Flat out - like a lizard drinking
World’s lowest car.
How low can a car go? The answer is 543
mm, according to British custom car builder Andy Saunders,
whose latest creation is billed as “the world’s lowest car”.
Dubbed Flat Out, the Fiat 126-based car is barely taller
than its tyres - yet is fully driveable. Assisted by noted
British engineer Jim Chalmers, Andy Saunders built Flat Out
in just three 18 hour days last year at Britain’s 40th
Annual Autojumble at the National Motor Museum in Beaulieu,
Hampshire.
He chose the 126, which also spawned the Polish-built Niki
650, because its rear-mounted water-cooled twin-cylinder
engine is mounted lower in the chassis than most cars.
The result is a total vehicle height that’s just over a
third as high as the original Mini (1350 mm) and BMW’s
born-again Cooper (1420 mm).
As a piece of automotive freakery, Flat Out is well worth a
first-hand look. But in the absence of any rollover
protection, perhaps its most appropriate application is as a
drip tray for a Hummer H2.
2007 F1
season opens in two weeks
The first round
of the 2007 F1 championship kicks off in Melbourne,
Australia on the 18th March. The first season without
Schumacher the Elder, and now with the World Champion
Alonso in a different team, and some exciting newcomers
like Lewis Hamilton, it could be a good season.
Lewis
Hamilton driving for McLaren.
The Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne returns to its
traditional role of season opener after moving to round
three last year to avoid a clash with the Commonwealth
Games. Meanwhile, the Japanese round will move from Suzuka
to Fuji, the circuit which staged the country’s first Grand
Prix back in 1976.
There are five sets of back-to-back races on the 2007
calendar: Malaysia and Bahrain in April; Canada and the US
in June; France and Britain in July; Italy and Belgium in
September; and China and Japan in September/October.
The full line-up is as follows:
Australia, March 18
Malaysia, April 08
Bahrain, April 15
Spain, May 13
Monaco, May 27
Canada, June 10
United States, June 17
France, July 01
United Kingdom, July 08
Germany, July 22
Hungary, August 05
Turkey, August 26
Italy, September 09
Belgium, September 16
China, September 30
Japan, October 07
Brazil, October 21
I will be watching from my favorite chair in Jameson’s. Join
me and many other F1 enthusiasts in front of the big screen.
Telecast times will be published on the Fridays before the
race day Sunday.
The cars of the future? NGV?
Biodiesel?
Hydrogen?
Fuel Cells?
Electric?
What will we be driving in 2020? In the opening sessions of
“On the Road in 2020”, a conference hosted by the Energy
Laboratory at MIT, they wished to see how people with widely
varying interests would respond to their technology
assessment and its results. The 70 attendees came from
companies that make and distribute vehicles and fuels,
government groups, and other academic and nongovernmental
organizations involved in transportation.
The future?
Their assessment focused on the year 2020 and selected
combinations of fuels and vehicle types that could be
developed and commercialized by then. Their options included
hybrids, fuel cells and electric vehicles. For each 2020
fuel/vehicle combination, they estimated key characteristics
such as energy efficiency, cost, greenhouse gas emissions,
safety and other consumer concerns such as reliability,
convenience and familiarity.
And what was their answer? Be prepared for disappointment.
Nobody really knew! The only good news was their assertion
that hard work on conventional technologies should produce
an “evolved” passenger car with dramatically higher fuel
economy and lower greenhouse gas emissions compared to
today’s models.
New technologies were compared to an evolved midsize car,
specifically the 2020 model that would result from a modest
continuing effort to improve fuel efficiency using
traditional technologies. According to the assessment, the
2020 model will use one-third less fuel, cut greenhouse gas
emissions by a third and cost only about five percent more
than today’s model. And that was the result of two years
with some of the brightest minds in automotive technology.
Hardly earth shaking, or futurology.
So are the next 13 years only going to be evolution, rather
than revolution? Looking into my own technological crystal
ball, I am not so negative as the MIT researchers. I do not
believe that the best we can do will be one third saving in
fuel and greenhouse gasses, or that the midsize car of 2020
will only be 5 percent more expensive than today.
Let me take cost of the vehicle to begin with. Personal
transport is an important part of the thinking of developed
societies. A large part of earnings is put towards vehicle
ownership, and that will not change in the next decade and a
half. With all Cost-Price indices showing around five
percent per annum positive growth, we should expect car
prices to then double between now and 2020, which will mean
they will be exactly as affordable as they are now, as wages
will also have doubled. Now you must factor in the
decreasing cost of technology (just take a look at the
computer hardware industry as a guide) and my crystal ball
would say that the vehicles in 2020 will have more
technology than today’s cars, and be (relatively)
considerably cheaper.
The next factor which I would like you to ponder is
greenhouse gasses, because this is what will decide the
future direction of the auto industry. Dieter Zetsche, the
head man at DaimlerChrysler in an interview at the 2005 New
York International Auto Show, claimed that the car business
is “about selling dreams, aspirations, and emotion,” and
that may be so, but the public perception of the dreams,
aspirations and emotion is changing, and will continue to
change over the next 13 years. The driving factor, says my
crystal ball, is global warming. Public perception will be
much greater than it is now as far as global warming is
concerned, and public emotion will be towards reversing the
global warming trend. This is what will bring an end to the
internal combustion, atmospheric polluting, engines. And
that includes both diesel and gasoline. The public will kill
these engines. No longer will fuel consumption figures be
the deciding factor in the purchase. The world will want to
be seen as grasping the global warming nettle, and will take
the motor industry along in its wake - you can forget about
the motor industry leading the world’s auto drivers!
Amongst the engines, or vehicle technology that will be
killed along with this are the hybrids. The internal
combustion engines are just too ‘dirty’ even when combined
with electric motors. At best you are only cutting down
greenhouse gasses. The world will want zero emissions by
2020.
So where is that going to lead us? To hydrogen, often touted
as the fuel of the future? However, my crystal ball says it
will remain as the fuel of the future, as the infrastructure
to make it universal is too costly. Even the most developed
nations will not be able to afford hydrogen reticulation by
the public (taxation) purse. And you must not forget that
hydrogen as a fuel energy source, is generally headed
towards making electricity as the motive power for the
vehicle.
It is now generally accepted that a major obstacle is
today’s fuel delivery infrastructure. Dr. James Katzer of
ExxonMobil Corp. (the guys who just made an American
corporation record profit), noted that the existing
infrastructure for gasoline and diesel fuels is the result
of 100 years’ development. Switching to methanol or hydrogen
requires building an entirely new infrastructure at a cost
of many billions of dollars. “We can only afford one change
in infrastructure in the next century, so let’s get it
right,” he said. “An infrastructure for handling methanol,
for example, will also become obsolete if we must eliminate
carbon emissions to prevent future climate change.”
One researcher at that conference who did see the way of the
future was Dr. Philip Sharp of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy
School of Government who did think the US may soon take some
action regarding global warming and he said that any action
taken to constrain carbon emissions, or not, will profoundly
influence the choice of transportation technology. He should
have looked a little further and deeper into the crystal
ball! The answer was there.
As carbon emissions/greenhouse gasses/global warming becomes
the dominant factor, which transportation technology is
left? Electric power, that is what is left. The world
already has electricity reticulated to every household in
the developed world, and will continue to expand the
electricity grids over the next 15 years. The power will be
where the people live. And how to get that power into the
family vehicle? Battery technology. Well that’s what my
crystal ball says.
Electric motors have been around for well over 100 years,
and the technology in converting electricity into rotational
movement is well known, and becoming increasingly more
efficient. All that we need now are lightweight,
rechargeable batteries to power the on-board electric
motors, and we have the power source that does not pollute,
and can be recharged in our own homes, using the electricity
grid. Just like our mobile phones.
I ask you to think back to when mobile phones first became
available. You carried around something that looked like a
small suitcase and weighed such that the mobile phone user
could be identified by the muscular development of his arms!
What do we have today? Miniature phones you can carry in
your shirt pocket, with lithium batteries that are recharged
at home. Not only is the technology better, but mobile
phones have also become very much cheaper.
Now extrapolate that to auto technology. The cars by 2020
will have small electric engines, powered by small
rechargeable batteries. Public sentiment will have
determined that we should drive non-polluting cars, the
public purse will have determined that we should not fund
incredibly expensive infrastructure to bring fuels to the
public, and all this will happen despite the powerful oil
lobby.
We have 15 years in which to do this, and incidentally save
the planet. It is more than feasible, but my crystal ball
also says that the oil industry will not go down without a
fight. “Old” technologies that have become entrenched are
often difficult to get rid of, but as the financial markets
see the opportunities, it will gain in momentum. Just make
sure you have some good electrical wiring plumbed into the
garage!
And to all those who say that the production of electricity
for the grid is a polluting process involving the burning of
coal, that may be the case right now. But in the next 15
years, technology will continue there too, and expect the
grid to be a mixture, coming from such sources as wind,
hydro, solar and tidal, all non-polluters.
The future can be good, but we will have to break the nexus
with the oil industry on the way!
Autotrivia Quiz
Last week I mentioned that the Citroen SM was
announced at the Geneva Motor Show in 1970. I asked what did
the initials S and M stand for? Well, it was S for the
project code and M for Maserati. And the reason they picked
Maserati was simple. Citroen had bought Maserati.
So to this week. The world’s first half-tracked vehicle to
traverse the snow was built for the Tsar of Russia. When was
this? Clue: Kegresse.
For the Automania FREE beer this week, be the first correct
answer to email [email protected]
Good luck!
