http://theage.drive.com.au/future-cars/scooped-vws-09l100km-car-20120319-1vf5t.html
This is interesting...
800kg of car, v's 1400kg in the Toyota Prius....
This thing is definitely the future... Light weight, and small....
The Prius is marketing hype, nothing more, we could debate this but it's been done many times before. Sure, it's ok but the numbers it produces are nothing fantastic considering some of the technology in it and the cost to produce it. You can buy similar sized cars for 1/2 the price that get fuel economy that is close to that of a Prius, you can buy smaller cars that do better.
Case in point: My dad has a VW passat, it's a big car, almost commodore sized. It has a 2L turbo diesel and on the hwy it averages 5-5.2L/100km...not to far off a Prius; it's only about 6.5L/100 around town too. Put a 1L even a 1.5L turbo diesel in a small light car and it will obliterate a Prius even without a Hybrid drive train, add that in and it's daylight.
Case in point, not very surprising, but 1L/100 is definitely impressive.
Goal is 0 Litre on 100km and can be done
instead of caring two enginse one petrol and another electric - just one
with solar on roof of your home also cost nothing to run
just the price for EV is not right yet
At the beginning if shouldn't be EV SUV but 2 seater Smart size carbon fiber car.
By analogy how big should be sail or kite and hassle to run SUP at same speed as right board.
do a google for the "gordon murray T 2.5"
intersesting new type of car and manufacturing process I read about a while ago.
stephen
Somehow the $30K car in America will cost over double that here. Whats the point in buying something like this when you should be able to buy a little diesel car that uses about 4 litres per 100 kms for about $20K?
Our bunch of engineers who got slightly fed up with Oil & Gas Engineering (Exploration, Pipelines, Processing, Delivery, etc), used their combined knowledge to create a successful micro brewery.
3 of the guys are loaded for various reasons, and a fourth guy who is loaded, and is departing the engineering firm, just bought 20% in the brewery side project...
Anyway, the engineering wheels are in motion for a light weight vehicle...
You could easily reduce the weight of an average Australian family car by around 200kg by eating less.