Quote:
Originally Posted by oil pan 4
The best ones by far were built on lotus bodies.
Wasn't some one trying to convince us that "weigh doesn't really matter on an electric" not that long ago?
(I know it was not you red devil)
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That was aerohead, I think, in the "100 MPGe at 100 mph" thread. He mentioned a paper by someone at Volvo, but I couldn't find it anywhere. My search did, however, turn up several academic papers on the optimization of lightweighting and cost in electric vehicles, and all those papers demonstrate increasing efficiency with weight reduction. Power is the integral of the force curve, and force required to move the car is always reduced if the car is lighter. While you get some of that back with regenerative braking, each conversion of energy comes with losses. So while you can get more back from braking in a heavier car, you don't get as much back as you expended moving that heavier car in the first place.