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interesting video about vehicle energy.
vlad01 - June 5th, 2011 at 06:46 PM

http://player.sbs.com.au/programs#/programs_08/fullepisodes/latestepisodes/pl...

enjoy!

donn - June 6th, 2011 at 08:35 AM

now that's a link worth posting, thanks vlad :tu::)

vlad01 - June 6th, 2011 at 03:22 PM

yeah I knew people would like it.

best bit was about how Henry Ford would be spewing about the fact most cars(America mainly) are less economical than his model T :lol:

over 100 years later and we have gone backwards :no:

donn - June 6th, 2011 at 03:36 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by vlad01
yeah I knew people would like it.

best bit was about how Henry Ford would be spewing about the fact most cars(America mainly) are less economical than his model T :lol:

over 100 years later and we have gone backwards :no:



Hmmm, saw that bit but if you take the weight of the modern car along with its performance I wonder if it is less economical, if you put a "T" model engine in a modern car I reckon it would have trouble getting off the start line, so that bit I had to take with a grain of salt. :no:

vlad01 - June 6th, 2011 at 04:02 PM

I actually agree with the video. we clearly have the technology (should be lack of) to make cars weigh less and more efficient engines but car manufacture "consumers too"
are just ignoring it in the name of making money and short term satisfaction.

yep sad world we live in.

efficiency of an engine directly translates to output vs displacement.
problem being is cars are too heavy and have too large surface area. coefficient of drag (CD) has some to do with it but overall
surface area(mainly frontal area) has the biggest influence of economy as well as weight.

a bug has a a CD of 0.41 not bad at all compared to most modern cars which is 0.3 and SUV 0.45.

but.... but wait for it....... because surface area is the biggest determiner of energy required to push an object through a fluid the modern car and especially SUV would use at least 50% if not 100% more engine kinetic energy fro cruse.

CD has nothing to do with the overall size of the vehicle only the relation of the shape to volume of the object in relation to fluid resistance.

So the most efficiency in terms of actually kinetic energy consumed to move the vehicle at cruse through a fluid would most likely be a mini. :smilegrin: