Why not a 40mpg suv?
MonsieurEvil
Join Date: 2002-01-22 Member: 4Members, Retired Developer, NS1 Playtester, Contributor
Join Date: 2002-01-22 Member: 4Members, Retired Developer, NS1 Playtester, Contributor
in Off-Topic
<div class="IPBDescription">Well... why not?</div>A very interesting MIT article on the potential future of automotive development and how it pertains to fuel efficiency.
<a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/fischetti1102.asp?p=1" target="_blank">Technology exists to double gas guzzlers' fuel efficiency. So what's the holdup?</a>
Note: please read the <b>whole article</b> before launching into your uninformed kneejerk left-wing/right-wing/pro-USA/anti-USA/crackers are good/crackers are bad responses.
Otherwise, Hulk smash...
<a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/fischetti1102.asp?p=1" target="_blank">Technology exists to double gas guzzlers' fuel efficiency. So what's the holdup?</a>
Note: please read the <b>whole article</b> before launching into your uninformed kneejerk left-wing/right-wing/pro-USA/anti-USA/crackers are good/crackers are bad responses.
Otherwise, Hulk smash...
Comments
<!--emo&:p--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':p'><!--endemo-->
He summed it up really nice right there. If this is the mind set of the auto-industry, then of course they're not gonna make the cars cost more just to make them more efficient.
Which will of course not keep me from upping my postcount.
I generally agree with the statement of Mr. Hwang - every big industry with shareholders in its back will try everything short of physical violence to hinder progress that will increase production costs in the short term.
It's sad, but well, that's free economy.
This special issue has however a second industry in the ring that literally fights for its life and wasn't mentioned in the article: The oil giants.
America is their biggest market; the prospect of up to 25% lesser sales should haunt their CEOs at night - and force them to use every means they have.
A relative of mine works at Daimler-Chrysler. If it wouldn't have been for some 'intervention' of BP & co., the first fuel cell prototypes wouldn't have hit the roads in 2002, but two years earlier.
Again, it's sad, but well...
<a href="http://www.freespeaker.org/Americanhistory/tucker-fee.html" target="_blank">Errr, no, you were mistaken.</a>
A brief quote from the article:
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td><b>Quote</b> </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE"><!--QuoteEBegin-->For two years, Tucker's "Tin Goose," as it [p. 5] became known, seemed to fly fairly high. For his company headquarters, Tucker managed to obtain from the War Assets Administration a huge Chicago plant which Dodge had operated during World War II. Early success in selling stock and dealerships eventually brought in about $26 million. Though the responsive public became restive over Tucker's failure to produce a car, he finally displayed one in a highly dramatized showing on July 19, 1947. Now called the Tucker "48," the display model captivated crowds with its aerodynamic design, rear-mounted engine, and such supposedly advanced safety features as a Cyclops center headlight which turned with the wheels and a windshield to pop out in an accident.
Though the display model also drew record crowds when Tucker took it on tour, it turned out that the vehicle had been hastily put together and actually had no reverse gear at the original showing. The suspension system had failed and had been frantically rebuilt just before the show. Some of the body had been fabricated around a 1942 Oldsmobile body. The more serious problem was that Tucker apparently had no sound plan or even blueprints for getting the car into real production. The 51 Tucker cars actually produced were hand-built models fabricated at enormous cost. One example of Tucker's profligate ways was revealed in his procurement of transmissions. Tucker obtained salvaged transmissions from the defunct Cord automobile, and then paid a shop owned by his family $223,105 to rework 25 of them.3 With such weird practices, it's not surprising that by late 1948 the firm was all but bankrupt. By early 1949 it was all over, with less than $70,000 remaining of the nearly $26 million raised by Tucker from trusting shareholders and would-be dealers.
A number of publications, particularly Collier's magazine, reported on the failure, [p. 6] leaving little doubt that the Tucker venture had been a business seduction of massive proportions. Tucker himself was exonerated of fraud charges, and it's possible that he had, indeed, fully intended to build and market his dream car. He was reportedly still determined to launch another automaking venture when he died of cancer in 1956 at age 53.
<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span id='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--EDIT|MonsieurEvil|Oct. 17 2002,17:09-->
But yeah... large coperations are usually ########, this doesn't suprise me.
1. Nemesis is right. Sort of. The short term costs of transferring to any of these new technologies would not only be detrimental to the major auto companies (Ford, Chrysler, GM), but would also have a sweeping ripple effect to numerous smaller companies that the big boys use as vendors. If the smaller companies could not adapt, they would fall quickly. Other vendors could pop up to take their place (sub groups of Lockheed Martin come to mind) but that would have to be established in concurrence with concept design.
2. As noted oh so quietly in the article, many of these fuel efficiency "improvements" are already in the works. One place your going to see improvements is in the larger utility pickups used typically in construction sites. I believe one version is already in production (by Ford I think but don't quote me on that). The reason it's being focused so specifically is because it's hybrid-diesel engine doubles as a generator producing enough power to run your house and probably your neighbor's house.
So far, the typical public doesn't want these vehicles. The most obvious reason is not the up front cost, but the super inflated cost to maintain and repair them. Right now you can take your beat up joloppy (sp?) to the corner shop for most problems. Try taking your extra efficient software propelled wonder car to see Fred and his cousin Elmer. I'm sure these improvements sound like fantastic solutions to "global problems" in the land of MIT, but the reality is that everything breaks. Unfortunately (and some think by design), products are not built to last any more. These machines will be put through some of the most violent, dirty, nasty environments that any engine could face.
Again, improvements must and will be made to the internal combustion engine. The turn of the century is actually a significant time to start these improvements. But the requirements that PAC's and tree hugging nut jobs are asking for can not be met in the timeline that they've demanded. That's why the government hasn't enforced them.
Jeez...
--Scythe--