DuckThor Evil
Legend
Sport cars use drag for downforce whereas prius tries to reduce drag as much as possible, both are good, but for different purposes.
Chevy Volt drivers average 800 miles between fill-ups.
- Thread starter nintenho
- Start date
Sport cars use drag for downforce whereas prius tries to reduce drag as much as possible, both are good, but for different purposes.
Well it will be some combination of area and coefficient of drag. Wikipedia has some figures for both for various vehicles.
What evil said though cheeze. Performance vehicles have different aero optimization than slow poor cornering vehicles.
And by sports car I assume you meant a regular car not an f1 style car. The back end of many cars is poorly designed in terms of drag. The prius could be better, but it would look even more weird with a pointy rear end.
And by sports car I assume you meant a regular car not an f1 style car. The back end of many cars is poorly designed in terms of drag. The prius could be better, but it would look even more weird with a pointy rear end.
Mintmaster
Veteran
Call me a skeptic. Where exactly is the efficiency advantage over normal engines? I can see the power density argument, but that's not really a problem, and even a couple hundred pounds will only save you a few percent in fuel economy. They're going to have a tough time optimizing efficiency without fine-grained control of four stroke engines with variable valve timing.
EDIT: I'm more interested in the potentially revolutionary stuff like the Wave Disc Generator at MSU:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20928035.100-shock-wave-puts-hybrid-engines-in-a-spin.html
They're estimating 60% thermal efficiency. That's insane.
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You mean like a ford focus?
is it the focus that closes its gril ? I dunno only just heard about it. Does it actually improve things ?
I haven't looked at the stats of that engine but surely, in stop/start traffic, saving 100kg of mass in a 1~1.5 tonne vehicle would be significant.
Is that some sort of cross between a pulse jet engine and a more regular turbine?
Here in the Netherlands, you pay a large extra tax on cars, up to ~80% for large, fuel-inefficient performance cars, down to 0% for fully electrical ones. For a big, electric car costing 50,000 Euro (only VAT, no other taxes) like the Tesla Model S, that's a saving of about 20,000 Euro.
And there's road tax, which depends on the weight of the car, but free for fully electrical ones. For diesel engines, you pay $2000 Euro extra road tax a year. Because diesel is cheaper than gasoline, and the taxes have to keep on coming in.
That's a saving of between 300 and 3200 a year, depending.
And the main one: about 70% of the price of gasoline is taxes as well. And gasoline isn't cheap to begin with.
At the moment, you would pay about 20,000 Euro for driving 200,000 kilometres on gasoline, while you would pay about 3,500 Euro for driving the same distance fully electrical, in a high-performance Tesla.
That's an 16,500 Euro extra you can spend on the initial cost of the car, to pay for the batteries.
And then there's maintenance: there's lots of things that need refilling, maintaining and replacing on an ICE car in that time. While there is almost none in an electric car. That's another 8000 Euro in savings.
So, over that 200,000 kilometres that Tesla gives as the minimal lifetime of the battery, you save 20,000 + ~9000 + 16,500 + 8000 = 53,500 Euro, compared with the cost of an ICE car.
That's (totally accidental, but pretty cool) exactly what that car would cost you over that 200,000 kilometres.
So, why would anyone here in the Netherlands bother with an ICE or hybrid car, when those great, all-electrical ones become available? Not to mention that it looks gorgeous, seats up to seven, and does 0-100 km/h in 5.6 seconds.
And there's road tax, which depends on the weight of the car, but free for fully electrical ones. For diesel engines, you pay $2000 Euro extra road tax a year. Because diesel is cheaper than gasoline, and the taxes have to keep on coming in.
That's a saving of between 300 and 3200 a year, depending.
And the main one: about 70% of the price of gasoline is taxes as well. And gasoline isn't cheap to begin with.
At the moment, you would pay about 20,000 Euro for driving 200,000 kilometres on gasoline, while you would pay about 3,500 Euro for driving the same distance fully electrical, in a high-performance Tesla.
That's an 16,500 Euro extra you can spend on the initial cost of the car, to pay for the batteries.
And then there's maintenance: there's lots of things that need refilling, maintaining and replacing on an ICE car in that time. While there is almost none in an electric car. That's another 8000 Euro in savings.
So, over that 200,000 kilometres that Tesla gives as the minimal lifetime of the battery, you save 20,000 + ~9000 + 16,500 + 8000 = 53,500 Euro, compared with the cost of an ICE car.
That's (totally accidental, but pretty cool) exactly what that car would cost you over that 200,000 kilometres.
So, why would anyone here in the Netherlands bother with an ICE or hybrid car, when those great, all-electrical ones become available? Not to mention that it looks gorgeous, seats up to seven, and does 0-100 km/h in 5.6 seconds.
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Frank said:
Heh in norway you can barely buy a vw passat 2.0 with some decent interior for 50k euro. The tesla is quite cheap here though 100k which is nothing when for that price you can barely buy porsche boxter 2.7. A 911 4s is about 180k .
Teslas are quite popular here as you can also drive in the busslane with elcars
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I really don't know why it was confusing, but sorry if so. I thought no as important was pretty clear. It is not as important as with regular vehicles. This is actually a really good thing since consumers tend to like big heavy vehicles for some reason.