The future of vehicle designs? Your thoughts & ideas.

[Tesla]

Just a wild thought, didn't know where to put it, so aero seemed the best option.
Where do you think the personal transportation design area will go.
I was thinking, looking at all the discussion and designs, the ideal aero shape being that of a dolphin crossed with a banana, and the fact that we all generally drive a basic wing effect that wants to lift and we just keep adding Aero effects to hold it down.
Why not let go and let it lift, this would reduce rolling resistance, as long as enough weight was kept on the wheels for traction, why not.
All the aero affects used currently are static and set, yet on aircraft, pretty much the only control they have is active aero effects.
What if we went to a hybrid aero car, a motor vehicle crossed with a ground effect aircraft, if the aero effects were made active and synchronised with steering and braking etc., so when you turn, the small wings front and rear move with the wheels to bank into the turn, if you brake they all go into a forced landing and give added traction to the wheels, on cruise they add lift and take weight off the wheels etc.
At slow speeds they behave like regular motor vehicles, but as speed builds up, then they start to take on the charachteristics of ground effect aircraft.
As electric vehicles or hybrids of some nature are the future, and weight seems to be the biggest constraint, wouldn't it make sense to let the aero effect carry some of that weight.
I'm braced and ready, fire away.

[Ryland]

My first thought is that you don't want your car to create lift, for two reasons, it takes energy to create lift! if you have a wing it will glide furthest if it's neutral, also lift is going to reduce traction, you already have the weight of the vehicle creating pressure on the tires to create traction, so in a strong side wind you'd have less traction and if you had to make a quick turn you'r vehicle would either have to drop down to get better traction or it would have to use wings like you were talking about to push on the air to move it in the direction that you wanted to go, either way creating less air drag seems like a better idea as air drag is a larger drag on the vehicle then rolling resistance from what I understand.

I've thought about building a vehicle who's tail bends with the turn it's making, but it'd only need to bend as much as the degree of the turn and at low speeds when you make sharp turns aerodynamics are not as important.
If you are willing to put that much work in to a vehicle, I think that building a wing like the wind powered cars have would be the way to go, harness the power of the wind around you.

[Sven7]

I'm a senior in Transportation Design right now and we get asked this a lot. Last semester i competed in the Michelin Challenge Design. My group won "Best Transportation System".

Our concept was made for Mexico city and we each designed a different car that would be able to drive on roads or convert to rail travel. Mine also converted to off-road to take advantage of the many Parques Nacionales just out side of the city. Unfortunately the computer model didn't come out as I'd hoped but here is a sketch of the Voisin-inspired car.


Green sketch rear by Tyler Linner, on Flickr

I personally was not on board totally with the rail idea because I thought despite my car's titanium wheels the extra weight would not be worth the reduced rolling resistance. My ideal future mobility concept would be cars that can sense lanes, speed limits and other cars well enough to drive themselves for long distances. This would allow them to use fuel-efficient driving practices and drive closer together to reduce congestion, not to mention give their occupants time to safely put on their makeup, read the newspaper or what have you. In the 90's a small stretch of freeway was paved with small magnetic markers that specially equipped Buicks could sense and navigate successfully. If we could do it entirely with optics there would be no added infrastructure cost.

DARPA has proven this to be possible through their robotic car challenges. I believe Google is running some driverless Street View camera cars as we speak. All we need to do is get this to a level that can be safely used across the board. The problem is even if it's 99.9% accurate, that one person that gets killed in an automated car will bring the whole thing down.

As far as propulsion I think a diesel generator giving juice to electric drive motors is the best solution for right now, but in the future with thin film battery cells we should be able to see pure EV's competing in the marketplace. In the meantime the Volt and Leaf should stay on the market to keep development going. They are going in the right direction in my opinion.

[euromodder]

More aerodynamic designs.
Lighter weight.
Smaller displacement engines.
More realistically sized vehicles.

The demise of the SUV within the next 10-15 years.

[euromodder]

Originally Posted by Sven7

My ideal future mobility concept would be cars that can sense lanes, speed limits

Which would lead to instant mayhem on the Belgian roads where speed limits vary wildly and very frequently.
Speed and other signs being left behind is another issue.

Lane marking are often a joke - a very bad joke if you also consider temporary lane markings.

and other cars well enough to drive themselves for long distances.

A massive challenge, and I don't see it happening.
Doing it through infrastructure is way too expensive.
Doing it through the cars themselves takes ages to implement.
And it has to be done worldwide, using the same standards so it's totally compatible.

In the 90's a small stretch of freeway was paved with small magnetic markers that specially equipped Buicks could sense and navigate successfully. If we could do it entirely with optics there would be no added infrastructure cost.

The Darpa challenge also showed how difficult that was once the lane markings were gone.

At times, it's a challenge for a human, let alone an optical system with a computer to interpret what it thinks it sees.

Then it needs to be able to comply with all international traffic legislation to be able to go abroad.
If you think a 4 way stop is a challenge, you'll be in for a surprise

As far as propulsion I think a diesel generator giving juice to electric drive motors is the best solution for right now

Currently, Diesel is an extra problem, not a solution.

[Sven7]

Most US freeways are quite well marked. 95% of the time I don't think there would be much of a problem. Cars would be programmed specially for each market.

If not diesel, what? Battery technology isn't economically feasible for Americans who think they need to drive 300 miles a day.

[Frank Lee]

If people hate driving so much that having the car drive itself is thought to be appealing, why don't they make any effort to live close to the stuff they do?

Re: aero and lift: bad idea, read up about it, plenty of sources of info out there already.

Back in the '60s and '70s there was a portion of the market that thought due to the KNOWLEDGE that cheap oil was on it's way out, that minis and micros would be "the next big thing". So then the masses decided that driving huge V8 4x4 cubes was where it's at. Contrarians. I guess that means future vehicles will become even bigger, more powerful, and more square... maybe Winnebagos will be the family car/commuter car of the future.

[aerohead]

You could conceive the Rube Goldberg automobile,festooned with high technology.
In the event of an 'event' which required the best human factors reaction time to react within a transient environment,your event horizon could be so short,as to have you dead on arrival,wadded up inside the remains of your car which was unable to respond to the fluid battlefield of streets and roadways,and everything which can happen on them.
We've struggled for tires with better adhesion.
We've struggled to eliminate induced drag.
Low drag and low rolling resistance is a done deal with off-the-shelf technology.You just have to be able to sell it.

[larrybuck]

Plastics, and more carbon fiber come to mind, to eventually do away with steel bodies.

But like the hydrogen cars; its still a ways off.

The carmakers must have their immediate profits, steel is still cheaper, and easier for them.

Its for sure a big $$$$$$ thing!

[Ladogaboy]

The first big hurdle is to start designing for efficiency rather than aesthetics. I prefer function over form, but unfortunately, the only automotive arena where that is actively pursued is in the performance car segment. That is why the Gen I Insight was so ahead of its time. It costs auto manufacturers money to design and build for efficiency, but efficiency doesn't make money. People can complain about CAFE all they want, but without a compelling reason, auto manufacturers have no motivation to design for efficiency. If they did, they'd eat the extra couple hundred dollars to equip every car from factory with a full, smooth aluminum underbelly panel.