This is the Axon city car. It’s a British project in its early stages of development, whose creators claim they’ll produce a 100mpg (70g/km CO2) urban vehicle by 2011. The orange prototype body shell has been developed by Axon with Warwick University and has been aerodynamically optimised in the wind tunnel to make it as slippery as possible. It’s made of a strong, moulded carbonfibre composite and has plastic door panels, so it weighs only 400kg. The Axon doesn’t use any trick future technology, just a 500cc, twin-cylinder engine that’s been developed by engineering consultancy Ptech Engines. Originally, the twin-cylinder was developed for a hybrid version of the Smart car before Mercedes took over the project. Based at Snetterton, Ptech says the engine will meet Euro 5 emissions standards and promises it will be hassle-free to maintain. The unit only produces around 40bhp, but Axon is convinced this will be enough to keep pace with city traffic while delivering 100mpg and tax-free emissions. The project’s part-funded with government money, but it’ll be at least two years before the Axon reaches any kind of production reality. The next step is to homologate the Axon to reach European crash standards, which its makers are convinced it can achieve.
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I don't know how the men will
I don't know how the men will react to this car but I'm pretty sure the ladies will appreciate it. I definitely like it and wouldn't mind getting one once it hist the market, do you have any idea how much it will cost? As long as they are durable and I won't have to get it to an auto repair shop too often, I'll be happy to drive it.
Re: The 100mpg Axon city car
Sorry guys, this looks like another load of junk funded by the UK government. It will never be built and if it is no-one will buy it. Old-tech engine rejected by Mercedes is not a good start. Being able to keep up with city centre traffic means it will do about 25 mph by my reckoning. As with obscenities like the G-wizz all normal safety considerations will be over-looked 'cos its GREEN. It will cost the earth - well compared to buying something sane like a 4 year old Astra diesel - and the company that sells it will be unable to supply parts and back up on any sort of normal service. It will just sell - assuming I'm wrong and the thing is actually built - to Guardianistas and weirdos who will do anything to polish their self-regarding eco credentials. Don't let's forget that the reverred Prius is one of the least green cars on the planet. Sorry, but if the great Gordon Murray can't get a new eco-car off the ground (last heard of 07/07) I don't think Warwick University and two companies no-one has ever heard of are going to succeed. Diesel technology with stop start is the way to go via major producers.
Re: The 100mpg Axon city car
It's not really heavier cars as such that are safer, more larger cars. Making the car heavier means you've got more energy to dissipate in a crash, making it larger (longer) allows the energy to be dissipated over a longer period of time. The main safety 'benefit' of heavier cars is that they cause more damage to what they hit and thus come to a stop more slowly, be that another lighter car or a deformable object. Fine if you're in the heavier car, less good if you're not. I would be very interested to know how occupant safety varies with size and weight for otherwise similar cars in a two-vehicle crash. I suspect that a head-on crash between two heavy vehicles would greatly reduce the safety advantage they have relative to average vehicles.
I'm not sure how good an example F1 cars are - their safety comes from having a very strong tub and impact-absorbing barriers around the circuits. The drivers are also very tightly constrained compared to road cars. Two F1 cars having a head-on crash at 30mph could be more violent than two road cars having the same crash as there's not a lot of energy absorbing material between the drivers. F1 cars don't tend to run head on into other cars or brick walls though...
Making the passenger cell out of high strength, light weight (and very expensive) materials would help, as reducing the car's overall mass means there's less energy to be dissipated in the crumple zones. In turn this should mean the crumple zones themselves can be lighter (but not shorter as there's no getting away from the need to minimise deceleration rates), further reducing the mass of the car. Alternatively they could be engineered to withstand a greater impact, but would this come at the cost of harsher low-speed impacts?
Anyhow, I think it should be possible to make a light car that can withstand single-vehicle or lab-test crashes as well as a larger car, the problem comes in the real world when you start crashing into heavier vehicles.
Re: aerodynamics - if the car is intended for city use, then aerodynamics aren't especially significant. That doesn't mean aerodynamics aren't important for a vehicle with 40bhp - there are bonneville streamliners that do 180mph with that amount of power, aero drag is still the limiting factor. What I don't know is how much engineering effort is involved in getting a car design down to a Cd of ~0.3 in the first place. My gut feeling says it might be harder than you expect, in which case the wind tunnel testing would be justified. Anyone? For any car, shaving 0.01 off a Cd of around 0.3 is going to make a fairly negligible difference, there are greater gains to be had by reducing the overall Cd.A figure by reducing the frontal area.
FWIW the reynolds numbers of car and person sized objects are such that aero drag increases with the square of speed for all 'interesting' speeds, but at low speeds constant friction and rolling resistance losses are more significant.