A team of engineering students from The University of British Columbia has built a vehicle so efficient that it could travel from Vancouver to Halifax on a gallon of gasoline.
http://www.physorg.com/news70040977.html
Great design effort if the goal was purely fuel efficiency, however comfort was sacrificed. The driver must lay in the prone position to navigate the vehicle.
Also the vehicle only has room for one passenger,the driver.
Now add all the weight of a four passenger vehicle equipped with the modern comforts of music, air conditioning, shock absorption, comfortable up right seating, speed....ect.
The fuel efficiency would evaporate like a fart in the wind.
Maybe some safety issues also, how well does the light weight composite materials absorb impact? Would the driver be safe in a collision?
While it is a good engineering exercise mainly resulting in a higher Grade Point Average, in todays market, it would be a complete failure, for not giving equal design considerations to the other customer CTQ's mentioned above.
It also does not break the dependence on fossil fuel, there is no mention of an alternative fuel design? it simply uses less oil. ???
Quote from: troutphisher on October 04, 2006, 18:41:09 PM
Great design effort if the goal was purely fuel efficiency, however comfort was sacrificed. The driver must lay in the prone position to navigate the vehicle.
Also the vehicle only has room for one passenger,the driver.
Now add all the weight of a four passenger vehicle equipped with the modern comforts of music, air conditioning, shock absorption, comfortable up right seating, speed....ect.
The fuel efficiency would evaporate link a fart in the wind.
Maybe some safety issues also, how well does the light weight composite materials absorb impact? Would the driver be safe in a collision?
While it is a good engineering exercise mainly resulting in a higher Grade Point Average, in todays market, it would be a complete failure, for not giving equal design considerations to the other customer CTQ's mentioned above.
It also does not break the dependence on fossil fuel, there is no mention of an alternative fuel design? it simply uses less oil. ???
:P you take the all fun out of it....
Feels almost like Phish peed in your Wheaties, doesn't it Woolly? Now stop that Phish!
if i can put a rod-rack on the top i could drive to montana for under 4 bucks ;D ;D thats way cool in my book
Quote from: lepomis_mcro on October 04, 2006, 20:35:34 PM
if i can put a rod-rack on the top i could drive to montana for under 4 bucks ;D ;D thats way cool in my book
did it say how fast it went... you might be on the road for a while.....
The year before the same team only got 1600 mpg. With the second place team only getting 1800 mpg this year, the winners really stepped it up this year. I have to agree with phish that it would be a much better feat if it was done using an alternative fuel source. It was however, quite an accomplishment! 0--0
It would be relatively trivial to switch the engine over to run off of alcohol, or even a bottled gas, such as propane or butane (or even pure hydrogen).
I think Wooly hit on to a key point, though. No where in the article does it state how fast the vehicle went. Wind/air resistance is a key factor in milage.