If you were a car engineer, what kind of car would you design?

.

I would take a small diesel car like the VW Lupo or Honda Civic (~50 horsepower), and add an electric motor to reduce acceleration from 15 to 10 seconds.

This would yield highway EPA ratings of about 80 mpg... with folks like Rick Reece squeezing out 120-130 lifetime averages.

If I were an engineer I would build a car with at least 400hp, 8 cylinders, large oil capacity with bypass filtration. The rod and main bearings would be oversized. Everything else over designed to about 200% expected worse use. Low rpm high torque design. Designed for the back yard mechanic to fix when it broke down.

Create a body that had replacable pieces, so you would only buy one and just update with easy replace parts. No more polluting the enviornment producing upmteen gillion new cars a year.

At least 15 inch rotors at each wheel for stopping, suspension capable of .9g side loads in real world, not steady state skid pad.

In other words, a car that would be fun to drive, be efficient, and be able to own it 20 years minimum.

John Lacey

We engineers DO double the minimum.

How is 400 hp an efficient car? You'd be lucky to get 25 mpg out of it.

Troy,

You seem unaware that there are other efficiencies besides just fuel efficiency. If you dont enjoy what you drive, why bother, I would rather walk.

Manufacturing is one of the worst deals ever in terms of pollution and out of control energy usage. Replacing a car that still has many miles left in it is another problemin terms of wasting resources.

When did you qualify as a "we" engineer?

John Lacey

John,

The environmental hit from manufacturing a car is small compared to the use of it.

See for example http://www.scientificjournals.com/sj/lca/Pdf/aId/4308

Johan Erlandsson

See mileage data for my 00 Prius.
See my environmental performance (still in swedish only, feel free to ask).

The Subject says FUEL efficiency & therefore you're off-subject.

But to answer your statement: Manufacturing energy equals ~10,000 miles worth of fuel (25mpg average). Overall you save more energy switching to a 50 mpg hybrid than to continue driving a 25 mpg guzzler.



Now you're just trolling/baiting to entertain yourself. I refuse to respond.

And to add, there is the efficiency of large torque, high horsepower without burning lots of fuel.

That was my main point. It would be great if a car got 100mpg, but most people will not trade off what is necessary to do that right now. Most people will not put up with waiting for the car to come up to speed, or lackluster performance to achieve that kind of gas mileage. Might be better to go for marginal gains that people will buy than try for the whole hog now.

Most of the fleet getting 1 mpg more is better than 1% of the fleet doubling the mileage.


John (A Wee Enginneer)

Troy... you are a car engineer?
Tell me more?
What are the relationships between the engineers and designers? Ratio?
Who does the most in determining what kind of car it will become?

A Prius a day keeps the doctor away!

Troy,

I would like to know this too. Can you enligthen us?

John

We engineers DO double the minimum. [/b][/quote]
To Add: It's part of our engineering education (Penn State for me) to double the required "size" of parts to ensure they continue working even if margins exceed the worst-case.

Anyway, I am an electrical engineer. 8 years in January.