Ford F-150 regular cab SB MT V6 4615lbs!
Acura TSX 4cyl MT small sedan 3257lbs! 3345lbs with auto.

I guess that other consumers must value 5 star crash test ratings and the impression of quality that comes with more mass more than they value quick acceleration and good city cycle fuel economy. I wish I could pay more for the “more aluminum, less iron and steel, less mass” performance option to reduce the weight of non-structural parts of a car. I don’t expect revolutionary changes with every design cycle, but 5-10% weight reduction vs. 5-10% weight increase would be nice.

http://www.ecotraffic.se/publikationer_eng.asp

In a similar vein, 90% of American drivers would get better mileage, improve performance and control, and save about $900 if they learned how to use their left foot. Is it really that hard, or is it too distracting from using your Blackberry while driving?

The light weight cars shattered, and the dummy was killed.

The heavyweight ones, which wound up signifigantly heavier than the steel bodied car, bounced off the barrier. Theimpact was so severe on the dummy, since the car absorbed none of the energy, that the dummy was killed. In some cases the seat belts snapped.

Small changes separated the “shatterers” from the “bouncers”. Sometimes temperature was enough to make the difference.

Stel absorbs energy better, per pund, than any material anyone has found so far. Steel cars can be lightrer than they are, and probably lighter than any plastic or aluminum car.Ask the Iron and Steel institute, of course, and they will say the same thing. They have, however, built some cars to back this up. They were Taureses, undistinguishable from a regular Taurus, and they weighed only 2500 lbs. With all accessories.

If you want to save weight, there is the place to start.

Another overlooked shortcoming of CRP is that while it is strong, it is not particularily rigid. In cars, there is a need for torsional rigidy. Airplanes and other things don’t need this, much. Per pound, steel works better for this requirement than any other material.

There are lots of ways to make cars lighter. Leaving hte spare tier home would be one. If everyone took out the spare tire, and jack, tonight, the country would immediately start saving tremendous amounts of fuel. More than any tinkering around with unreliable materials.

Bob Elton

In fact it does soak up collision energy–far, far better than steel does. (See my article, link somewhere above). This is part of the reason F1 drivers often walk away from crashes at extreme speeds.

Jan, I’m more concerned about the carbon emissions per mile than about the mpg, and because of that, E85 doesn’t exactly make me want to do a Snoopy dance. Diesel improves carbon per mile, but not as much as mpg would suggest. As for the other sources of diesel, especially the renewable sources–wood dust, etc.–the big question is how much can be sustained. However that comes out, diesel certainly should have a much bigger place in the current mix than it does.

Of course not. The human needs to be positioned appropriately to control the automobile. It needs to be kept warm in winter and likes to be cool in summer. It’s exceptionally fragile in the context of the vehicles capabilites, and needs some sort of protection from, ahem, sudden changes of velocity. It needs to be aware of the automobile’s speed, fuel load, etc. It needs to be isolated from excess friction/combustion heat, noise, and road impacts. It needs a place to put it’s Big Gulp (OK, maybe not so much).

And all of these things which our sack of meat requires must necessarily add weight!

The above is an entirely incomplete list, and while utterly obvious to anyone who takes any time to think about it, it makes a valid point- this 1% talk is almost uselessly academic. If you take it as a given that the human requires certain things that will necessarily add weight to an automobile (and you should), well, wouldn’t it be more valuable to know what percent of the total weight of your average vehicle those elements add up to? Probably a pretty large percentage, dontcha think? Will it change the equation much to swap out steel bodywork for CFP? Probably not.

Don’t get me wrong- the idea of cutting out automotive flab is extremely appealing to me. And, chock full of facts and figures that obscure the difficulty of solving the problem rather than enlighten with examples of solutions, that’s why this article was such a letdown.

excellent article! Thanks!

I know you love your Prius, and I totally respect it, but keep in mind that when the Prius is driven normally (not like most Prius enthusiasts), it averages about 42-44mpg. Excellent, but exagerations are not necessary.

That last statement is simply not true. Massachusetts, where I live, will be one of the first places in the country where solar electricity becomes competitive, because electricity here is so expensive (I pay about 16c/kwh). I have neighbors who have solar hot water heating systems. I don’t think that the notion that wind “spoils the view” is going to gain any traction. The need for it is too great, and the economics is becoming too compelling. Here in Mass, Cape Wind, which will supply most of the electricity for Cape Cod, is almost certain to become a reality since we have just elected a governor who favors it. Use of wind power is growing exponentially; I expect in ten years we’ll have wind farms all over Mass. Denmark gets a very large % of its electricity from wind farms. There are also houses here that get virtually all their heating from passive solar architecture.

And I am sure those Romans were eventually running around saying this is the end of human civilization! Nope – just them.

And I am not an expert in the end of the Roman Empire, but I am confident that a bunch of government regulations, government regulators and armchair “experts” would only have hastened the demise of a once great society. Here’s hoping these three groups don’t try to “save”us.

Excellent point. My old Civic-Corolla class ‘93 Saturn weighed around 2450, about 500 lbs less than current civics and corollas. At around 2300 lbs, the Yaris weighs 400+ lbs more than my comparably-sized ‘77 Corolla did; the Fit weighs even more than that.

One point that Lovins makes is that when you start peeling weight off of a car, you get into a virtuous circle where it becomes possible to peel more weight off. For example, my old Corolla required neither power steering nor power brakes (people who drove it thought it had power steering, the steering was so light). (again, see my article on the hypercar at http://tinyurl.com/tkrby)

Of course, I want an FCX if I can lease one. I’m a car-guy! I wanted a Chrysler Turbine in 1963 even though I was SIX YEARS OLD. OK? At least I have some small chance of leasing an FCX at age 51 in two years, eh?

Of course, the cynic inside says “well, we were promised gas turbines, then it was steamers, then it was Stirling, then it was Wankel – as the next BIG thing.” Pretty incredible that here it is 2007 nearly, and a good 1/2 of the damn vehicles on the American road have chug-chug V8’s, ladder frames and straight axles. Sheesh.

If I cannot get an FCX, we may well wait another year for the Prius gen III (gen IV for Japan). The the current Prius will be the “50 mpg gas hog” only used a few thousand miles a year when we can’t carpool.

Those folks who say “20-30% improvement” (in a hybrid such as Civic Hybrid or Prius) should come and take a ride with me and watch the MPG meter. It’s a 20-30% improvement over what? How about a 100% improvement over our current conventional 2002 Hyundai Sonata V6 with the same interior room, performance and functionality?

Took my boss to the Ford dealer to pick up his (once again in service for a problem) “Dorf SUV” (Ford spelled sideways is dorf). He was transfixed by the MPG meter. We slowed down to turn into the Ford dealer and he exclaimed “oh my God, you just went up to 49 mpg” (he was looking at the overall average over a couple hundred miles).

“Glenn A,

Remember: Light, cheap, or durable. Pick two.”

Ford Fairmont / Mercury Zephyr. Light, cheap. NOT durable.

Toyota Prius. Light, durable.

Point taken.

But perhaps the Prius is not as “expensive to purchase” as one might surmise. Depends upon your perspective, doesn’t it?

Prius at $22,000 is a bargain for a mid-sized car if you consider what a all-out attempt to obtain 100 mpg with carbon fiber as a car body would cost. Much as I admire the idea that Honda is being extremely brave and putting out their FCX hydrogen fuel cell car in 2008 (in low-mass production), it is going to be a LEASE ONLY car, thus probably heavily subsidized by Honda (which I do NOT think Prius is by Toyota).

Plus, “watch this space” in about 2009 when the next-gen Prius comes out. I bet it is NOT made of ultra-light “unobtanium”. Toyota promised cutting the “hybrid premium” in half (to what, an additional $2000 instead of twice that).

@WaaaaHoooo re: the “huge American gas guzzler” thing:

Compare the market share for the F150 (the highest-selling vehicle ever) and other light trucks and SUVs to that of luxury and sports cars. I don’t have numbers in front of me, but you will find the former much greater. Thus, their economy or lack thereof has a much greater effect on the nation’s fuel consumption and emissions.

@insightOwner, and others re: miles per gallon per person.

I believe you mean people miles per gallon. Take Bubba Gump’s example: “You could fill a 24 mpg Outlook with 8 people and it equates to 192 mpg per passenger”
Miles per gallon per passenger (or “person”) = m/g/p = 24 mpg / 8 people = 3 miles per gallon per person, not 192.
People miles per gallon = p*m/g = 8 people * 24 mpg = 192 people miles per gallon.
Interestingly, Arthur St. Antoine’s column in the November Motor trend addresses exactly this. Check it out.

@ash78 re: “fancy physics terms”

That makes sense on paper and in real life, too. The word you’re missing is “acceleration,” which is “rate at which the small vehicle changes direction or speed.” A “G” is a measure of acceleration.

@neilberg re: cake:

Check out http://ask.yahoo.com/20060511.html.

@many people re: high-mileage/plug-in Prius:

Yes, according to several sources, the next-generation Prius will be a plug-in hybrid. This makes obvious sense if you consider that, with a hybrid Camry available and a hybrid Corolla coming soon (some say 2008), the Prius loses its niche if it doesn’t stay a step ahead of them in efficiency and technology.

@virages re: push rod engines:

For the record, the pushrod engine is a more recent design (though the omniscient Wikipedia disputes this) and a more elegantly simple one. It also allows for more compact packaging of the engine, allowing improvements in a car’s weight distribution, crush zones for pedestrian safety, styling, and more. Though the OHC design is perceived as technologically superior, one need not look farther than the current small block Chevy to see that a well-designed and -constructed cam-in-block engine can be quite competitive with modern OHCs.

@Brandon D. Valentine re: A Modest Proposal:

Hilarious! Good show!

@Bubba Gump re: nuclear cars:

It’s also ironic that, in a thread discussing lightweight cars, you suggest a design that would require hundreds or thousands of pounds of steel, lead, and other materials (perhaps concrete) to contain the radiation that is as inextricably attached to nuclear reactions as heat is to combustion.

@quasimondo re: the cost of charging an electric car:

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/electric-car.htm puts the cost of driving an electric at 1 cent per mile, versus 4 cents per mile for a gas car at thirty mpg. And that was with gas prices at half of today’s values!
I’ve read other estimates of a full charge worth 250 or 300 miles for the cost of one gallon of gas. That’s at least ten times as economical as most gas cars.

@Glenn A. re: Honda FCX and Toyota Prius:

For the record, the “FC” in “FCX” stands for “Fuel Cell.” It is not a hybrid, plug-in or otherwise.
And again, word is that the next Prius will be a plug-in.

@johnnycam:

The continued existence of “chicken littles” does not mean that they are always wrong. I’m sure many warnings were dismissed by skeptical Romans around 500 AD….

Also, on the subject of growing vehicles, grab a car mag and read a review of an updated version of nearly any vehicle. You’ll see “it’s x inches longer, y inches wider and [usually] z inches taller.” Chances are, you’ll also find something like “the new [model name] gains 200 pounds over the outgoing model, but compensates with an extra 36 horses.”
It seems every new model has grown in every redesign for the last decade. Witness the Honda Fit, Toyota Yaris, and Nissan Versa, which slot in under the Civic, Corolla, and Sentra, which used to be defined by their smallness (especially the Civic).

And about navigation systems:
I’m convinced that a navigation system in my car would result in a net savings of gas, due to the reduction in wrong turns and the associated backtracking.

If you’ve stuck it out all the way to here, thanks.

* You can have your luxo-widget tomorrow, but it’s gonna cost you
* I can give you a luxo-widget at half price, but the waitlist is 9 months
– or –
* You can pick up a craptasto-widget at the 7-11 on the way home for only 99 cents

It’s not a matter of the beancounters dictating this, nor is this the outcome of an engineer’s mind gone stagnant. This is quite simply the truth, so to speak.

These cars are heavy not because the car companies wanted to pile on weight, but because they were required by the government to make a car that can withstand a crash. Noley mentioned earlier of how an insurance adjuster told him that small cars can survive an impact from a larger car because they simply bounce away. I disagree. A youtube search for a video of a crash test involving a Honda Civic being broadsided by a Mitsubishi Montero traveling 60 mph shows the Civic wrapping itself around the front end of the Montero. The cabin intrusion was so severe that the door was halfway inside the car, and somehow the driver’s head found its way into the backseat. Definitely not surviveable unless you have reinforced door beams and B-pillars. But unfortunately that adds weight. Sure you can use composite materials, but the problem is the cost not from expensive materials, but because it is time consuming and in most cases must be made by hand. This is fine for a limited production vehicle like the Lotus Elise or Corvette Z06, but when you’re trying to churn out half a million Corollas, this just won’t do.

Besides, how are you going to convince a buyer that your car is safe when you have naysayers saying the car is glued together, even if the bonding process makes it many times stronger than a standard weld?

Light, cheap, or durable. You can only pick two.

2. Regarding #1: Toyota knows the full size truck market is a gold mine, that is why they are spending billions on the new Tundra, a full-size, 384 hp full size pickup. BTW it will likely have worse fuel economy than the Chevy Silverado. Despite all the talk of Toyota Honda technology nobody seems to match Chevy’s full size pickup fuel economy.

3. Saying the Prius is an EV is mis-leading: all of the Prius’s energy is generated from burning gasoline, even though some of it is temporarily stored in a battery. O.K real world you might get 20-30% getter mileage, but otherwise you’re burning dinasour juice, just less of it. Plugin hybrids will improve this.

4. Regarding EV’s: If GM was only car maker you could blame its demise on GM. However many carmakers (Honday, Toyota) all ended their EV sales about 10 nano-seconds after CARB ditched its silly mandate. (the most amazing thing I heard as that “big oil” killed the EV. How could they punish EV owners – refuse to sell them gas?)

You might think I’m pro-GM or anti-Toyota, I’m not. I drive a small 4-cyl ford and a Toyota minivan and like them very much. That last thing I’d want is a fuel sucking Tahoe (even less the Toyota Sequoia which gets even worse mileage). My point is that fuel in-efficiency sells and makes money.

If someone could make a 9 passenger, 450 Hp 4 wheel drive that got 80 mpg and cost $12,000 people would buy it. But this does not exist, and may not be possible. So people choose to pay more and give up fuel economy.

Pick 2.

Thats right, I’d like to say you CAN’T have it all, but maybe it makes more sense to say you don’t NEED it all. We humans are greedy and always want 3, but we also have a conscience – it makes us different to animals.

Does anyone still not believe that global warming is happening? Even if you’re a non-believer, just maybe making a sacrifice and only picking two for a change is pretty cheap insurance for what could happen.

Here in Victoria, Australia we are having one of the worst bushfire seasons ever (and its only December) and water restrictions mean I can’t water the garden. It just doesn’t rain here anymore.

Now we’re getting somewhere. Any discussion about transportation efficiencies should include carpools…elevators, escalators, and the ultimate “transpools,” trains and planes!

“Light, cheap or durable. Pick two” is an OK wry engineering saying as long as they don’t come to believe it and as long as beancounters don’t impose it. Acting on that attitude in the 70’s is what got the Big 3 to where they are today – the Largeish 2.5. They made them heavy, cheap and unreliable and paid the price in market share. The Corvette ought to be an aspirational car – its clear the expertise to pick at least 2.5 of the quoted items is there. Granted a Corvette is only cheap for what it is.

I think that a lot of people (not in this bunch!) are ignorant of the physics of weight, mass, thermodynamics, aerodynamics, and the energy required to move, stop, go, and do. I think it’s partly an education problem.

If we were better educated in these areas, I think we would be more intelligent consumers. Among other things.