Blog 13
Future Roadster
Popular Science Magazine often releases articles that have to do with the ever changing market of future cars. Within the original article, there author has picked out key points to highlight in his article and has briefly stated a few comments. The author’s comments are correct, but I believe them to be a bit shallow, so I would like to bring forth some otherwise unnoted information.
The first topic has to do with the “Head’s-Up Display.” These displays project images, onto the inside of the windshield. This type of display has many advantages. They are lighter than mechanical clusters, usually the layout limits unnecessary gauges that most drivers don’t pay attention to, and usually because they have no idea what they mean, But there are also some downfalls to them, and for me, the biggest is with driving during a bright sunny day the projected display on the windshield never seems bright enough. Sure I can still read what it’s trying to say, but it could be better, much better.
The next topic of discussion was of ceramic windows. The authors claim the windows to be strong enough to withstand impacts from bullets, but this seems to be a little over kill. This is a great concept to protect the driver from debris breaking the window and injuring the driver. But, this is a bad idea if per say the driver got into a wreck, but couldn’t get any doors open because the car has twisted and buckled, usually you would just break a window and crawl out… not any more.
Wheel motors were next on their list. This can be a big positive. Wheel motors do contain a rather surprisingly high amount of weight for their size, but far less weight than a conventional combustion engine. Motors also would completely eliminate gasoline and oil, except where needed for lubrication on moving parts.
Energy storage is the last topic of discussion on the authors list of importance. Currently, lithium-ion is the best of the readily available battery sources. Yes, there are brand new chemical combinations out there, but they are not ready for mass production, yet. So now we have the best batteries we can get, but what a lot of people don’t think of is how we charge the batteries. Electric cars loose the gasoline and oil, but if your charging your car from electricity produced by coal, your not helping the pollution topic at all. If you really want to be green, charge your batteries by means of solar power.
Original Article:
http://www.popsci.com/cars/article/2010-04/future-drive-electric-luxury-racer
Supporting Articles:
http://www.popsci.com/announcements/article/2010-04/may-2010-futue-car
http://www.popsci.com/cars/article/2009-09/frankfurt-motor-show-audi-e-tron-electric-concept
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exoskeleton
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