🚀 go-pugleaf

On Aug 14, 6:55 pm, "Trevor" <tre...@home.net> wrote:
> "BruceS" <bruce...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:3c32da26-a43d-4f0d-a306-70c2e3699c7f@c19g2000vbb.googlegroups.com...
> On Aug 14, 3:20 am, "Trevor" <tre...@home.net> wrote:> "Sylvia Else" <syl...@not.at.this.address> wrote in message
> >news:a8tm07Fup4U2@mid.individual.net...
> > > On 14/08/2012 7:55 AM, Graham Cooper wrote:
> > >> Electric Cars will need a 5 KILOWATT Engine
> > >> (2 AIRCONDITIONERS WORTH OF POWER)
> > >> NOT a 100KW ENGINE (50 AIRCONDITIONERS POWER)
> > > The power requirements of a vehicle are not just a function of its mass.
> > > At higher speeds, wind resistance is a major factor,
> }This is particularly noticeable with bikes.  My fuel use on my bikes
>
> doesn't really change much from having a passenger, despite the
> substantial proportional increase in mass.  My smaller motorcycle}weighs something like 200Kg, so even a 60Kg passenger affects the
>
> acceleration.  OTOH, speed makes a huge difference.  Long stretches of
> freeway speeds, which generally *help* cars vs. stop & go driving,
>
> }reduce the bike efficiency.
>
> For small capacity, high drag bikes. The opposite is true for high capacity
> low drag motorcycles.
>
> > Pretty easy to make cars fairly aerodynamic at legal speeds these days.
> }Of course that adds cost though, and may add mass as well.
>
> Not at all, cars have steadily reduced their wind drag for decades, the
> trade off is more often things like storage space, access and practicality.
>
> }Again with
>
> the bikes, you'll notice that models really oriented at high speed use
>
> }have a lot of fairings to clean them up aerodynamically.
>
> Right, a "naked" bike is high drag, but there are very few "naked" cars on
> the road. And ones like the Ariel Atom aren't that bad because of their very
> low frontal area.
>
> > >and won't be changed by making the vehicle lighter.
>
> > You have to make the passengers lighter as well! That's the hard part
> > these
> > days :-(
> }No!  Just don't *have* passengers!
>
> No need for a car then!
>
> }As long as we're using super-
>
> lightweight vehicles powered by solar cells, why not make them
> completely remote-controlled, or better yet robotic, as well?  We}could all settle back like Jabba, having everything brought to us
>
> while we lose the need for movement.  Oh, and we could instruct our
> electric robot cars to send angry emails to everyone while following
>
> }some random car we've decided we should own.
>
> One car with multiple passengers is almost always more efficient overall
> than one car per person, whether robotically controlled or not. Even staying
> home would still require delivery vehicles if you wish to eat.

There's something odd going on with your attribution, that makes it a
bit hard to see who wrote what.

You're right about the differences among bikes of different drag &
capacity.  That's what I was talking about with the bit about bikes
intended for freeways being fully faired.  That adds weight and (!)
cost, but does greatly improve the drag.  My bigger bike, a "touring
cruiser", has terrible drag.  A real touring bike, like a Goldwing,
should handle those long miles of high speed much better.  Then again,
its mileage isn't that great to start with.  With cars, yes we've made
decent progress over the years, but to get really low drag requires
more expense, both to come up with shapes that are both practical and
efficient, and to implement them.

The last bit was really just a joke.  Graham has some fantastic ideas,
by which I mean they are largely fantasy.

I've noticed that in the U.S., the overwhelming majority of vehicles
seem to have one or two people in them.  Even in HOV lanes, you'll see
monster SUVs with two, while it's illegal for a far smaller, more
efficient car with just a driver to use that lane.  We also have buses
here (Denver) that typically have very few passengers, too often only
one.  I don't know if the situation in Australia is anything like that
though.  If you could find a way to convince people here to combine
more passengers into fewer cars, you'd cut way down on total fuel use,
as well as improve traffic speed.  It just doesn't seem to happen.