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I thought we were done with the ugly "covered up rear wheels for electric cars" thing.
by thematt 13y ago
I 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.