Do Sportscars and Hybrid contradict each other?

Among the car manufacturers to push for hybrid technology there are also a number of sportscar companies, i.e. Porsche, Ferrari and others. But, does the combination of a sportscar with hybrid engine technology really make sense? There are quite a number of reasons against it:
(1) Hybrid technology makes a car heavier, easily 50, but most commonly 100-150 kg extra weight. Weight is bad for handling and performance
(2) Hybrid technology only really makes a car save fuel if it allows to shift earlier or to run without the gasoline engine. However, the fun of driving a sportscar often comes with revving the engine and listening to the noise the car makes
(3) Driveability often suffers due to the effect when you use the electrical engine to slow down the car. This has also been a huge issue with KERS in formula 1.
Of course there are also a number of good reasons why adding hybrid technology to a sportscar can make sense, as for example the successful 997 GT3 Hybrid has shown or the future 918 spider will maybe illustrate, but I stay with my opinion that we should rather save weight and come up with simple efficient sportcars that are fun to drive!

Is the Tesla changing the world?

There are more Teslas in Switzerland (per capita) than anywhere else in the world. Actually, you now see them quite often. I have been writing about the Tesla before. It's based on a great car (Lotus Elise) and has been able to retain its donor car's handling excellence despite the extra weight. Combine this great basis with an ecological drivetrain and a courageous choice of battery technology and you actually have a pretty good car. The fact that you now see a Tesla besides an Audi R8 or a Ferrari 458 Italia at the airport lottery (win a great car for just 20 £) supports the assumption that owning a Tesla is quite hip. What do people use the Tesla for? I have no clue. They probably don't use it for traveling (range to narrow) and neither on a race track (you will not be able to complete a lap at the Nurburgring with the Tesla before the battery is empty) and for shopping it's probably not practical neither. So it's rather an item to own (and show) than one to use. Good so, if you can afford it. But there are not enough people in this segment to make Tesla a true success.

GoCycle - the best e-bike yet?

I just stumbled upon the GOCYCLE e-bike. It's not that new, but it's still fresh. So what does it have to do with cars, you may ask. Well, it has been designed by Richard Thorpe, coming from McLaren. It's pretty clever with its moulded magnesium frame, cleandrive fully sealed 3-speed sequential gearbox and integrated floating disk brakes. And it looks good and very stylish. And it's light, 16.2 kg is something in the e-bike world. I haven't yet had the opportunity to test drive one, but I will. There are things already though I don't like. The price lists looks like what you are used from Mercedes or BMW, everything costs extra and the add-ons are quite expensive. The bike as such is fairly affordable with £1'272 excluding VAT.
So, I am tempted, but not fully convinced yet ...

New 2011 Lotus Elise with ultra low CO2 emission

Lotus has just announced that the new 2011 Lotus Elise has been awarded an outstandingly low emissions figure of 149g of CO2 / km which represents a reduction of 16% over the previous Lotus Elise S.
This figure means that the Elise has the lowest CO2 for its performance level for any gasoline sportscar in the world. Fuel consumption is ultra low too, with 5.04 litres per 100 km (extra urban). Where are the savings coming from? Aerodynamics have been improved by 4% and new super efficient, 1.6 litre 4 cylinder VVT-I engine has been installed which is not only is 200 cc smaller than the engine for the outgoing Lotus Elise S but also produces the same power. And the bottom line performance figures speak for themselves: 0-100 km/h 6.5 seconds! Who said that driving a green car can't be fun?

The car Artega should build - Artega GT 2.0 TFSI

We haven't heard much from Artega lately, at least they were at the Geneva Car Show a couple of weeks ago.
Given the current trends and sensitivities I wonder whether Artega shouldn't consider adding another model or even replacing the one they have. As you know the Artega GT has the Volkswagen V6 engine on board, basically the unit from the Passat R36 coupled with the DSG box. While this certainly guarantees acceptable performance the engine isn't known for fuel efficiency and low CO2 emissions. So why not replacing that unit with a tweeked 2.0 TFSI engine? Performance would still be more than okay, but weight could come down to 1'235 kg, CO2 emissions to 174 g (from 220 g), average ECE fuel consumption from 8.9 to 6.7 l/100 km. Even the price could be reduced and maybe some of the components (breaks, wheels, etc.) could be made lighter optimizing performance and fuel efficiency even more. Important though would be an investment on the sound engineering side though and please alter the seating position so that even tall men can sit comfortably!

Porsche with low emission sportscar concept in 1980

30 years ago Porsche was planning to build a low emission sportscar. With a wind slippery body (cw 0.25) and a low not too wide body, combined with a 4 cylinder 2 liter engine it would have been fast enough with less than 10 seconds from 0-100 km/h (yes this was still fairly fast in 1980) and a 200+ km/h top speed. And thanks to the low weight of less than 800 kg Porsche calculated a (ECE standard) fuel consumption of less than 4.8 l/100 km. Even today, this would be quite impressive.
Well, we know, Porsche never produced this car. And to be fair, it's pretty probable that it wouldn't have been a sales success. But what I am really wondering is that if they thought a 4.8 l/100 km sportscar was possible in 1980 why on earth can't we build a 2-3 l/100 km sportscar today? I am totally convinced that all it takes is available! And, differently to the good old days, it might be well possible that people actually would buy the car. Look at the Smart Coupé, people actually did like it and it sold, even if it didn't meet the volume expectations of Mercedes.

Small cars outpacing medium sized and large cars in the US

I just stumbled upon a chart from Ford stating that in 2013 there will be more small cars in the US than medium sized cars. Now, let us think about this:
a) In the last 2-3 years US people haven't really got rid of their SUVs and they still like large cars
b) It's quite difficult to make good money with smaller cars
c) From a fuel consumption point of view, being small (and light) makes less and less of a difference. We said that 100 kg mean 1 liter more of fuel consumption per 100 km in the past, today, it's more about 0.3 liter and in 4-5 years it probably will be 0.2 liters or less. In the US where people drive long distances at constant speed the weight impact might even be smaller. Aerodynamics though is still very important and better results can be achieved with medium sized cars than with small cars.
So, there are a lot of factors working against the growth of the small car segment. Let's see what will happen ...

Where have they gone? Volkswagen Beetle and Citroen 2CV

In the sixties and seventies streets were dominated by few popular cars, for example the Volkswagen Beetle ("VW Käfer") or the Citroen DeuxChevaux (2CV), also called the "Ente". These cars were affordable and efficient. Almost everybody I know either had a Beetle in the family at one time or owned one even himself/herself. Volkswagen built more than 21.5 million Beetles between 1938 and 2003, Citroen almost 4 million between 1949 and 1990. That's a lot of cars. If you look at pictures of let's say Munich, Frankfurt or Zurich from the 70ies you will certainly spot a couple of Volkswagens in the streets, same for Paris and the 2CV. But how is it today?

Having just been for three days in Paris, I haven't seen one 2CV at all, at least not that I would remember. And also the Volkswagen Beetle has become a true rarity. 24 million cars have just disappeared almost! If the Beetle and the 2CV had survived in similar proportions as Ferraris or Porsches, we still would have 10-15 millions of them on the road. But that's not the case, as these cars were daily transports and often died after 8 to 15 years suffering from rust or accident damage.

Actually these cars were quite economical, especially the 2CV. With a weight of less than 600 kg and seats for four people, plus a decent trunk it was both practical and fuel efficient. Driven gently 5-7 liters of gasoline were enough. Of course these cars were not fast, but quick enough to get from A to B. Building a 2CV probably took 25-35% of the energy of a modern car, so all in all, the 2CV probably was substantially better in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. If you forget about modern safety precautions you could even imagine having them produced until today with modern 2 cylinder engines and catalysts.
But as said, they disappeared and the few that are left are now collectors' items. I actually wouldn't mind owning a Volkswagen Beetle (ideally an early sixties' model) one day.

Car scrappage programs are bad for the classic car scene

We all are aware of the financial crisis and we all see how bad it is. To improve the situation a number of states created car scrappage programs under a series of names, i.e. "cash for clunkers", "Abwrackprämie", "Oekoprämie". The concept is pretty much the same: Buy a new car, get your old one destroyed/scrapped and the state will honor this with an amount in the area of USD 1'400 to 7'000, depending on the country. Usually there's some fine print on what old and new cars fit the scheme.
People seem to like this model and bought new cars, the states invested together more than 10 billion USD to subsidize these car sales. So far so good. But there are a number of issues with such an approach:

1. It's not sustainable, people basically bought a car earlier than they planned to profit from the subsidies. This means the car industry may have an even bigger problem next year.
2. New cars are not always better for the environment. As I said in earlier blog posts, the production of a car takes a lot of energy and material. Destroying old cars that still could run for another 5 or 10 years can be a bad idea for nature.
3. Repairing (older) cars is an important business. What will all these car repair shops do if people only drive new cars that need less repair or can only be repaired in the dealer networks?
   
4. If you read what cars are destroyed under these programs you will find some that you hoped to see as classic cars soon, for example the Porsche 914, Ford Capri, Volkswagen Beetle, Fiat Panda MK1, Alfasud, etc. to just name a few. As a matter of fact a lot of cars that might have become cherished youngtimers or oldtimers disappeared from the scene.

Of course my worries are specifically with the last point. Let's hope that not too much historically valuable engineering output has been destroyed. And, for once, I am happy that the nicer old cars are way too expensive to be exchanged against a boring new car and a 3'000 USD check.

Where are the truely fuel efficent sportscars?

I just read the list of cars producing less than 120 gr/km CO2, published by the German car magazine "auto motor und sport". The list shows about 80 cars, coming from manufacturers such as Toyota, Volkswagen, Peugeot, Mazda, Ford, Fiat, Citroen, Renault, BMW, Audi, Volvo, Chevrolet, etc. Most of the cars have a Diesel engine, only about 25% have gasoline engines. Three hybrid cars (Honda Insight, Honda Civic, Toyota Prius) can be found in top quarter. But while these cars may make small families and commuters happy, there's nothing on this list that will excite sportscar fans.
I think it hasn't to be like this! A Smart Coupé oder Convertible would certainly be able to drive with less than 120 gr/km CO2 if the technology of today was applied. Or why shouldn't Artega build a version of its gorgeous sportscar with a downsized KERS enabled 1.8 or 1.4 liter engine? The technology is there! Just take the Volkswagen 1.4 liter Turbo engine (170 HP) and combine it with a simple hybrid unit as produced by Connaught Engineering as retrofit for the Mercedes Sprinter or Ford Transit. An optimized unit would probably be less than 50 kg light, thanks to the supercap approach and the additional weight would easily be compensated by the smaller engine and other weight reductions possible. Would this be a big seller? Maybe not, but there's certainly a segment of people who would trade in efficiency against excess power. It has worked in the 60ies with the Fiat 850 Spider for example, and it can work again now.

The pedestrian's influence on greenhouse gas emissions

Discussing greenhouse gas emissions its clear in most discussions that the technology producing them is the problem. And in principle this is true of course. But as said in an earlier blog post, the driver has a lot of influence on the amount of greenhouse gas emitted.
But there are other influencers too, for example the pedestrian. In Switzerland we have a law that a pedestrian on a crosswalk has the right of way and can walk over, while the car has to break and wait. This law was established to give the pedestrian more protection and make his life less miserable. But of course if misused it's creating a lot of extra breaking and acceleration and therefore additional greenhouse gas emissions. Take two scenarios. In the first one there's a compound queue of cars going through a city. A passenger needs to go from one side of the road to the other. Thanks to the law he can stop the queue and walk over. Fair enough. In the second scenario only two cars are driving up the hill. A pedestrian comes to this same street and crosses it immediately without letting the two cars pass. With this both cars have to fully break to 0 and thereafter accelerate again, a total waste of energy, besides some extra noise. In this second scenario the pedestrian could have prevented quite some greenhouse gas emissions. But sadly enough, many people don't think that far, they just take the right given by the law. There are even people out there having fun doing so, as I could read in a column of a local newspaper.
So, here's the conclusion. Pedestrians can help saving the planet by letting pass a car once in a while. Thank you.

Is the Nissan Leaf the answer to our mobility problems?

Nissan just has "presented" the new Nissan Leaf, an electrical car to be sold in the US and Japan in 2010 and in other countries (i.e. Europe) in 2012. It's a new generation electrical car with 160 km reach and roughly 120 hp, so certainly fast and powerful enough, to master shorthaul traffic needs. 160 km is more than enough for commuting traffic, though will not make the car suitable for holidays/vacation. I sort of like the goals (key characteristics) Nissan set themselves:

1) Zero-emission power train and platform
2) Affordable pricing
3) Distinctive design
4) Real-world range autonomy - 160km (100 miles)
5) Connected Mobility: Advanced intelligent transportation (IT) system

But is this really the answer to our mobility problems? Probably not. It's a well engineered combination of today available technologies and perceived needs of the consumers. However it's still heavy, large and full of difficult to reuse materials and components. And it's probably not even that fun to drive, but that's anyway not a key objective for that type of car. At least it's a statement that Nissan tries to get innovative technologies in production and on the street.

Why taking the car instead of public transport can be so much more attractive

As we all know public transport offers many advantages compared to individual traffic means: A better greenhouse gas footprint, better use of infrastructure and no parking issues, besides many others. But there are also some quite significant disadvantages as you need to stick to often suboptimal time schedules and you may need to take detours. But there are sometimes also other disadvantages of public transport, as the video below shows.

Saving fuel is not rocket science, but requires discipline

If you want to save fuel when driving your car, then it typically comes down to some pretty simple guidelines:
1) Look ahead, minimize braking and acceleration manoeuvrings, try to "glide" as much as possible
2) Leverage the means your engine provides to minimize fuel consumption. This is different from engine to engine. It may mean to accelerate gently with one car, but to firmly accelerate and then glide again with another car
3) Adapt your speed to the topography you drive through. This may mean going slower up the hill than down the hill

If you follow these three rules and you know under what conditions your engine can optimally support you in doing so, then you can achieve astonishing results. Look at the foto (to the left). This is a BMW 330i Touring (model 2008) with 272 hp and almost 1'800 kg weight (with a family and some luggage). But you still can drive it using less than 6.5 liter per 100 km without slowing down the traffic behind you. The influence of the driver though is substantial. Doing the same distance with 50% more fuel consumption is easily possible and might also be more fun. But if the goal is to save fuel then fun has second priority. There's one exception. Rule 1) allows you to take curves very quickly to not have to break ;-)

One more comment: We often feel that cars today are not much more efficient than cars 20 or 30 years ago. Well, to have the performance of the described BMW 330i it took a Ferrari 308 GTB/GTS in the early 80ies and staying below 20 liters per 100 km wasn't easy with that car.

The Morgan 4/4 - maybe this dinosaur is actually one of the most ecological cars on earth

So here's a car that has been built since roughly the 30ies. Yes for about 80 years now Morgan manufactures this same car. The current entry model is called Morgan 4/4 Sport. If you read the technical data it sounds like these guys have invented an almost perfect green car! Combined fuel consumption is 6.2 l per 100 km (or 45.6 MPG). The CO2 footprint is 140 g/km. 115 HP are enough to accelerate the 795 kg car in less than 7 seconds from 0 to 100 km. Also, as energy spent for production is an important factor in overall environmental perspectives, here's another important fact: Manufacturing one Morgan takes much less energy and material use than producing a standard car, and typically these cars are well maintained and kept forever.
And the Morgan looks absolutely gorgeous. And it's retro not because it has been designed that way, but because it has been manufactured for so many years now. Get one today or you will regret it tomorrow. I always loved Morgans, especially the Rover V8 powered +8. Maybe ...

What Peak Oil means for classic cars and new cars

I happened to be in an interesting presentation by Daniele Ganser yesterday. He presented his views and thoughts around "Peak Oil". Basically this is about the facts that oil is only available in finite quantities and that the largest volumes have been discovered already while consumption still increases. There will be a peak in oil production in the foreseeable future (some say 2010, some later, some earlier) and then the prices will increase and the amount we can consume must decrease. Of course we all have known this for quite some times, but we tend to forget. There's a lot of nasty business around this problem, and there are wars and propaganda battles. But whatever we do, oil will not last forever and we need to preserve what we still have for what we most urgently need it for.
As a classic car owner of course I need gasoline for my hobby and while I am willing to pay more for it as it doesn't matter that much in the overall cost of my hobby it can become difficult to justify let's say 5-10 Euro per liter of gasoline. But it would be even worse to not being able to drive the cars any more and I am pretty sure it would help to increase the value of the cars.
Very different is the picture for car manufacturers of new cars and their buyers. Let's accept the facts and start to produce cars that weigh rather 500 kg than 1.5 ton and consume much less than 5 liters per 100 km. Let's build electrical cars as soon as the battery technology is both economical and ecological and hybrid cars to combine the two things. I have posted a lot on what can be done. And for the politicians - let's bet on alternative fuels and energy sources.
Overall, let's be intelligent and clever about this and think for future generations too. And keep history and tradition - classic cars are part of this - in mind too.

Are better batteries enough to make the electrical car succeed?

There have been a few announcements recently that talked about better batteries giving more reach at less weight for cars. IBM for example is working on a Lithium Air battery, claiming to be able to build the energy store for cars doing 300 to 500 miles. This would be a factor 4 to 6 of what is possible with the best batteries today.
But that is maybe not good enough as the base of future mobility. As long as we haven't solved the recycling problem with batteries and as long as we think we can continue to build cars as we do today (heavy, large, more geared towards safety than efficiency) we still will waste earth' resources.

I still think the car of the future should be lightweight (e.g. 500-900 kg), slippery (0.25 cw), accommodate 2-3 persons or 4-5 depending on configuration and be powered by electrical motors and an ecological range extender. Batteries should be as small as possible and be fully recycleable. Maybe it's a dream, but this dream could come true in the next 3-5 years I think, at least from small production companies. Cars like the Mindset and the Aptera are clearly pointing in the right direction.

New Hybrid engine concept from ETH Zurich - simpler and clever

Hybrid cars are more complex and more expensive to build. Two engines and batteries and a lot of computer power are a lot to handle to save a bit of gasoline. That is at least what ETH professor Lino Guzzella thought. So he came up with something simpler. He took a small engine (approx. 750 ccm instead of 1'300 ccm) and combined it with a turbo to achieve the performance level needed. This comes with the disadvantage of delays in power delivery. To compensate for this Guzzella adds an air pressure tank where he can store air with a pressure of up to 17 bar. The pressure is built up during brake phases. And it's pushed into the turbo unit instantly in acceleration phases. The new concept is said to deliver a similar power output than a bigger engine at the gasoline consumption of a Toyota Prius. Not bad. And it comes at a fraction of the cost (approx. 20 % of a hybrid system) and I would reckon the weight is also a fraction.
A question for me remains: Is this clever engine downsizing or true hybrid technology? Be it what it is, it's a good example of intelligent engineering.

Electrical race bikes at one of the most traditional motor sport events

I have been talking about whether electrical cars (or bikes) can be fascinating contenders in motorsports. Well, have a look at this video highlighting the recent Tourist Trophy on the Isle of Man. They had an electrical category this year for the first time, it's called TTXGP. The winner was able to average 87.4 mph or roughly 130 km/h on the 37 mile mountain course, quite impressive.

Range Extender - or how to get home safely

With the promotion and continuous development of electrical cars a new technical concept became fashionable - the Range Extender. It has been born out of necessity. If it's not economical to build large batteries and the more power you want to store in batteries the heavier the battery becomes then maybe here's a case to install some auxiliary power in a car - the Range Extender was born. Basically it's a gasoline or diesel powered small engine that loads the battery. With this approach the range that with only battery operated cars is pretty narrow can be extended, hence the name. Interestingly people were remembering engine types for this purpose that are not used broadly otherwise, i.e. Wankel engines or Stirling motors. The objectives for a range extender engine are quite different to what you would usually have for the engine in a car. It needs to be as small and light as possible and should be operated only at the optimal point to deliver high output at low fuel consumption.
The concept makes a lot of sense, but it also makes the car more complex and expensive to build. And it means you have to fill up your car with two sources of energy, electricity and gasoline/diesel. But given the usual driving patterns where people use their car for maybe 10-20 km per day and only rarely do long range trips, adding a Range Extender to an electrical car actually may be a good compromise after all. Also you could see the Full Hybrid car as a car that maximizes the Range Extender approach.