VW new Hyrbid-Diesel

[Mega]

I saw a number of people here have discussed Diesel-Hyrbrid's i though i post this:-
http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/ne...w-launch-95mpg
Mike

[shiny!]

Re: VW new Hyrbid-Diesel

Wow! I wonder what acceleration is like and what the top speed is? Will it come with an automatic transmission?

[shiny!]

Re: VW new Hyrbid-Diesel

Reading up on the Up, it's going to be a 2-seater. The article you linked to said:

When the XL1 is being powered purely by this hybrid diesel engine, it returns 141mpg on the EU test cycle. However, the Up will be at least 300kg heavier than the carbonfibre-bodied XL1 and will have more aerodynamic drag, due to its bigger cabin and much greater frontal area, which means fuel economy will be reduced by about a third when compared with the concept.

This insistence of auto makers to keep using the 4-wheel-box, side-by-side seating design is stupid. Tandem seating- one behind the other- reduces wind resistance and increases MPG. If they're building a two-seater, why not make it tandem seating so they can get closer to that 141 MPG?

[dcarrigg]

Re: VW new Hyrbid-Diesel

Reading up on the Up, it's going to be a 2-seater. The article you linked to said:



This insistence of auto makers to keep using the 4-wheel-box, side-by-side seating design is stupid. Tandem seating- one behind the other- reduces wind resistance and increases MPG. If they're building a two-seater, why not make it tandem seating so they can get closer to that 141 MPG?

The real question I'm wondering about is the price point. Diesels are usually a bit more expensive than gasoline cars. Ditto with hybrids. Adding the hybrid system will gain you more efficiency/dollar with a less-efficient gasoline system than with a more efficient diesel system.

If they manage to pull this off and keep the price around $20k, they could be doing very well in the subcompact market.

If they manage to stuff this sort of tech into a Jetta and Passat and sell it stateside, I think they might make a killing. Even a Passat that got 60mpg for $30k would be groundbreaking if it could be pulled off.

Imagine Boston to Jacksonville or Seattle to Los Angeles on a tank of gas with a comfortable family of 4...

[shiny!]

Re: VW new Hyrbid-Diesel

The real question I'm wondering about is the price point. Diesels are usually a bit more expensive than gasoline cars. Ditto with hybrids. Adding the hybrid system will gain you more efficiency/dollar with a less-efficient gasoline system than with a more efficient diesel system.

If they manage to pull this off and keep the price around $20k, they could be doing very well in the subcompact market.

If they manage to stuff this sort of tech into a Jetta and Passat and sell it stateside, I think they might make a killing. Even a Passat that got 60mpg for $30k would be groundbreaking if it could be pulled off.

Imagine Boston to Jacksonville or Seattle to Los Angeles on a tank of gas with a comfortable family of 4...

From your lips to Volkswagon's ears.

[flintlock]

Re: VW new Hyrbid-Diesel

Doesn't VW have a hybrid Diesel Jetta already?

edit: apparently not. Its a turbo hybrid.

[GRG55]

Re: VW new Hyrbid-Diesel

Reading up on the Up, it's going to be a 2-seater. The article you linked to said:



This insistence of auto makers to keep using the 4-wheel-box, side-by-side seating design is stupid. Tandem seating- one behind the other- reduces wind resistance and increases MPG. If they're building a two-seater, why not make it tandem seating so they can get closer to that 141 MPG?

Not so. The difference in parasitic drag between a tandem and well executed side-by-side seating arrangement is virtually irrelevant, especially at the speeds that ground based vehicles are limited to...and that applies most especially to urban vehicles that generally travel at rather low speeds, and consume most of their energy accelerating from a standing start over and over and over again between stoplights.

At typical urban speeds the parasitic drag on a land vehicle is more influenced by factors such as the air cooling requirements (through the finned radiators) for engine cooling and air conditioning condensors, as well as the turbulence of the air passing under the vehicle where it has to flow around the myriad suspension, drivetrain, exhaust system and other components. Some manufacturers have been spending time in the windtunnel "smoothing out" the bottom of their cars in order to reduce the drag. Back in the 1970s I fabricated and fitted a very deep fibreglass skirt under the front bumper of my competition Datsun 240Z (a street usable copy of the skirt on Bob Sharp's SCCA winning "Z" race car) in order to direct some of the air around the car instead of under it.

One of the objectives of an efficient "real world" vehicle design is to create the most amount of usable interior volume in the smallest, lightest exterior dimension package. To that end it is very difficult to improve on the basic front-wheel-drive, "box-on-a-box" design pioneered by Sir Alec Issigonis with the 1959 Austin/Morris Mini. That basic configuration has endured not because auto makers are "stupid", but because it is the most practical arrangement for a real world car, and works better than anything else that has been tried since.

[lektrode]

Re: VW new Hyrbid-Diesel

well hey!
taint half bad to look at either (compared to some of the other little box jobs, with 'faces' only their mother could love ;)

Wow! I wonder what acceleration is like and what the top speed is? Will it come with an automatic transmission?

not clear exactly what this critter is, but sounds like a manual?? - would think to squeeze out that kind of MPG, that a stick would be req'd

The engine and electric motor will be coupled to a seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox.

and as per usual, dc has the best/most pertinent (for some of us) question:

The real question I'm wondering about is the price point. Diesels are usually a bit more expensive than gasoline cars. Ditto with hybrids. Adding the hybrid system will gain you more efficiency/dollar with a less-efficient gasoline system than with a more efficient diesel system.

If they manage to pull this off and keep the price around $20k, they could be doing very well in the subcompact market.....
....
Imagine Boston to Jacksonville or Seattle to Los Angeles on a tank of gas with a comfortable family of 4...

NOW, we're talkin!
and just imagine - NOT needing to hunt for a charging station, on a weekend trip up to the hills/country.

but... it does seem a bit nerve-inducing complicated/sensitive to the usual issues with exotica:

Based on today’s four-cylinder, 1.6-litre VW Group diesel engine, the Up’s twin-cylinder, 800cc turbodiesel is expected to develop just 47bhp, but will be ‘assisted’ by a 26bhp electric motor. The engine’s block is made from aluminium and the bores are plasma coated. It also gets a sophisticated balancer shaft set-up to smooth out the inherently unbalanced two-cylinder layout. The engine and electric motor will be coupled to a seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox.


Unlike the XL1, however, the Up blue-e-motion will not be able to travel solely on battery power. That’s because the car’s battery pack will only be large enough to power the electric motor during standing starts or for brief periods of hard acceleration. Energy will be reclaimed during braking to help recharge the battery.


The Up is also likely to be equipped with the XL1’s new ‘pulse starting’ feature, which will make the car’s stop-start mode much more seamless. In pulse starting, the electric motor spins the idle engine up to the required speed for its restart, making it virtually undetectable by the driver.

[shiny!]

Re: VW new Hyrbid-Diesel

Not so. The difference in parasitic drag between a tandem and well executed side-by-side seating arrangement is virtually irrelevant, especially at the speeds that ground based vehicles are limited to...and that applies most especially to urban vehicles that generally travel at rather low speeds, and consume most of their energy accelerating from a standing start over and over and over again between stoplights.

At typical urban speeds the parasitic drag on a land vehicle is more influenced by factors such as the air cooling requirements (through the radiators) for engine cooling and air conditioning condensors, as well as the turbulence of the air passing under the vehicle where it has to flow around the myriad suspension, drivetrain, exhaust system and other components. Some manufacturers have been spending time in the windtunnel "smoothing out" the bottom of their cars in order to reduce the drag.

The object of an efficient vehicle design is to create the most amount of usable interior volume in the smallest, lightest exterior dimension package. To that end it is very difficult to improve on the basic front-wheel-drive, box-on-box design pioneered by Sir Alec Issigonis with the 1959 Austin/Morris Mini. That basic configuration has endured not because auto makers are "stupid", but because it is the most practical arrangement for a real world car, and works better than anything else that has been tried since.

I hear what you're saying and withdraw the use of the word "stupid". When it comes to engineering and such, I am clearly the one who is stupid. Or at least ignorant.

The box design might be better for city cars. But for highway driving, isn't a sleek tandem style vehicle goind to be more aerodynamic and fuel-efficient than a square design?

[Mega]

Re: VW new Hyrbid-Diesel

Gas version..........
Mike

[GRG55]

Re: VW new Hyrbid-Diesel

I hear what you're saying and withdraw the use of the word "stupid". When it comes to engineering and such, I am clearly the one who is stupid. Or at least ignorant.

The box design might be better for city cars. But for highway driving, isn't a sleek tandem style vehicle goind to be more aerodynamic and fuel-efficient than a square design?

Yes it will. But not by anywhere near as much as you seem to believe. Vehicle designs are now developed and tweaked for aerodynamics the way airplanes used to be...in a windtunnel.

You are focusing on only one source of drag...form drag which is related to the form of an object moving through the air. The "plate area" of the object is but one factor in the overall drag equation. You are correct that the front plate area of a tandem vehicle is going to be less than the plate area of a side-by-side vehicle. But other factors including skin friction and the way in which the cross-sectional area changes along the length of the vehicle, as well as the aforementioned drag components in my last post, also play a large role at highway speeds.

Yes, an ultra-high efficiency vehicle, with tandem seating, very large diameter and super-thin tires, a driver that lies prone instead of sitting up, and a host of other innovations can be created. Here is a recent award winning example of a super efficient "car" from the Universite Laval in Quebec, Canada. But as you read this consider that a real world car generally has to be practical and somewhat multifunctional or it won't have any buyers...people use their cars to haul groceries, a child seat, luggage for the weekend, golf bags, and so forth. Where does that go in a tandem vehicle (compared to the now very streamlined versions of Alec Issogonis' box)? I suspect that a pure two passenger high efficiency tandem seat highway vehicle will have a total market size that is less than that for the Tesla Model S.



A team of students at Université Laval just won first place for the third time in the Shell Eco-marathon in Houston with their svelte hypermiling supercar, which gets an incredible fuel efficiency of 2,564.8 MPG! The annual Shell Eco-marathon challenges high school and college students to design, build and test energy efficient vehicles, and the Alerion team have proven themselves to be masters at their craft. The prototype beat out the second place winners by a whopping 766.1 miles per gallon, and the vehicle even improved upon Université Laval’s entry last year by 77 miles per gallon.

The mini cars aren’t meant for commercial consumption, as they aren’t exactly comfortable. On average, the entries accelerate to about 15 mph as they make laps around the 1km course. The idea here is not distance or speed, but total fuel efficiency. Team Université Laval won by a landslide with their Alerion vehicle.
The supermiler consumed between 9-10.31 ml of gas on average for the 10 lap run, and the win scored the team a $5,000 cash prize. Shell’s Eco-marathon also challenges students to build other cars powered by other green technologies such as solar power, plug-in electric batteries, and fuel cell/hydrogen power.
These innovative challenges and prototypes by young students set the stage for the developments of our future engineers. With any luck, these prototypes for energy-efficient vehicles will grow into realistic consumer products in the future.

[GRG55]

Re: VW new Hyrbid-Diesel

well hey!
taint half bad to look at either (compared to some of the other little box jobs, with 'faces' only their mother could love ;)






not clear exactly what this critter is, but sounds like a manual?? - would think to squeeze out that kind of MPG, that a stick would be req'd


...

Right down to the outside mirror, looks somewhat similar to the Mercedes Smart Car...which has been around for a while...


And here is where I think the hurdle is. Complexity. All this technology adds complexity, adds unique new failure modes, adds servicing/maintenance costs and doubtless adds to the initial purchase cost. If one took a really cold blooded economic view of this, I suspect the simple, and still reasonably efficient Smart Car works out to be the better solution over the full life cycle, even if it does not quite get the same fuel economy (in Canada the original Smart Cars were 3-cyl diesel powered and typically run about 60 mpg). As for the transmission in the VW, it is almost certainly an automatic. The engine/transaxle computers can maximize the efficiency of a vehicle to a degree that humans can not replicate shifting manually.

"...Based on today’s four-cylinder, 1.6-litre VW Group diesel engine, the Up’s twin-cylinder, 800cc turbodiesel is expected to develop just 47bhp, but will be ‘assisted’ by a 26bhp electric motor. The engine’s block is made from aluminium and the bores are plasma coated. It also gets a sophisticated balancer shaft set-up to smooth out the inherently unbalanced two-cylinder layout. The engine and electric motor will be coupled to a seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox.


Unlike the XL1, however, the Up blue-e-motion will not be able to travel solely on battery power. That’s because the car’s battery pack will only be large enough to power the electric motor during standing starts or for brief periods of hard acceleration. Energy will be reclaimed during braking to help recharge the battery.


The Up is also likely to be equipped with the XL1’s new ‘pulse starting’ feature, which will make the car’s stop-start mode much more seamless. In pulse starting, the electric motor spins the idle engine up to the required speed for its restart, making it virtually undetectable by the driver..."

[lektrode]

Re: VW new Hyrbid-Diesel

Gas version..........

"...a nice little rumble....and because of the size of it, ya feel like yer goin quickly all the time..."

yep - me mothers beetles made me kinda cackle whenever i drove em - esp when drivin em on the dirt roads in the woods out behind us (usually when nobody else was around to notice... ;)

[lektrode]

Re: VW new Hyrbid-Diesel

Yes it will. But not by anywhere near as much as you seem to believe. Vehicle designs are now developed and tweaked for aerodynamics the way airplanes used to be...in a windtunnel......
...
a real world car generally has to be practical and somewhat multifunctional or it won't have any buyers...people use their cars to haul groceries, a child seat, luggage for the weekend, golf bags, and so forth. Where does that go in a tandem vehicle (compared to the now very streamlined versions of Alec Issogonis' box)? I suspect that a pure two passenger high efficiency tandem seat highway vehicle will have a total market size that is less than that for the Tesla Model S.

and where would ya mount a ski rack???