The 100 M.P.G. Car!
The 100 MPG car, the “car of tomorrow”, is yet to arrive! It was a dream of all the automobile industry and the general public alike. The ideal car meant a fuel efficient, low-cost high mileage, no pollution, comfortable, low maintenance vehicle, ideal for long as well as short trips family car! The average price of a gallon of gasoline has increased several times in the past few years, and is still rising, the emission levels are dangerously high, the middle-east has become more volatile and hostile, and the dollar is plunging to ever new lows every day, and the climate seems to have changed forever.
The “car of tomorrow” would just have solved many of the above problems! The hybrid car is very close to being that dream car. Still, several automobile companies are developing better engines implementing new generation technology and advanced auto and aerodynamic designs. Thus, the dream 100 MPG ideal car is not a distant dream anymore. An engine that can deliver 100 miles per one gallon of gasoline or any other fuel delivering equivalent mileage is becoming a reality.
To make matters more interesting, the X Prize Foundation is announcing a competition for the first car to break 100 miles per gallon barrier. The X Prize Foundation is the same group that kick-started the space-tourism industry with its $10-million competition to produce a reusable private spacecraft. The prize money can be in the $25-million range as an appropriate incentive. The X Prize Foundation people hope the prize will urge people to completely reconsider what a car should look like and how it should function. “We need a paradigm shift,” says Mark Goodstein, the executive director for the automotive X Prize. “We need to change the way people think about automobiles.” That’s an ambitious program for all!
Smaller, Better, Cheaper
The most obvious approach to achieving super-high mileage is to reduce overall weight and wind resistance, the chief oppositions of highway mileage. This is the stratagem you see in student engineering contests, in which teardrop-shaped vehicles on bicycle wheels on a regular basis achieve hundreds of miles per gallon of gasoline. But these vehicles are all extremely expensive prototypes. The challenge is to make a light, highly aerodynamic, reliable, strong, and most important, an inexpensive vehicle to mass-produce.
Steve Fambro’s Aptera, which he designed in his garage in Carlsbad, California, is a three-wheeled, bullet-shaped two-seater that minimizes aerodynamic drag and weighs only 850 pounds (the Toyota Prius weighs 2,890 pounds). He cut weight by using a carbon composite frame, which is a race-inspired solution that should help with efficient crash shock absorption.
Fambro’s company, Accelerated Composites, is attracting the attention of several venture capitalists. He hopes to have his Aptera on the market in less than two years. He said, “Everything I had been doing was with an eye toward manufacturability.” By using new composite-construction techniques, including inexpensive molds and automated fabrication processes, Fambro assures that he can keep the cost of each vehicle under $20,000. Moreover, when combined with a hybrid engine that burns diesel, the Aptera could break the 300 mpg barrier too! That could well be the day to rejoice!