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Volkswagen's 261-MPG Diesel-Electric
- thematt 13y agoI thought we were done with the ugly "covered up rear wheels for electric cars" thing.
- Nux 13y agoIt looks kind of sexy (and expensive)!
- sigzero 13y agoProbably the expensive part is true. :(
- colinshark 13y agoThe car may be expensive, but covered rear wheels are not expensive.
- fosap 13y agoI think the covered up rear wheels are not just a optical gimmick, but safe fuel.
- MartinCron 13y agoUgly or not, covering up the rear wheels can give a meaningful improvement to fuel economy.
- abruzzi 13y agoAn early Saab also had covered front wheels, to improve economy. It was problematic though because it under certain conditions it could get packed with snow and hinder turning.
- stygianguest 13y agoWith wheel no more than a few inches wide, it won't be driving in the snow anyway.
- modoc 13y agoActually unless you're trying to drive on TOP of feet of snow, narrow is better than wide for normal driving as you cut through the snow and get to the road. Typically people will run snow tires that are 10mm narrower than their summer tires on the same rims.
- MartinCron 13y agoCurious to see how that could possibly look, I scrounged up these pictures of a 1947 Saab prototype. Beautiful. http://www.thelocal.se/gallery/news/806/ http://www.thelocal.se/gallery/news/806/
- ImprovedSilence 13y agowow. That, is a beautiful car.
- pbreit 13y agoWell, the request was simply to see some data on how "meaningful" the improvement is.
- acdha 13y agoIt's unfamiliar, not ugly. Give it a few years and you'll think they're perfectly fine, just like we heard endless complaints about "melted" cars when more aerodynamic designs were first introduced.
- MartinCron 13y ago(partially) covering the wheel doesn't have to be as ugly as it is in this particular VW. I submit the first generation Plymouth Fury as evidence: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plymouth_Fury http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plymouth_Fury
- mikeash 13y agoHN is certainly not the place I expected to find a comment criticizing the aesthetics of a useful engineering decision.
- sp332 13y agoI'm excited to see a car that was actually designed up-front with aerodynamics in mind. This isn't the first of course but they're pretty rare. Even for the Bugatti Veyron and Nissan Leaf, where you'd think drag forces would be the first consideration for the body, the overall look was determined first and aerodynamic engineers had to work within those limits.
- Spooky23 13y agoI don't know about the Bugatti, but think of the use case for a Leaf -- urban commuting and errands. Does aerodynamics matter for city driving?
- alayne 13y agoHere in snow country, the last thing I would want is for my wheels to be covered like that.
- claudius 13y agoNot everything is snow country and it might make perfect sense in warmer or more densely populated places. There’s no reason why one car would have to be fit for every climate on every continent.
- alayne 13y agoI figured someone would make that comment. I'm just giving one example of why this may not be a good engineering decision. It also makes it hard to access or inspect the wheel/tire in general. You can't just optimize for one thing like aerodynamics without taking into account the big picture (and I personally think aesthetics). I have seen many solar cars and high efficiency cars over the years that are highly impractical because they've optimized one efficiency dimension too far.
- themckman 13y agoIt's hideous; I agree. The prevailing argument here for the covers is fuel economy (i.e. reduced drag). Show me the numbers with and without the covers, but, I'd bet they're not so different that I'd sacrifice the look of the automobile by adding them, especially considering the 250+ MPG claim here.
- waivej 13y agoHere are some stats: 0.4-6.25% http://ecomodder.com/wiki/index.php/Rear_wheel_skirts http://ecomodder.com/wiki/index.php/Rear_wheel_skirts It's highly dependent on speed. Small gains can add up. I had a 75 minute commute for a while and ran some MPG experiments on my truck. Adding a wedge shaped tonneau cover, a chin spoiler, and inflating the tires more boosted my MPG from 18-26. It was ugly so I took them off and got distracted before I built them again. It was much quieter and seemed to "roll" along at faster speeds.
- brotchie 13y agoI feel that Tesla's success with the Model S is due to its fairly conventional shape. It looks like an "ordinary" car. I'm not sure if the design aspects of this VW are due to improved aerodynamics, or a desire to make something look "futuristic". Striving for this look actually makes it feel out-of-date.
- fosap 13y agoSame for the Opel Amera. Opel cars are always ugly. But Amera looks like it's out of a low buget SciFi film. But I think this car looks like all the next gen VWs will look like. We will get used to it.
- gilrain 13y ago"The car doesn’t need much power due to its wind-tunnel honed bodywork. The XL1 has a coefficient of drag of 0.189 — making the uber-slick Tesla Model S look a bit like a brick — and is the most aerodynamic production car on the planet."
- cmurphycode 13y agoHere's your answer: "The XL1 has a coefficient of drag of 0.189" from the article. That's an enormous improvement on all other production cars. Which is why it uses " 8.3 horsepower to maintain [60 mph]— one-third that of a Jetta" Of course, they don't mention the frontal area, which is just as important and yet never referenced in these discussions.
- sliverstorm 13y agoWell, it has a conventional shape, but it also looks distinct. I think trying to make an electric car that looks just like any other car would be a mistake- I came to this conclusion after looking at the Prius and the Insight. See, the Insight was too weird and too much of a compromise (2 seater, stickshift), so even though it got 70MPG in the 90's, it never took off. Nor did the first generation Prius, which looks exactly like an ordinary car. Then the second generation comes along, which is much like an ordinary car but has a distinctive look that says "Look at me! I'm driving a Prius!" and it sold like hotcakes. My conclusion is essentially that people were uninterested in hybrids, unless the hybrid was recognizable as such to act as a social signal, yet did not compromise on any of the functionality of a regular car. So in summary, the Tesla does these things- it has a distinctive look, enough to signal "Look at me! I drive a Tesla!" while still being very close to an ordinary car.
- jmj42 13y agoVolkswagen has been doing interesting things with diesel for a while now. Back in 2005, they introduced the turbo diesel powered Audi R10, which won the 2006 12 Hours of Sebring and 24 Hours of Le Mans. It was replaced in 2011 by another turbo diesel, the R18. Of course, neither of these are diesel/electric hybrids, but it's not a surprise that, given their history of inovation with diesel, Volkswagen Group put something like this together.
- ComputerGuru 13y agoActually, the R18 is available as a diesel/electric hybrid! It's know as the R18 e-tron quattro and the electric motor separately powers the front wheels, converting the R18 to a quattro (4-wheel drive system). Because of the race rules and regs though, the electric is only allowed to kick in past 120km/h.
- schiffern 13y ago>Because of the race rules and regs though, the electric is only allowed to kick in past 120km/h. Why make that rule?
- daeken 13y agoPresumably because of the torque an electric motor can make off the starting line, versus an ICE.
- parimm 13y agoIMO that rule was made to prevent the cars from going through slow corners too fast, The speed restriction only applies to cars that have the motors connected to the front wheels. The Toyota cars have their hybrid motors attached to the rear and they can use their hybrid system from 0 kmph.
- wh0car3s 13y agoThe R18 e-tron sends the extra power to the front wheels (effectively making it a four wheel drive). I guess the rule was put in place to negate any advantage the R18 e-tron will have when cornering. The other LMP hybrid is the Toyota TS030, their system applies the extra power at the rear only, and therefore Toyota can use the electric power at any speed (race reports of the 2012 24 hr of Le Mans said that the Toyota TS030 was eerily silent going down the pit road as it was running on pure electric power on pit stops).
- Zigurd 13y agoIf the diesel can run on vegetable oil, you could grow a year's supply of fuel with 1 acre of sunflowers. Storage would not be a problem, either. That's a cheaper way to access solar energy for driving than an acre of solar panels.
- jcomis 13y agoIs this accounting for all the labor and resources it takes to grow and process the sunflowers?
- bwanab 13y agoLet's see how that works out. Wikipedia says there are 240 million cars in the US. That means we would need 240,000,000 acres of sunflowers to power all our cars. World Factbook says the US has 9,161,966 sq km of land of which 16.29% is arable or 1,492,484 arable sq km. With about 247 acres per sq km, we have 368,643,612 acres of arable land which means about 65% of the arable land in the US would have to be devoted to sunflower production. On the other hand, those solar panels can go anywhere.
- namdnay 13y agoYeah but what about the pollution (not CO2)?
- schiffern 13y ago1 acre of PV != 1 acre of biofuel crops. Biofuels require at least 20x more area. If we stopped growing all food we could just about cover our energy needs with biofuel. PV is the way to go. http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/03/27/1783781/for-powering-cars-solar-is-orders-of-magnitude-more-efficient-than-biofuels/?mobile=nc http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/03/27/1783781/for-powe... As for actual cost, SolarCity's business model seems to indicate that the net present value of solar is cheaper than residential grid electricity, which is in turn cheaper than gasoline/diesel. And solar prices keep plummeting.
- jgj 13y agoIn the future, fuel-efficient cars will look like normal cars! I can't wait. Hopefully it will be because the people making them realize that fuel-efficient cars don't need to look like rejected drawings from Doug[1] and not that everyone decided that all cars need to look like rejected drawings from Doug. [1] http://i986.photobucket.com/albums/ae342/dougfunnieiscrazy/Dougs%20Sister%20Act/01.jpg http://i986.photobucket.com/albums/ae342/dougfunnieiscrazy/D...
- tenpoundhammer 13y agoI really like the look of the car, I have always loved the slick aerodynamic "futuristic" look. I also keep wondering why commercial long haul trucks have such an inefficient design. It's like a giant block barrelling down the highway. Couldn't a little bit of aerodynamics go a long way for long haul truckers ?
- noahc 13y agoThey do. See: [1] Between the back tires is a flap that helps with aerodynamics. I would say that 50%+ of the trucks I see on the road have these. [2] These are much less common, but I'd guess 5% or so use these. [1] http://www.popularmechanics.com/cm/popularmechanics/images/pm/semi-trucks-05-0812-de.jpg http://www.popularmechanics.com/cm/popularmechanics/images/p... [2] http://www.blogcdn.com/green.autoblog.com/media/2009/11/part-450.jpg http://www.blogcdn.com/green.autoblog.com/media/2009/11/part...
- tenpoundhammer 13y agothat's really cool I never saw that before.
- Shivetya 13y agoThe Wal Mart supercube trucks are an example, http://www.core77.com/blog/transportation/walmarts_new_supercube_increase_sustainability_by_designing_bigger_trucks_23804.asp http://www.core77.com/blog/transportation/walmarts_new_super... Also, note that its not just the truck, but how you pack it and how you package what it is carrying http://www.walmartgreenroom.com/tag/trucks/ http://www.walmartgreenroom.com/tag/trucks/ * I do not work for Wal Mart, merely remember articles about their fleet recently
- tenpoundhammer 13y agoInteresting,I always expect the snub nose of these drags to add a lot of drag and keep expecting them to become more smooth and conical. But I'm sure these methods are more cost effective.
- umsm 13y agoI drive a diesel, and I love it. I'm so surprised that all of these hybrids are "revolutionary" yet they offer almost no improvement over something similar with a diesel engine. My 1.9L diesel engine gets 40+ MPG everyday for the past few years. I'm excited by what Mercedes is doing with their GLK250... a 2.1L diesel in the GLK is almost perfect for that car.
- paulbennett 13y ago40MPG vs 260MPG is not exactly "similar" though. Something like a Prius vs a modern diesel though is very similar, I don't see the Prius as revolutionary.
- umsm 13y agoI wasn't comparing a normal car to this, as this is an edge case. I am talking about the choices we make when purchasing a car. Almost everyone that I spoke to that has a hybrid doesn't consider it worth the money. These manufacturers advertise "38MPG highway" as being something incredible while a ten year old technology can achieve something better. The problem is that gas prices are stable (controlled?) in the US so that inefficient cars are the norm.
- zwieback 13y agoThey aren't really revolutionary, of course, but a gasoline powered hybrid still has a slight efficiency edge over a diesel. If you factor in the higher complexity, weight, cost and emissions of Diesel vs. Otto it's easy to see why gas hybrids are popular today. I think what VW and Bosch are doing for diesels will pave the way for broad adoption of diesel-hybrids at some point, though.
- umsm 13y agoI'm curious, how do gas hybrids have an edge? If you consider reliability, a diesel has no "technology", so there are fewer things to go wrong. The issue of emissions has been addressed with BlueTec. No?
- brudgers 13y ago"The result is a car that weighs just over 1,900 pounds, or about one-third less than the new 911." And 10% more than a 1963 Beetle of fifty years ago. http://www.hemmings.com/hsx/stories/2007/04/01/hmn_feature23.html http://www.hemmings.com/hsx/stories/2007/04/01/hmn_feature23...
- dpcx 13y agoWith lots more comfort, safety equipment, etc. Seems like a valid tradeoff to me :)
- paulbennett 13y agoIt does have more in the way of safety and comfort features though.
- brudgers 13y agoAt zero to sixty in twelve seconds, however, it's not appreciably quicker off the line...well, ok, significantly faster if we use a 1963 Type II.
- wiredfool 13y agoThat's only a couple hundred pounds lighter than my Miata, which has an empty weight around 2050 lbs. Granted, the Miata doesn't have anywhere near the Cd that the VW has.
- tonylemesmer 13y agoI've always thought this. Mk1 Golf GTI was very light: 790kg, as was the Mk2 Golf GTI 910kg (hot hatches from Europe) but ever since then cars seem to be minimum 1,200kg. They are a lot safer and that is the main reason. You can walk away from a minor crash with your legs intact. Car manufacturers have been upping power (speed) over the years and this has lead to an increase in weight from a performance and reliabilty standpoint but also safety.
- rrhyne 13y agoClinton was working with the major auto manufacturers to do this years ago. Each of the big four had models designed and tooling up the plants for production was to be subsidized. Bush came in and killed the program in favor of the yet to materialize hydrogen.
- yareally 13y agoInteresting, do you have any references/links with more info about that?
- tassl 13y agoNot really commenting on your appreciation (I don't really know the details of Clinton-Bush-Obama's politiques on electric/hydrogen automobiles) but in the university where I studied some of my department-mates were working on fuel cells and their applications. One of the most interesting (for me) applications was hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, and I could talk with some of the students involved in that research about the current state of the technology. I was also fortunate enough to test one of the vehicles they were using. While I still don't know the technical details, they mentioned that the main reason the technology is not yet available (I think Toyota wants to have an hybrid by the end of 2015) was the lack of investment or the shift of investment to battery powered vehicles. What was more interesting to me is that the difference between an electric car and a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle is basically the source of energy used. With that I don't mean the technology if fully ready; as far as I know there are still concerns beyond logistics (for example, temperature problems, security...) but I would say those are part of the novelty of a technology.
- revelation 13y agoCareful with the numbers. With hybrids, they often don't count the electricitiy in the consumption, but still measure with the car running on it. That leads to these rather outrageous numbers of 261MPG - they just assume electricity is free. Using that measurement, of course the Tesla Model S has infinite MPG.
- sageikosa 13y agoTesla Model S would have an undefined MPG. The limit approaches infinity for very small values of G, but isn't defined for a value of 0.
- kristianp 13y agoThey assume electricity is 'free', because the battery is charged only by the fuel in a hybrid. (Not a plug-in hybrid of course). So there is no need to consider the electricity as a separate cost. Or am I misunderstanding what you're saying?
- revelation 13y agoMost hybrids with a larger battery (as this one) also have a charging port. I think what they do is start the test with a fully charged battery and never count the energy in that. So you get the first 40 miles or so free until the motor kicks in to recharge the battery again (which is where they then start counting the gasoline consumed).
- namdnay 13y agoPSA Peugeot-Citroen have been selling diesel-electric hybrids for more than a year now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peugeot_3008#Hybrid_version http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peugeot_3008#Hybrid_version http://www.carmagazine.co.uk/Drives/Search-Results/First-drives/Citroen-DS5-Hybrid4-2012-CAR-review/ http://www.carmagazine.co.uk/Drives/Search-Results/First-dri...
- waivej 13y agoI've been hoping to some day find a car that is a worthy replacement for my Honda Insight. The Volkswagen seems to be similar in many ways: comparable horsepower, weight, covered rear wheels, etc. I doubt it'll be $22,000 though. A friend even was able to get similar mpg numbers by boosting the battery pack to a similar capacity (in a competition). Too bad the market didn't shine on the early Insight. If I remember correctly, they only sold 20,000 worldwide over its 8 year run.
- oftenwrong 13y ago>the XL1 can putter along for 32 miles and at up to 62 mph on electric power alone I wonder what kind of numbers they could get out of an electric-only version. 62mph is near the legal limit of highway speed anywhere I've ever been, so for me that would be a fine limitation. If they removed the diesel engine, the extra drive-train components it requires, and the gas tank, they could save more weight. With just that weight savings, the range would be improved. It also leaves room for installing a larger battery. 32 mi on a 5.5 kWh battery is nice, but of course the public wants more. For reference, the Tesla S with the largest battery option (85 kWh), can do 265 mi. It is good to see a car company pursuing a radical design.
- icegreentea 13y agoMind you that 62 mph is probably on flat ground. The moment you have to deal with hills, 62mph flat out is going to get you in trouble. And yes, I know highways are typically pretty flat, but even small grades can result in large increases power required.