This slide helps elaborate on the
idea that "design," or vehicle packaging and personality, can impact energy
consumption. The car in the photo was designed in 1978, and I was one of the two
co-designers. At the outset, we asked the question: "What would the
21st-century urban dweller drive?" The presumption was that it had to be much
more energy efficient than existing cars...... and this was our answer in 1978.
Now the actual prototype achieved somewhat less fuel
economy. But I’ve taken the liberty to insert figures that would result from
using today’s automotive technology. The prototype was powered by an unmodified
industrial engine that was about on par with 1930's automobile technology - maybe not
quite that advanced - and it still achieved about 55 mpg. Using today's
technology, this car could easily achieve in excess of 100 mpg.
Low mass is the main ingredient of the
vehicle’s high fuel economy. In city driving about 70 percent of a car’s
energy goes to the effects of mass. So all we did was build a small, lightweight car, and
style it to suggest that it was a totally new type transportation product - as opposed to
a cheap econobox version of a conventional car. Although the three-wheel platform
does help reduce weight and rolling resistance, the underlying reason for using it was
because it naturally conveyed the message that this was not just a downsized ordinary car.
We were attempting to create a shift in perception through the use of
"design."
Safety is an issue that comes to mind when we talk
about 800-pound three-wheel cars. But it’s possible to design three-wheelers
with rollover stability equal to that of four-wheel cars. It’s also possible to
make ultralight cars with lots of crash protection. And with emerging technology,
it’s possible to avoid automobile crashes altogether. Safety is a whole
presentation by itself, so I’ll limit what I say about it. But by 2020 NHTSA
expects that crash avoidance, rather than crash survival, will be the primary focus in
automobile safety.
If we were to consider vehicle mass as a safety
feature, then the natural extension would be to build 10,000-pound cars and make the
highways a lot safer. But safety should be envisioned as an engineering problem, not
a challenge to out-smash the other car. The whole idea of crash survival as an
approach to safety is rather uncivilized, and far more elegant solutions are being
developed.
|
