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Old 04-01-2009, 01:40 PM   #2 (permalink)
jamesqf
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You're wrong about a lot of that, but especially about the sports car part. First off, most of the cars I've owned, up to and including my current Insight, could be reasonably described as sports cars by the original British definition. (Though perhaps not by an American definition that confuses them with Detroit muscle cars.) All of them have also gotten much better than average fuel economy: not just for their day, but for any day.

There's a reason for this. As Colin Chapman, the founder of Lotus, put it, the essential principle of sports car design is "Simplify, then add lightness." Proper sports cars dispense with a great deal of unnecessary weight - starting with the back seat (I can't even remember the last time I wanted to carry more than one other person), and continuing through junk like automatic transmissions, '50s-era tailfins, or chome-plated grillwork designed to create an impression of aggressiveness when seen in a rear-view mirror - and that increases both performance and fuel economy. You might reflect on the fact that the automaker with the highest CAFE numbers in recent years has been none other than Lotus, the builder of those "wasteful" high-performance sports cars.

Furthermore, sports cars are not really about going fast, but about going quickly. Any idiot - even GM - can shoehorn a 500 hp engine in a car, and manage to go fast down a straight road like your neighborhood freeways. Sports cars are about what happens in the curves. Make your sports car electric, and the efficiency penalty for quickness is miniscule.

Lastly (for now) there's the psychological aspect. How do you expect to get people out of their overstuffed handles-like-a-waterbed land yachts, unless you offer them some reward? It's a bit like losing weight: you can force people to lose weight on a starvation diet, but only a few ascetics will do so voluntarily. Put them on an exercise program, though, and make that exercise FUN, and they'll burn off the pounds in short order. Same principle applies to energy conservation: show people that it's a pleasure rather than a sacrifice, and you'll get a lot more takers.
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