GM HX3 Hybrid Van
 

http://www.carstyling.ru/resources/c...90gm_hx3_1.jpg

GM HX3 hybrid van
Popular Science - GM HX3

Looks like GM had a hybrid years before Toyota's Prius...

Reading the rest of the magazine makes me sad.

Same "Tomorrow will be better" tech articles
Same "Almost ready for production" electric cars
Same Snake oil products at the back of the magazine.

The more things change the more they stay the same, indeed.

Interesting vehicle though. I like how they got a clean shape out of a minivan.

The more secret prototypes of GM's I see, the worse I feel for its engineers. They produced some amazing designs and prototypes. They had all the technology and engineering know-how to be a world leader in many different markets, but the leadership has always held it back. It's a shame.

Thanks for posting, Piwoslaw. Some excellent pictures in that link.

I like it a lot.

Looking over the photos again, it seems smaller than the pics suggest. Maybe about the size of a Mazda 5?

The VW 1L car also tricks the eyes - it's much smaller in real life than it looks in photos. Something about aero styling?

GM and Ford have large European divisions that have been putting out quite efficient cars that the US doesn't get to see. GM and Opel/Vauxhall are supposedly the same company, but with totally different politics. I guess the European part had to go with efficiency to stay in the market, while in the US it was the Big 3 that kept the brakes on for years. Now they're so far behind that it's hard to catch up, let alone be ahead.

Hi,

Thanks for posting! The Cd of 0.258 for this vehicle makes the Mercedes Boxfish's Cd of 0.19 look even more impressive!

Interesting find. Looks very similar to the Previa which Toyota made into a hybrid in Japan around 2000, called the Estima. North America got the V6 Sienna :(

Funny thing is that van would probably have a lower Cd in reverse.

This type of thing is so common in corporate culture. If you look like you are green that is all that matters. All image, no substance. GM to a T. Just like all those green ads for big oil companies. Very expensive manure... on recycled paper.

The quote at the end is prefect: "We could wait and wait and wait for the perfect batteries, but we are going ahead with what we have." Ron R Dabels: Market development manager.

They waited, they got the batteries and then they sold them to Chevron.

Looks like an EV-1 station wagon.

I just noticed that the HX3 resembles Citroen's ECO 2000, from 1981-84. But didn't all prototypes look like that in the '80's?

http://www.citroenet.org.uk/prototyp...es/sa109-2.jpg

Another great page full of aero eye candy. Thanks for the link, Piwoslaw.

Some of you may be familiar with my website Mulsanne's Corner. During my research for my IMSA GTP book I got to know fellow Industrial Designer Clark Lincoln. Mr. Lincoln was responsible for the famous GM Goodwrench livery on the Corvette GTPs. Clark Lincoln was also a designer for General Motors and worked in their Advanced Studio. Well turns out he was heavily involved with the HX3 Hybrid. He's graciously shared some of his wind tunnel test run notes and I've decided to share them with you all as well as they make for interesting, and very relevant reading:

http://www.mulsannescorner.com/pictu.../HX3Doc001.jpg

http://www.mulsannescorner.com/pictu.../HX3Doc002.jpg

http://www.mulsannescorner.com/pictu.../HX3Doc003.jpg

The main conclusions they came to was the interrelationship/sensitivity between the slope angle of the trailing edge of the roof and that of the rear underfloor trailing edge ramp angle. The HX3 had essentially a flat underfloor. They found that if the roof trailing edge slope was effectively zero, sloping the underfloor/diffuser ramp actually INCREASED drag. But if an angled rear diffuser (15 degrees) was combined with a sloped roof trailing edge just the opposite occurred: drag REDUCTION.

More than likely the downwards "aimed" roof vorticies helped draw air through the rear diffuser, whereas without the top trailing edge slope the diffuser was creating a localized flow separation. Interesting stuff and quite a treat to take a peak into the development notes of a road car. Typically this type of information is considered verboten!

That's a very interesting set of notes especially for a van driver like myself. I would love to chop and slant the roof on my Previa like the HX3! Just a weekend job, really.

I went over to Mulsanne's Corner and found the following which was at the bottom of an article on the Toyota GT One.

Mulsanne's Corner: GT-One, 101?

This is a hot topic here at ecomodder. There have been countless arguments, experiments and claims regarding VG's and base filling drag reduction but no one has been able to find any research on the topic. The is one small reference in Hucho but that's it. Do you know where these studies were published?

I messaged Juha and he had a number of references to look into:

Hucho, "Aerodynamics of Road Vehicles", 1st English edition, page 334, chapter 8.5.4.5 Add-on devices on the rear end...
Hucho refers to: Young, R.A. "Bluff bodies ion shear flow". PhD Thesis, Cambridge University...
.... found another one also referring to the Young work:

SAE paper 2003-01-3377 "Simple and Low-Cost Aerodynamic Drag Reduction Devices for Tractor-Trailer Trucks"

SAE Paper 2005-01-3526 "An Assessment of Drag Reduction Devices for Heavy Trucks Using Design Experiments and Computational Fluid Dynamics"

woodstock74 - thanks for posting those "napkin" development images. (I have lots of napkins... lacking in wind tunnels, unfortunately!)

I've been to your site a bunch of times. Thanks for sharing.

Blame it on the EPA anti-Diesel policies and the NHTSA.