timelapse exposure of traffic at night

Transportation

Hypercars: A Market-Oriented Approach to Meeting Life Cycle Environmental Goals

This paper from 1997 discusses the growing social and regulatory pressures that are compelling automakers to make cars with higher quality and lower life cycle environmental impacts. Examples include rules and incentives for clean manufacturing, low-emission vehicles, and recycling. Yet focusing on any single issue or stage of the car’s…

Ultralight Hybrid Vehicle Design: Implication for the Recycling Industry

This paper describes the engineering of the Hypercar, a car made of carbon fiber that is lightweight, efficient, and safe. The authors argue that the automobile industry is on the threshold of potentially dramatic change in its materials use and platform design. Ultralight-hybrid Hypercars, using advanced composites for the autobody,…

Ultralight Hybrid Vehicles: Principles and Design

The technical feasibility of superefficient family cars has been demonstrated. Yet it has typically compromised vehicle performance, safety, cost, manufacturability, or marketability. Industry experimentation has tended to focus on improving performance, on implementing hybrid-electric drive systems in essentially conventional vehicles, on reducing mass and drag, or on improving safety—but has…

Hypercars: The Next Industrial Revolution

Strong synergies between ultralight mass, ultralow drag, and hybrid-electric drive can produce attractive designs for superefficient cars (and many other vehicles). A realistic near-term 4–5-passenger “hypercar” can achieve average fuel economy with much room for improvement. Depending on design details, mature ultralight-hybrid hypercars could achieve 60–120 km/l using virtually any…

Advanced Ultralight Hybrids: Necessity and Practicality of a Leapfrog

This presentation by Amory Lovins illustrates the deep potential and transformative implications of a Hypercar automotive revolution. The presentation addresses issues of affordability, safety, and design of an advanced ultralight hybrid. Lovins argues that designing an elegantly frugal car requires a leapfrog approach with a newly designed platform and strategy.