100mpg caterham

[euromodder]

Originally Posted by elhigh

Yup. Check it: Kinetic Vehicles
This article (and it's four years old) also gives a shout to Basjoos' Aerocivic.

Check out the links at the bottom - I'm only keeping the headlines:

More Green(er) Cars
Fisker Gets Half-Billion Dollars (!) Loan from Department of Energy
another bust, then compare that to :
Modified Honda CRX HF Wins Fuel Economy Competition with 118 MPG!
Or to the aerocivic.

You can see he switched to a more aero body for better numbers.

The Lotus 7 was never built for aerodynamics, but it would easily get better figures with better streamlining, at a modest weight penalty, and at the same time increase luggage capacity.

Think aerospider 6C with conventional engine lay-out.
It'd add massive amounts of internal volume.


Going with FWD, have a look at this :


It's the VW up!'s engine bay.
It's only about 70" deep or so ... and leaves massive internal volume even in a car only 12' long.
If VW made it better streamlined rather than a boxy hatch, it could do small miracles.

The only downside on the LoCost is it's a two-seater.

Is that an issue, with "high-occupancy" starting at 2 ppl in CA ?
Even then you still have the HO lane all to yourself ...
Been there, done that.

Luggage capacity doesn't look that great, either.

Neither is it on the 7 (Lotus or Caterham) but improving the aero could take care of that - it badly needs a tail to improve aero.
And a cabin, optionally.


I rate both garage-modded cars a couple orders of magnitude above the X-prize contenders - let alone finalists who received a pile of cash.

I'd rather see the aerocivic or (son of) MAX in a museum than an X-prize prototype ...

Jack's said on here as well that X-prize was an administrative nightmare to stress the production capabilities, rather than a realistic car competition.
Yet they've got no production-standard cars to show, let alone sell ...


If I pay Mike 30K or so, I bet we'll have aerocivics in low-rate production by next week or so, if he can find good donors quickly enough.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

I like the classic style of the Caterham, altough it's not so aerodynamic. We might remember that 750cc engines were fitted to the earliest ones, since their focus is on the lightest weight possible...