Thread: Steve's Intro
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Old 04-09-2008, 01:07 PM   #14 (permalink)
SteveP
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Yeah, I looked at carfolio.com -- lots of the data was missing (random check), so I haven't bothered looking there any more. I also don't know where they got their data from, so I don't know whether to rely on it or not.

Re the .85 factor, I've heard of .8 and .81; I picked .85 since it seemed to match the EV1 and Insight numbers. I think it would depend on how rounded (side to side) the body is and cars vary quite a bit in that (the Prius is darn near rectangular!). For my uses, the .85 is likely "worst case" which is what I'm designing to. If whatever vehicle I end up with turns out to be a little better, that's a welcome "plus".

As far as my "spreadsheet"--it's just numbers on of paper--I've mostly started from lightweight vehicles and tried to add CdAs as I could find them. Maybe this will help:

Since weight is important to me, and weight (at least curb weight) is fairly easy to find, I looked at a *vast* array of vehicles and discovered that American mfrs don't make light cars. So I ruled all those out--basically I was looking for 2,000 lbs (900 kg) curb weight or less. The other set of cars I ruled out were sports cars--no room for batteries and, usually, their CdAs are horrible because despite the low "A", they have crappy Cds (usually). There are exceptions--'93 Mazda RX-7 is listed at 5.61 but its curb weight is 2600 lbs. The '95 Mitsubishi eclipse GSX and GS-T are listed at 5.92. I also wanted a car that was popular so I'd be able to get parts, etc. so that ruled out a lot of foreign cars -- even the Insight didn't sell that well, so that, too, might be iffy (from my point of view).

What's left (for me) is a set of light cars with horrible CdAs: Tercel only weighs about 1800 lbs but the CdA is listed in the low 7s. Geos are light, too, but are about 6.8 or so (for those that I could find)--the problem there is the payload capacity (in lbs) isn't that great. Some Subarus aren't too bad; something called the SVX has a CdA of about 6.0 for the '92, but I haven't (yet) found the weight--also don't know what it looks like. Honda Civics are pretty bad: '94 DX is 7.22 for example (don't know what body type) and they seem weigh up in the 2200 lb region.

The problem with compiling a list is that there are so many considerations, I wouldn't know how to sort it for someone else--that and the fact that the CdAs really aren't available for most cars. I mean, do you cut it off at a CdA of 7? 6.5? How about year: go back as far as 1990? 1980? (I know, you were hoping for whatever I *did* have, but I kinda got going there )

My best advice is 1) decide what mfrs you're willing to consider, 2) consider what CdAs you're willing to live with. Then go to mayfco and click on the boxes for those mfrs. There are so few cars listed you can see at at a glance what, if anything, matches your criteria. After that, it's just slogging, model by model looking at various car sites for whatever scraps of info you can find. What I've found so far is darn few cars are under 6; most are in the mid-6s to mid-7s.

If you have specific criteria in mind, I could look through my notes (about 20 pages worth) and see if I notice anything (assuming I have the relevant info) that would be of use to you.


--Steve
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