View Single Post
Old 05-26-2010, 04:28 PM   #2 (permalink)
RobertSmalls
Left Lane Ecodriver
 
RobertSmalls's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2008
Location: Buffalo, NY, USA
Posts: 2,257

Prius C - '12 Toyota Prius C
Thanks: 79
Thanked 287 Times in 200 Posts
Have a look at the streamlining template.



Thinking big is good, and you may want to think bigger. The distance from where the curved roofline begins to where it meets the ground (roughly the length of the boattail), is 1.78*D, where D is twice the height of the vehicle. In your case, that's 6.34m! That's obviously not going to happen.

But if you line up the template with the widest part of the TOP view of your minivan, you find that D is the width of your vehicle, 1.90m, and 1.78*D is 3.39m. That's still a little long, but 70% of that length (i.e. 2.37m) gives you almost as good of a result. See this thread for drag reduction estimates for shorter boat tails. Even a 50% chop, 1.69m, looks to be good for a very large reduction in Cd.

I like the way it looks, and you'd probably have the least thirsty seven-passenger vehicle on this site. Very cool, and I hope you do it.
Attached Thumbnails
Click image for larger version

Name:	Streamlining Template.jpg
Views:	730
Size:	100.1 KB
ID:	6075  

Last edited by RobertSmalls; 05-26-2010 at 04:36 PM..
  Reply With Quote