Around the world on 8 litres of fuel?

June 29, 2005 10:25 AM

Around the world on 8 litres of fuel?I'd be more excited about this if the automotive industry hadn't been teasing us with cool, feature laden concept cars for years, and then actually producing boring combustion engine sedans.
posted by Fozzie (10 comments total)

Jeez, 5385 kilometers on one liter of fuel is amazing!
posted by fenriq at 11:35 AM on June 29, 2005

see also: The California Commuter
posted by glider at 11:48 AM on June 29, 2005

Its a boon with oil prices making new highs close to $60 per barrel.
posted by webmeta at 12:33 PM on June 29, 2005

looks really safe and easy to drive :)
posted by delmoi at 12:41 PM on June 29, 2005

5385 kilometers on one liter of fuel

or 12,666 miles per gallon.

To be honest, that's really not all that fair. On a frictionless surface you should be able to go an infinite distance with just an inital shove, regardless of the engine used.

Obviously these cars are optimized for really low wind and tire resistance. At 70 or 80 miles an hour, the wind resitance would be much, much higher, so the efficency would go way down. This car probably can't go more then 20 mph, because weighing it down with heavyer engine would reduce it's efficency.

Also, how steep of a hill could this thing go up? I'm guessing not very steep.

Finaly, how much does this car weigh? Just looking at the pictures, and assuming super-duper composite materials, I'd guess less then 200 pounds with driver.

If we assume gas milage scales linearly with weight, we'd expect full sized cars to get about 1,000 mpg.
posted by delmoi at 12:51 PM on June 29, 2005

That thing looks pretty streamlined... I bet with a set of pedals and some sort of derailed chain-driven multigear drivetrain instead of a combustion engine, that thing would lighten right up!
posted by chibikeandy at 1:43 PM on June 29, 2005

The garage for that thing better look like a vagina or people are gonna be pissed.
posted by Divine_Wino at 2:28 PM on June 29, 2005

Wow! And if you get out and walk, you'll get an even better milage!
posted by c13 at 2:29 PM on June 29, 2005

recently discussed
posted by purtek at 5:26 PM on June 29, 2005

Around the world on 8 liters of fuel?

Define 'fuel'.

If I can pick any fuel, I pick Uranium. The energy density is simply incredible!

Contemporary energy thinking is so locked into the "fuel = hydrocarbons" and "radioactivity = death" mindset that it makes my head hurt.
posted by spazzm at 3:58 AM on June 30, 2005