Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
FIGURE 5
A hypercar. (Rocky Mountain Institute)
nated. But there are a lot of good technologies that have accumulated
meanwhile. Instead of just trickling them into the car stock, we could
put more of them in at once. The Partnership for a New Generation of
Vehicles, the partnership between the Big Three automakers and the fed-
eral government, aims to come up with a triple-efficiency prototype over a
ten-year period.They will do that, and better. But I want to tell you about
a different prototype, because having not a threefold, but a car 4-8 times as
efficient turns out to be cheaper, easier, and faster than one 3 times as effi-
cient, and it will ultimately save as much oil as OPEC now sells.
We call it a Hypercar, and it integrates a number of different technolo-
gies, dozens of them, including ultra-light auto bodies made of advanced
composites like carbon fiber, using new manufacturing techniques; very
low-drag design, using new simulation and measurement techniques for
aerodynamics; very efficient tires with better polymers and design; and
hybrid electric propulsion.When you put these things together, something
quite remarkable happens. I am not, of course, talking about the standard
battery electric car.We are building on the same technical foundation, and
battery cars have gotten a lot better, but battery cars are cars for carrying
mainly batteries, but not very far, and not very fast, or else they would have
