Rocky Mountain Institute : Library

T00-26, Hypercars^®: Uncompromised Vehicles, Disruptive Technologies, and the Rapid Transition to Hydrogen (PDF-1.0 MB): This PowerPoint presentation to a senior executive conference on the future of the global car industry summarized the nature, status, and prospects of Hypercar^® development, including how they accelerate the shift to a hydrogen economy (16 June 2000).

T99-10, Uncommon Knowledge: Automotive Platform Sharing's Potential Impact on Advanced Technologies (PDF-278k): Automakers are embracing with vigor the strategy of dedicated platform sharing, which portions common design, engineering, and production efforts over a number of outwardly distinct models. Platform sharing mixes lower-volume "differentiating" technologies to increase market attractiveness with higher-volume "standardized" technologies to lower overall costs. "Disruptive" advanced technologies like polymer composites and the Hypercar^® concept, ill-suited to conventional, mass-production automaking, may fit very well within the new rules of platforms (1999).

T99-07, A Strategy for the Hydrogen Transition (PDF-144k): This paper illustrates how the careful coordination of fuel-cell commercialization in stationary and transportation applications, the use of small-scale, distributed fueling appliances, and Hypercar^® vehicles combine to offer leapfrog opportunities for climate protection and the transition to hydrogen (1999).

T98-0, Advanced Composites: The Car Is at the Crossroads (PDF-152k): Strategic recommendations for composite firms seeking to join the lightweight automotive material competition (1998).

T97-09, Speeding the Transition: Designing a Fuel-Cell Hypercar^® (PDF-2.6MB): Hypercars' low-drag, low-load platform could accelerate the adoption of fuel cells in vehicles, argues this paper presented to the National Hydrogen Association in March 1997. It models three fuel-cell Hypercar^® scenarios based on varying load-leveling capacities, and plots cumulative energy used in representative driving cycles. It also discusses onboard storage and the broader implications of fuel-cell Hypercars^® for electricity infrastructure (1997).

T97-05, Hypercars^®: A Market-Oriented Approach to Meeting Lifecycle Goals (PDF-94k): Growing social and regulatory pressures are compelling carmakers to pay greater attention to their products' total lifecycle environmental impacts-from materials extraction to use to disposal. This paper for the Society of Automotive Engineers details how Hypercar^® vehicles' whole-system design can minimize lifecycle impacts (1997).

T97-0, Hypercar^® Vehicles: Frequently Asked Questions (PDF-36k): This paper answers the basic questions about Hypercar^® vehicles, discussing fuels, fuel economy, advanced composites, safety, cost, and recyclability (1997).

T96-14, Ultralight-Hybrid Vehicle Design: Implications for the Recycling Industry (PDF-52k): Hypercar^® vehicles afford an opportunity to build recyclability into cars from the ground up, argues this paper written for the 1996 conference of the Society of Plastics Engineers' Recycling Division. Discusses the materials and design approach used in Hypercar^® vehicles, the technologies necessary to recycle Hypercar^® vehicles, potential markets for recycled Hypercar^® materials, and durability (1996).

T96-10, Ultralight Hybrid Vehicles: Principles and Design (PDF-106k): Discussion of the main design issues for Hypercar^® vehicles, with modeling and some analysis of an illustrative vehicle, prepared for the 1996 International Electric Vehicle Symposium (1996).

T96-09, Hypercars: The Next Industrial Revolution (PDF-70k): Overview from a paper presented at the 1996 IEV Symposium in Osaka, Japan (1996).

T95-3, Ultralight-Hybrid Vehicle Design: Overcoming the Barriers to Using Advanced Composites in the Automotive Industry (PDF-59k): This paper summarizes the ultralight, hybrid-electric Hypercar® concept, emphasizing why mass-optimization is crucial to its design; summarizes potentially applicable high-volume advanced composites technologies; recounts two recent studies of the main barriers to structural composites use in the BIW; explains why a whole-system application — not the conventionally prescribed component-based incrementalism — is probably the best way to conquer these barriers and create new opportunities; and explores in greater detail a key barrier of advanced composites, their manufacturing cost, to show how a whole-system application can circumvent it (1995).

T95-35, Costing the Ultralight in Volume Production: Are Composite Bodies-in-White Affordable? (PDF-160k): Using an industry-standard technical cost model, this paper for the International Body Engineering Conference explores the manufacturing and lifecycle costs of advanced composite autobodies. It examines the main costs of producing, using, and recycling composites for high-volume applications, and shows how ultralight carbon-fiber bodies can out compete steel (December 1996 Revision).

T95-33, Building the E-motive Industry—Moving Toward a New System (PDF-24k): RMI is working with entities eager to bring Hypercar^® vehicles, to market — several are automakers. The rest are non-automakers with impressive capabilities that they wish to apply to becoming automakers — in a new and different sense, obviously. This transcript is from an interview held on 24 March 1994 (1995).

T95-27, Vehicle Design Strategies to Meet and Exceed PNGV Goals (PDF-188k): This paper examines hybrid configurations, energy-storage mass, and safety. The intent is to present an approach to vehicle design that can yield marketable, production-worthy, high-performance automobiles while meeting or exceeding goals set by the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles (PNGV) (August 1995).

T94-29, Reinventing the Wheels (PDF-36k): The landmark article on the Hypercar^® strategy that first appeared in Atlantic Monthly (January 1995). New ways to design, manufacture, and sell cars can make them ten times more fuel-efficient, and at the same time safer, sportier, more beautiful and comfortable, far more durable, and probably cheaper. Here comes the biggest change in industrial structure since the microchip (1994).

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