i wonder what it will look like after a semi hits it

I wonder what any car would look like after it gets hit by a semi.

Just look at the carbon Enzos... or rather... look at what happens to them when they get in a wreck.

If you can recognize them, that is.

I dunno... 900lbs... maybe it will bounce before it rips apart.

Hey that looks not bad, pretty funky and futuristic!

900lbs huh? I wonder how fast it'll go if you fit it with a regular 1000 cc engine

The conventions of thought always, ALWAYS gravitate to the absolute worst case scenario. Personally, I have seen Ford Excursions after being hit by semi's.

The reason people are redesigning transportation is not only because we are rethinking our consumption of petroleum products. We are redesigning our thoughts on transportation and how we get from point A to point B. Vehicles like this hint at this change. Driving with responsibility toward our impact on the environment may also change us as drivers. Possibly making driving safer. Eventually. Without change, though, there's no hope of ever getting there.

Present day vehicles, no matter how many airbags or sensors, are still unsafe under certain conditions. I'm willing to bet that this car will have the required safety characteristics to be driven by the reasonable driver.

It will probably be comparable to a crotch-rocket... perfectly safe until it impacts anything... car... pole... deer. It may be incredably strong and lightweight, but carbon is not steel. Steel bends. Carbon breaks. The only plausible precaution would be steel ribs inside the carbon. The weight is also a factor as well... how do you keep such a lightweight vehicle traveling at high speed through a watery roadway? You stick an impeller on it and call it a boat.

I think if these type of vehicles, when/if they become common, will need an independant system much like trains. A seperate highway lane would probably be ok, but it would need to have high walls and be heavily automated. This thing would definitely not be for city driving.

it's not a practicle car though. sounds good on paper though. it doesn't look like it can carry much

We already have a car that can get 300 mpg or more, is in large-scale production, widely accepted by just about everyone who sees it, carries four passengers (or three with a week's worth of groceries) and costs less than $30,000 US.

It's called the Toyota Prius (with two easily implemented factory changes).

First, make it a plug-in. After the first disaster with the GM all-electric cars of 6-8 years ago (that no one would buy because of their limited range) Toyota got the message that people don't want to be tied to an overnight outlet and decided (wisely) to let the IC engine and regen braking provide electricity to charge the batteries. But by not letting the driver have the option of plugging the car in overnight Toyota missed out on a great opportunity.

You can now retrofit a Prius (for about $12,000 US) with larger batteries, a different computer, and a receptacle for your 115 VAC mains. With the new system, the IC engine won't even start up until the current level drops to a pre-determined point or the car reaches 34 mi/hr (55 km/hr).

This means that you can charge up at night when electricity rates are lower, and, if you commute five or ten miles to work on surface street, you might not use any gasoline at all. In reality, though, given the mix of commuting, picking up the kids, going shopping, etc., the retrofitted Prius gives you about 98-110 mpg (42-47 km/l).

Second, change the computer (and, if necessary, the fuel lines) to give the engine multi-fuel capacity. General Motors, not exactly your cutting edge automotive company, is not offering many vehicles for 2006/2007 which can burn fuel up to e-85 (15 percent petroleum, 85 percent ethanol)

Work the numbers here. If you ran e-85, you’d only be using fifteen percent of the gasoline as before, which would (theoretically) turn your 100 mpg into 567 mpg! Now, in reality, the efficiency of ethanol is lower than that of gasoline, so your fuel usage would be up a bit. But even if you figured your e-85 efficiency very conservatively, you could still expect 300 mpg of gasoline (128 km/l) on a good day!

Now of course, there’re two negative factors I haven’t mentioned.

First, the electricity you get from your mains that you use to charge the batteries overnight is not a ‘freebie’; many electrical generating plants burn hydrocarbons like coal or oil, and that in itself is a Bad Thing in that it pollutes the air and lowers our stocks of petroleum world-wide). But electricity can be (and often is) generated by other methods such as hydro and nuclear fission, both a lot cleaner than hydrocarbon-burning. And even if you did get your mains electricity from burning coal, you get a lot more ‘bang for the buck’ from a large power plant than you do from a 1500 cc engine, even the one made by Toyota.

Second, changing the fuel from gasoline to e-85 is not a ‘freebie’, either. It costs a lot to produce ethanol, both in land, fertilizer and pesticides (not a Good Thing) and, most importantly in the long run, water.

But we can cut the production costs drastically, and ethanol (from corn or any other sugar-producing crop -- and maybe even cellulose someday!) is renewable, unlike oil.

There’s one more downside I almost forgot. With our demand for oil drastically reduced, our poor friends in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Venezuela, Iran, etc. would see their oil revenues go down and would not be able to afford their Mercedes Benzes and private jets. Also, without the oil thugs strategically important to the Western world, we wouldn’t have a need or an excuse to even be involved with the islamo-fascists, and we can leave them to their own devices. All is not lost, however; I understand there may be export possibilities for camel dung.

sardionsez:

Yes but those plants operate at a higher efficiency then individual combustion engines and are easier to remediate the pollution with some conventional methods as well as some rather new unconventional methods like using Algae.

Algae? Isn't he the guy that invented the internet?

You're right, of course; that's exactly what I meant by 'getting more bang from the buck'. Innate economies of scale with big plants mean the cost per kW/hr and the cost to clean up emissions per kW/hr are substantially less, even when you crank in transmission losses over long distances.

And your comment about algae is an interesting one. My wife, whose extra-curricular interests run to marine and aquatic biology, was mentioning that capability to me last week. I obviously need to do some more research on that!

[edit on 12-2-2006 by Off_The_Street]