partial list, the 3 (not necessarily currently in) production cars with better [math]\mbox{C}_{\mbox{d}}[/math]s than the Prius’s 0.25 are the US$49,000-55,000 Mercedes E350/E550 (0.24), the “killed” GM EV1 (0.195), and the 1935-1938 Czech Tarata T77a, (0.212) of which only the EV1 was/is a high-efficiency vehicle.

You know, in the age of aeronautic design principals, where every .1 of a drag coefficient translates directly into efficiency, why is it so damn difficult to design ONE car that will be appealing, both visually externally, comfortable internally, and pocket-friendly, because you know what, people, when looking for a car are not only looking for the highest mpg, but also a car they can feel comfortable in, and all the damn hybrids fail horribly!

I’ve driven a 2005 Prius cross-country, and found it as comfortable as anything I’ve driven.

 

It’s not as efficient when driven long distances at high nearly constant speed (48 MPG @55 MPH for 2010 model) as when driven stop and go (52 MPG), as it’s regenerative braking and on-demand only gas engine advantages are negated, making it merely a low-drag gas powered car.

 

The chief major practical disadvantage I’ve heard from Prius owners is that, due to their low-rolling resistance wheels and light weight, while like most front wheel drive cars, handling is good, their ability to climb and avoid getting stuck in snow and mud is significantly worse than ordinary small cars. I’ve personally seen a couple of Priuses dig themselves into inescapable ruts in about 20 cm of fresh snow. If I owned a Prius, I’d keep a set of snow chains (non-metal ones like these) in it, or at least a coil of cotton over nylon cord, which in an emergency can be made into impromptu, short-lived “chains”, in case of muddy or snowy conditions.

Which got me thinking, if a hybrid gets a 50 miles per gallon, if you decrease its drag coefficient by a couple of points by designing a sleeker body and lowering the car, change to using thinner tires with an auto adjusting camber suspension, lighten up the car as much as possible by using polymer body panels where possible, make things easily replaceable, easily serviceable, use as little as you need inside for comfort, i mean some firm foam-filled bucket seats with cloth lining (basically like my maza seats, they are not super expensive, pretty light and they are damn comfy), make it plug in, coat the roof sections with the latest paint-like photovoltaics and use latest biodegradeable battery technology, how much more world-friendly would this car become, and how much one would increase that "mpg" value, and cetainly increase it's buyability?

Lots of engineering, and a few marketing questions in this sentence!

 

“Sleeker body” is more a aesthetic styling term than an aerodynamic one. As noted above, the somewhat boxy Prius has a much lower [math]\mbox{C}_{\mbox{d}}[/math] than many “sleeker” looking cars.

 

Assuming it has a reasonably aerodynamic underside, “lower the car” – reducing the clearance distance from its underside to the ground - doesn’t reduce aerodynamic drag, but increases it. The main advantages of reducing ground clearance is improving a vehicle’s maximum cornering speed and general handling by increasing aerodynamic downforce and lowering its center of gravity. Note in the previously linked wikipedia article that vehicles with extraordinary cornering speeds, such as a typical F1 racecar, have very high [math]\mbox{C}_{\mbox{d}}[/math]s of 0.7 to 1.1, while the vehicles with the lowest [math]\mbox{C}_{\mbox{d}}[/math]s, such as the Nuna multiple year World solar challenge race winner’s 0.07 have as much ground clearance as possible.

 

“Thinner tires”, with correspondingly higher pressure and smaller contact patches, do improve efficiency. Cars like the Prius have specially designed tires of this kind. This efficiency comes, however, at the expense of handling, as less friction corresponds to less longitudinal and lateral traction, so a balance must be found where the vehicle has good efficiency while remaining safe to drive. I’ve long imagined and wished for a system that actively changed the vehicle from riding on a very small, low resistance contact patch to a large, high traction one upon detecting a skid, wheel spin, or other loss of control or traction situation, but have seen nothing like this on any market or in any literature (other than my own ;)).

 

“Lighter body panels” – sheet metal body panels are already some of the lightest components on a passenger vehicle, so replacing them with something lighter, such as plastic, doesn’t reduce weight significantly.

 

The major advantage of plastic body panels is that they don’t permanently dent, and can be colored through so they don’t show scratches. The 1984-1988 Pontiac Fiero sportscar, which had easily removable plastic body panels over a tubular frame, tried this – one of its interesting features was that owner could buy and self-install aftermarket bodies to change the car to resemble other vehicles, one even as different as a small pickup truck. Pontiac dealers sold one body variant that resembled a Ferrari 328, ‘til Ferrari sued the kit’s maker, successfully ordering them to stop.

 

“Firm foam-filled bucket seats” have a fairly narrow age-banded market appeal, expecially if set low to the floor. A significant fraction of the car-buying public has physical difficulty getting into and out of low and/or bucket seats, hence popular cars like the Prius have very upright seating. Another disadvantage of low-slung seats are that, because they require passengers’ legs to be extended, they increase the required length of the vehicle, especially in cars with rear seats.

 

Photovoltaics – As mentioned upthread, the 2010 Prius has a much-advertised solar panel roof. However, this feature is used only to directly power a ventilation fan, to keep the car interior cool. It doesn’t connect to the main power system at all, and would contribute only insignificantly to it if it did.

 

I suspect this will be the case for nearly all hybrids and EVs for some time, as for typical vehicles and sunlight conditions, you simply can’t get much energy from a photovoltaic panel totaling the overhead surface area of a car. True solar vehicles are exotics like the above mentioned Nuna, not practical or safe for ordinary driving conditions, and actually are allowed by competition rules to spread solar cells over more than their usual area when recharging.

 

“Biodegradeable battery technology” – The most popular present-day hybrid battery type, NiMH, and the likely future most popular type, Li-ion, are both readily and profitably recyclable. From the few first hand contacts I’ve had with car salvage (junkyard) folk, they all participate in deal-incentived recycling programs, pulling and shipping batteries from Priuses and Honda Civic hydrids when they get them, rather than keeping them for direct resale. So I don’t think there’s much reason to pursue large biodegradable batteries for cars, because, unlike small batteries for consumer electronics (cellphones, etc.) they’re unlikely to be improperly disposed of by consumers. (info available at many sources, eg: Recycling your Battery)

[alexander]

Craig, actually noted, lotsa good points there.

 

Here are some thoughts on drag coefficients:

Lowering or creating clearance in the car actually would not create any more or any less air drag, well, neglegeably more or less by exposing more or less tyre to the air, ofcourse this depends on how aerodynamic the underside is, but for most new cars, this would actually not change the drag coefficient. The reason most bigger cars, like dodge viper, my mazda and many others that actually have sleek bodies have a higher drag coefficient is because they are made to go faster. My mazda for example can do and handle rather well at 115MPH, and it actually can go and handle a bit faster, the stock tires are rated at 125, and i think they are limited to 125 in Australia, but to make safety regulations Mazda cut the limiter down to 115 for most of the rest of the world. Anyways, Prius on the other hand is set to top out at 96mph. We know that in order for the car to handle at faster speeds, we need to push the car down, so an inverted wing, and a body design and position that makes the whole car act like a wing are used. This causes turbulance that is needed for the wing to push the car down at faster speeds, thus increasing the observed drag coefficient. This is the reason formula one cars have a higher coefficient then most of the other cars (even race cars), they need a lot of down force for such a light car (under 2000lb) to handle at speeds over 100 but below 200 mph. Though, there are always interesting solutions out of this, for example a Koenigsegg CCXR (the Green supercar (1018bhp on e85/100)) has a drag coefficient of 0.36, stock does not come with a wing, and is well capable of speeds in excess of 250MPH (nobody has been crazy enough to take it that fast). They achieve their downforce (350 kg at 250km/h) mostly by using the body angling and by using the venturi effect (though the high speed handling has been shown as problematic without a rear wing (see the episode of Top Gear where they test drive the Koenigsegg CCX (the 800bhp model) and the Stig runs off road and crashes into some tires))

 

Anyways, on that comment that you cant decrease the drag by lowering the car, well, you can and you cant, you can not decrease the drag, but what ground effects do is they can increase the downforce at minimal drag increase, which can then allow you to decrease the down force generated by the car's wings (and even in most regular street cars there are 2 non adjustable wings) which can cut down the drag of a car while maintaining the downforce, thus overall increasing efficiency. And i could prove this, if i could create a model of my car, run it through some CFD crunching, then altering the design of the body to incorporate ground effects and compensate by slightly altering a couple of body features that produce drag and see if we can drop that 0.29 to maybe that prius range :evil:

 

anyhow i digress, oh i forgot to say, most formula one cars produce their curb weight in aerodynamic downforce at 78-81mph, plus they are open wheel, and we all know about the vortexes created by the wheels moving through air (hence why we see our cars covering the wheels as much as possible). Also they need it for braking, the downforce and the drag, both help in this case, i tell you what, there are not a hell of a lot of vehicles that can generate up to 5.5g on deceleration, claimed up to 1g caused by the air friction, meaning that if you take the foot off the accelerator, the F1 car traveling above 100MPH will decelerate as fast as a sports car under full braking power

 

Batteries... The biodegradeable Lithium Ions are able to store a lot more power and give it off much more rapidly then the current lithium ions used in the prius, and they have a smaller environmental foot print, less memory and are much more easily recycled... NiMH recycling produced gases and acids that are not very friendly, even though they are "recycled"...

 

Composite body panels can combine the characteristics of their metal counterparts in strength, much higher durability, and a signifficant reduction of weight, more then that, composite materials in the rest if the car;s body would weild an even bigger reduction of weight.

 

Tires, I've been toying with the idea of a slanted tire, one that operates at an angle, the tire such that the outer diameter is larger then the inner, also the inner corner can be rounded, which with adjustable suspension can provide low rolling friction, and increased grip patch through a corner. Lastly the thinning of the tire and rim will provide less drag and less weight. Also with a proper suspension this will provide a lot of travel even with a lower sitting car, by the means of tilting the tire... basically a mix between a motorcycle and a car tire, but on steroids... just a thought. riding on a smaller patch until you turn the wheel which shifts the weight and rolls the body of the car making the outer wheels use the full contact patch... You would have to use a harder compound on the inner part vs the outer part, too..

[CraigD]

Lowering or creating clearance in the car actually would not create any more or any less air drag, well

…

Anyways, on that comment that you cant decrease the drag by lowering the car, well, you can and you cant, you can not decrease the drag, but what ground effects do is they can increase the downforce at minimal drag increase

…

You make lots of good points about the tradeoff between increasing downforce and decreasing drag, Alexander.

 

A point I’ll add is that I believe that, due to rule restrictions strictly prohibiting them in nearly all motorsports since the mid 1970s, car enthusiasts tend to forget about the idea of active downforce generation, which usually involved movable wings (eg: the 1967 Chaparral 2F Can Am car), though after movable wings were made illegal, also included at least 2 “vacuum cleaner cars”, the 1970 Chaparral 2J Can Am car and the 1979 Brabham BT46B, which used motor powered fans. Both were banned after 1 season of racing, despite Brabham’s efforts to convince officials that the fan was primarily for engine cooling, with downforce being a “secondary effect”. ;)

 

Though effectively banned in race cars, there’s no prohibition on active aerodynamics in passenger vehicles, so one could in principle have a car that produces zero aerodynamic downforce, and thus had its lowest possible frontal and rolling drag, until needed for lateral or straightline traction. Such an approach could, IMHO, be used to make a car with racecar-like (or better) speed and handling, yet when driven sedately, high fuel efficiency

Batteries... The biodegradeable Lithium Ions are able to store a lot more power and give it off much more rapidly then the current lithium ions used in the prius, and they have a smaller environmental foot print, less memory and are much more easily recycled... NiMH recycling produced gases and acids that are not very friendly, even though they are "recycled"...

I think you meant to say “current NiMH used in the Prius” – as of the 2010 model year, the Prius continues to use a nickel metal hydride battery, rather than the generally better performing LiIon type. To the best of my knowledge, the only Priuses with sizable LiIon batteries are ones with aftermarket plug in conversion, such as by Hymotion, which uses a more environmentally friendly 90 MJ lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4) battery (vs. the more common, less friendly lithium cobalt oxide (LiCoO2)) in addition to, rather than replacing, the manufacturer installed 24 MJ NiMH battery.

 

Though there’s been little talk and press about them, I’ve a hunch, and a hope, that nearly all present day batteries will soon be rendered obsolete by Lithium-titanate battery batteries, which appear to offer about a 30 times improvement over the best LiIon batteries, due to the molecules of its anode physically moving less during charging and discharging than those in a graphite anode. We discussed this a few months ago in and around the post “Lithium-titanate batteries - Wow! (by about a factor of 30)” – a key link from that post is this manufacturer’s background/overview paper.

Composite body panels can combine the characteristics of their metal counterparts in strength, much higher durability, and a signifficant reduction of weight, more then that, composite materials in the rest if the car;s body would weild an even bigger reduction of weight.

I agree.

 

However, I think it’s place too much importance on vehicle mass reduction is a potential pitfall, because no matter what, a car is still essentially a mass hauler, with typical 200 to 1000 kg of passengers and cargo that can’t be eliminated. Safety concerns put additional constraints on materials, as do practical issues of durability. While a single-piece graphite unibody could be fantastically light and strong, it would also likely require replacement if damaged in even a fairly minor collision, resulting in an entire car that’s effectively a single field replaceable unit!

 

Another somewhat startling issue with ultra-light vehicles is that when you get out of them, they can blow away in a strong breeze! :evil: At present, this is seen mostly in boats and airplanes, but by my best guess, is a conceivable issue with a very advanced low mass car.

Tires, I've been toying with the idea of a slanted tire, one that operates at an angle, the tire such that the outer diameter is larger then the inner, also the inner corner can be rounded, which with adjustable suspension can provide low rolling friction, and increased grip patch through a corner.

Through the early 1980s, there pedal bicycle tires built on something like this principle had some popularity. These tires were V-cross sectioned, with a narrow raised ridge in the center, had very high pressure (150+ PSI), riding up on the narrow ridge when going strait, then falling over onto the wider side when cornering. They actually did seem to go faster in a straight line, but tended to cause psychological problems, because the felt weird – I tried some, and found that when I stood up to pedal hard, I had to focus on not tilting the bike, as it felt like it would go out from under me if I did. In bicycling, being afraid of you bike can be as bad for performance as exhaustion or low tire pressure.

Also with a proper suspension this will provide a lot of travel even with a lower sitting car, by the means of tilting the tire... basically a mix between a motorcycle and a car tire, but on steroids... just a thought.

I don’t see how this can work – if the suspension depresses more than the ground clearance, the cars belly will hit the road, no matter how the suspension tilts or traverses the wheel.

 

Active suspension controls, such as a high speed, electronically controlled system to allow suspension depression with little resisting force for a short distance, then smoothly increasing greater force as the distance increases, can make for both short, firm suspension and jolt and vibration free ride. A system with very rigid wheels (eg: a thin layer of tire directly on a composite wheel) and a suspension that converts motion into recoverable electricity, can reduce rolling drag, eliminating energy that would ordinarily heat the car’s tires and shock absorbers.

 

Then, there’re that cyber-punk fictional classic, smartwheels, which can potentially eliminate almost any form of rolling resistance for which they’re properly programmed.

riding on a smaller patch until you turn the wheel which shifts the weight and rolls the body of the car making the outer wheels use the full contact patch... You would have to use a harder compound on the inner part vs the outer part, too..

Seems a good idea to me, though I’ve though mostly about tires made to run on a small central strip when inflated to a high pressure, then settle into a normal contact patch at a lower pressure, because it seems like something that could be practically installed as an aftermarket replacement, based on technology currently existent in automatic tire inflation systems seen presently mostly in large trucks and RVs.

 

Fun stuff, all of it :)