Building a 100mpg consumer vehicle

[Grant-53]

Exactly. Re #265 post

Maybe I'll just build a fast bike for each kid and teach them how to do a pace line instead of a quadracycle.

There was some discussion a while back about roll over strength. If a strength test is needed before selling frames for liability purposes, a spare frame could be tested (and videoed) using a loader bucket with the equivalent vehicle/passenger weight. If you are just selling copyrighted drawings then the liablity risk is less.
I expect to have to do a fair amount of testing of my reinforced bike fairings before selling plans online. Maybe its just because I'm in New York state.

[euromodder]

Originally Posted by drmiller100

I think the real market is performance commuter. No one cares about a car which will get 80 mpg, but EVERYONE seems interested in a cool car which flat frigging SMOKES a vette and gets 50mpg.

Sadly, you could have a valid point there.

While a power commuter would likely get good MPG when hypermiled, the highest MPG will only be achieved when the vehicle is designed and optimized for fuel efficiency, not power.

Are you still going for the 100mpg commuter ?

[divedaddy03]

Miller and Dave,

Great convo about this.
What is it going to take to gain a wider market appeal for this?

I can see the household having a couple of "A" cars and a fun "B" car in the garage of the future...

Humm....thoughts to ponder.

Wayne
SC

Originally Posted by Diesel_Dave

I think this is a very good point. As much as we're all about fuel economy on this forum, I think it's wise to realize there's probably not a wide market apeal out there for that yet. It looks to me like you had two options:
A: Good fuel economy and good perfomance
B: Great fuel economy and okay perfomance
If you were only trying to market to the folks on this site, then option B would be the way to go. However, I think you'll get a lot farther by going with option A, as you have. There's more people and more money out there to appeal to that way.

BTW, do you have any videos yet?

[serialk11r]

Originally Posted by euromodder

Sadly, you could have a valid point there.

While a power commuter would likely get good MPG when hypermiled, the highest MPG will only be achieved when the vehicle is designed and optimized for fuel efficiency, not power.

Are you still going for the 100mpg commuter ?

Dunno, you can have an Atkinson cycle engine and then a fat Eaton TVS supercharger for the extra power, it would be very fuel efficient with the supercharger bypass opened since you can gear it to cruise with the throttle fully open, and it'll go like stink under boost. Maybe aim for like, 85 Nm/L without boost as opposed to the 79Nm/L that the Toyota ---FXE engines usually use the TVS units work well at pressure ratios of 1.6 ish, so with intercooling you can probably get a healthy 120Nm/L.

[Diesel_Dave]

Originally Posted by serialk11r

Dunno, you can have an Atkinson cycle engine and then a fat Eaton TVS supercharger for the extra power,

Sounds great in theory, but we're talking about a real car that's actually being built by a guy in his back yard. Taking the powertrain out of an old Civic sure seems pretty simple to me.

[Sven7]

Originally Posted by Diesel_Dave

A: Good fuel economy and good perfomance
B: Great fuel economy and okay perfomance
If you were only trying to market to the folks on this site, then option B would be the way to go. However, I think you'll get a lot farther by going with option A, as you have. There's more people and more money out there to appeal to that way.

No one's going to buy this car as a fun car. No one buys a Prius for its driving dynamics. If you're going to make a 100mpg commuter car, make fuel economy your priority. If you put out a car like this that does 80mpg and 0-60 in 6 seconds, people are going to say-

A: Why didn't you focus and make 100mpg?
B: Why didn't you focus and make 0-60 in 4?

If you start with a novel solution then compromise it no one will care, period. Decide what it's going to be and do that. With a car this small you can have more than the average two car garage. Imagine fitting two of these into one garage stall, with the other stall occupied by a Mustang.

Of course there are some people who will say, "Hey, 80mpg is twice what my Sonata Hybrid gets." But for every one of those there will be five that say, "It does several things decently, but for the money I want it to do one thing really well."

What is that one thing? Efficiency or performance?

[drmiller100]

It started efficiency.

This site is one of the most popular efficiency sites on the whole 'net.

And I got VERY little positive response.

I made one little post on an obscure performance site, and got slammed with phone calls.

0 to 60 in 4.0 is pretty quick. Top speed of 160 is pretty fast.

Both should be pretty easy with a K series NA.

[Diesel_Dave]

Heck, if Doug finds that there is a market later on, it's not like there'd be a huge amount of extra work creating a "fuel economy" version and a "performance" version.

[groundflyer]

Originally Posted by Diesel_Dave

Sounds great in theory, but we're talking about a real car that's actually being built by a guy in his back yard. Taking the powertrain out of an old Civic sure seems pretty simple to me.

Hi guys I Just started building a reverse trike from a 88 CRX HF So were do I post info later started the roll cage yesterday got a large bike tail will have some sort of boat tail just dont know yet... All parts under 1000 bucks HMMMMM

[NachtRitter]

I would suggest you start your own thread rather than posting details of your build in someone else's build thread...