9 Responses to “VW One-Liter Gets 235 Miles Per Gallon”

1. Nelly Posted: Jul 9th, 2008 at 1:45 pm

   1 People keep talking about buy motocycles to get to and from work cheaper. This one-liter thing would give you a bit more protection compaired to that of a motocycle… but not much if a big ol’ SUV sits on you. BUT if they could get the cost down it would make for an interesting concept… family has the family car for family thing… plus tiny car for commuting to work… maybe…

2. Devin Posted: Jul 9th, 2008 at 2:08 pm

   2 yes but does it go faster than 25 mph?

3. Kevin Bahrt Posted: Jul 9th, 2008 at 2:34 pm

   3 That won’t be too popular back home. We get floods several times a year and that would probably float away.

4. salthegeek Posted: Jul 9th, 2008 at 3:32 pm

   4 it looks like an escape pod

5. Echo Posted: Jul 9th, 2008 at 4:52 pm

   5 very cool. considering it doesn’t weigh very much more than a proper motorcycle, i’d say it’ll putter around where you need to go quite readily and capably. given that it has a canopy and 4 wheels, it’s going to be a lot more pleasant to ride around in unpleasant weather. though it doesn’t have the brick shitting badass factor of motorcycles, i’d say that it could have a decent sized north american market. although i can pretty much guarantee that some nut is gonna get his hands on one and tune it into a beast. also, diesel hybrids seem to be the ‘duh’ evolution in the application of hybrid technology. i’m loving the automotive posts, by the way.

6. Fm Posted: Jul 9th, 2008 at 7:43 pm

   6 If you lower the weight of a car you lower the cost to move it and cars in generally are terrible at energy consumption.Some thing like 30% of the energy generated by the engine go to the road.If they can mass produce a low weight car that work efficiently you’ll get a car that can easily go around with half current fuel consumption.With out a bazaar future pod design.I watch way to much discovery channel.Here a small fact solar panel only absorb energy in UV rays which any one who ever had a high school science class knows it a small part of the light spectrum.If we can absorb roughly 50% of the energy in sun light we will never need fossil fuel again.

7. Kevin Bahrt Posted: Jul 9th, 2008 at 11:31 pm

   7 We would only need combustible fuels if you ever want to do anything beyond the speed of sound like go into space. And by combustible I mean fossil and bio type fuel. If you want to get into space and maneuver around you’ll need combustibles or an insanely expensive (as in trillions if not more) launch tube.

8. Echo Posted: Jul 10th, 2008 at 3:48 am

   8 errrrr……… Fm, what? drivetrain loss is about 5-20 percent at the most. 30% kind of sounds like you’re getting on about thermodynamic efficiency, but that’s a whole nother beast… that’s not the kind of thing that you’re going to increase the efficiency of just by trying. anybody who’s had a thermodynamics course will tell you that 30%ish number is kind of the limit of things on that end. also your average silicon based cell gets about 10% efficiency. efficient solar panels even in the _range_ that you’re talking about are extremely prohibitively expensive. the uv portion has the highest energy in sunlight that we get due to atmospheric filtering, and we’re limited to it because that high energy is required to knock out electrons through the photoelectric effect. the kind of things you’re suggesting would be nice, but aren’t likely to happen. even given your 50% efficiency statistic for the obsolescence of fossil fuels is correct [i have no idea] you might as well say that we would not have any problems if we had infinite supplies of fossil fuels. dreams and fairy tales.

9. Echo Posted: Jul 10th, 2008 at 3:49 am

   9 sorry about blowing up your spot. i apologize if i come off as patronizing.