VW Redefines car with a 170-mpg diesel hybrid | Hacker News Reader

VW Redefines car with a 170-mpg diesel hybrid

wired.com

30 pointsrav_biradar24 comments

I'm sure the aerodynamic wheel fairings are really good for fuel efficiency, but I predict they'll be a lot smaller on any production car that comes from this idea. People do like being able to drive over speed bumps after all.

And they also look rather strange. Not a big deal, but it could keep people from buying it. I know I wouldn't want those things on my car, they look like something straight out of a bad sci-fi movie.

Interesting announcement, given the comments Audi of America's president made recently that only idiots would buy a gas hybrid.

For the average person, a plain old diesel is probably the best value at the moment. Eventually, though, I suspect that hybrids will converge on a Volt-style drivetrain mated with a turbodiesel. The same arrangement has been used on diesel locomotives for years.

To be fair, he didn't say that only an idiot would buy a gas hybrid, he said that the Chevy Volt was a car for idiots. Still a fairly inappropriate and, I think, inaccurate statement, but not in direct conflict with other parts of VW the way you might suggest.

The trouble with the idea that everyone is gonna use diesel is... what are we gonna do with all the regular gasoline? IIRC fractioning of crude oil produces a certain amount of diesel, a certain amount of gasoline, a certain amount of kerosene and so forth, so somebody might as well be burning that gasoline.

There is a degree of overlap in the hydrocarbons used for gasoline and diesel fuel, and refineries routinely adjust the ratio they produce to match seasonal variation in demand. It's also possible to crack the heavier hydrocarbons in crude oil into molecules suitable for diesel, which is an important consideration as lighter crude oil supplies are being supplanted by heavier oils from tar sands and shale. In the longer term, there's also the possibility of refining less oil and supplementing with biodiesels.

How is the statement inaccurate? What is the value proposition for the Volt? $45,000 makes no sense, and even with the government subsidies, you won't come out on top. Most existing hybrids don't even make sense on cost basis.

The price isn't announced yet, so it's dumb to make pronouncements based on a rumoured price point. I've also heard rumours of prices as low as $30K, at which point it becomes pretty compelling.

Even if it is $45K I'm not going to deride everyone who wants to spend that kind of money on a fancy high-tech vehicle that under most driving conditions burns hardly any fuel while still being versatile enough to take anywhere as an idiot. Hell, you can spend twice that on a far less versatile Tesla Roadster and still not be an idiot.

"Henderson conceded the cost of building a Volt will be expensive, about $40,000 per vehicle. But he said the vehicle will qualify for a $7,500 tax credit, which will reduce the vehicle cost by that amount for consumers."

http://money.cnn.com/2009/08/11/autos/volt_mpg/index.htm?pos...

Note that the figure is the manufacturing cost, not the price. The price will be higher.

Hybrids and electric cars are status symbols. The premium is more than you save in operating costs. At that price point, you can buy cars that are more effective status symbols, if that's what you're going for. Buying the Volt is a bit idiotic, and it'd be more idiotic without the subsidies that the rumored cost you cited includes.

The Volt is not fancy. It is high tech, but the appeal of most high tech gadgets is from the experience of using them. Driving a Volt will be marginally different from driving a Chevy Cruze.

VW says the L1 is perfectly safe, with the driver and passenger safely ensconced in a carbon fiber safety cell and protected by head and side-curtain airbags. The front of the car features an aluminum crash structure.

Saying it is safe and passing NHTSA are two extremely different things. That is why the smart costs so much.

As a side note, some similar ideas have gotten street-legality by being officially motorcycles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corbin_Sparrow

Passing the NHTSA and being safe are two extremely different things, in that the former certainly doesn't mean the latter in terms of customer satisfaction.

Smart cars passed the NHTSA safety checks, but the NHTSA still brought out a dire warning due to it only receiving a 3-star (now considered rare for vehicles) in a passenger side crash. It passed, but I doubt anyone wants to know that it's an entire grade less-safe than nearly any other vehicle on the road when it comes to passenger safety.

I'd trust an 1L further than a Smart due to the ability for a large side impact zone relative to any vehicle on the road while maintaining safety front and back. Like any car below a mid-size, I wouldn't buy it unless it had at least 4-star minimum, and I'd seriously reconsider anything without a 5-star. If the 1L gets all 5's, I'd buy it without a doubt.

My concern with NHTSA tests is that they're performed using an 'average' car (IE mid-size). A mid-size with a 4-star fairs much better against a pickup than a compact with a 4-star, when in reality it shouldn't. It's just a simple matter of well, matter and velocity. Then you've got to consider material strengths, aluminum used in car bodies typically has to be twice as thick as required to match the strength of steel due to it being too thin. This means aluminum vehicle frames are expected to increase vehicle safety two-fold, and I believe if used in the same dimensions as steel it would be a seven-fold increase in strength.

Somebody got some numbers wrong: "20 kilowatts (26 horsepower); and 'Sport,' with 29 kilowatts (39 horsepower)". 20 kW == 0.26 HP, 29 kW == 0.39 HP.

Google disagrees with you:

http://www.google.com/search?q=20000%20watts%20to%20horsepow...

I find it hilarious that two people responded with the exact same phrase: "Google disagrees"

We might as well automate this process!

Or, you know... read other comments before replying. My comment beat the other by an hour :)

Actually I think it was by a minute, not an hour. Not that it really matters now...

OK, so I forgot the "kilo" in front of the "Watts". What's three orders of magnitude among friends :-P

Google disagrees: http://www.google.com/search?q=20+kilowatts+to+horsepower

And what are they going to do to get more diesel pumps around the good old US of A? And the perception of diesel as dirty in the good old US of A? And why does it seem like there's an unwritten law that any sufficiently fuel efficient car has to look like a robot turd?

> And why does it seem like there's an unwritten law that any sufficiently fuel efficient car has to look like a robot turd?

Concept cars have always looked like that. Even before the 'concept' was a fuel-efficient one. I remember going to autoshows (living in the Detroit-area the International Auto Show is just downtown every January) in the 90's and seeing sketches of cars that looked like that (style-wise), and sometimes prototypes on display as well. I think that it's more of an auto-industry thing.

People keep bringing this up. Is it really an issue across the US? Every gas station I go to has at least one diesel pump in each row of gasoline pumps (Minnesota/Wisconsin/Iowa). Finding diesel, at least around here, is no more difficult than findng gasoline. My wife tends to prefer driving her big diesel pickup, so if she were having trouble finding diesel, I'd certainly have heard about it by now.

Because we all know that Americans are the only people on earth who buy cars.

Diesels are already popular in Europe, so there's no problems there. I'm not sure about the rest of the world, but I suspect diesel is popular in most places outside the US. The US is the place built around cars, the US is the place that spends the most on oil, and the US is the place with an atypical dislike for diesel and a lack of diesel pumps. Thus for this car to make the biggest difference it has to become popular in the US. And while anyone who can read English can read Wired on the Internet, Wired is a US publication.

But other then that no, nothing US specific about this.

Here in Canada I see diesel nearly everywhere (certainly not compared to the UK and Europe where 3 or 4 fuel prices are listed on a sign, I have no clue why they don't do the same here besides corporations being as smart as a thanksgiving turkey), certainly in the GTA it's at every pumping station.

I've seen a fair amount of Jetta's around where I live carrying the TDI symbol, so diesels are definitely selling. I believe info about biodiesel is helping promote this, but I believe it will still be considerable time before the NA market is as accepting of diesel as the European market, which I find seriously disturbing due to the fact that southern US has been perfect for diesels since their invention (high temperatures meant starting was never an issue in winter, and the higher fuel density meant that you didn't lose as much fuel to evaporation, but then fuel-efficiency is still a near alien word to many in NA).

Wired is a UK publication too: http://www.wired.co.uk/

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