Originally Posted by
peabodypride
if you take flo seriously, there is something wrong with you.
that was a joke.
the paramore chick is beat too though
as for
Originally Posted by peabodypride
"I am interested in hearing some more scientific ideas about how racers can actually achieve some moderation in performance to gas."
there are two ways of doing so:
1. lightweight cars that use lightweight materials like a miata or a lotus elise, or to an extreme cars that are all carbon fiber or not really cars like the Ariel Atom.
2. engines that don't have to use much gas, be it through
-turbocharging or forced induction
-shutting off cylinders like the new corvettes do so they essentially turn into 4cyl at speed until you put the foot down
-just plain old high tech stuff like direct injection and high compression, though that usually requires higher octane fuel which is more expensive to produce.
a turbocharged engine will use a lot more gas and get a lot of power under boost, but by driving with a light foot and low in the rev range it won't produce any boost and will be pretty economical. subarus use big engines, so they're not a good example, but the powerful ones are turbocharged so they make lots of power but will still get pretty good gas milage if you drive with small amounts of throttle at low revs.
also a combination of those things like a turbocharged civic or something nicer like the supercharged lotus exige...
technology can increase the efficiency of an engine and a vehicle... the problem is that people don't want smaller vehicles that require higher octane fuel and they don't want to give up performance... so cars have gained mass and power at a steady rate but fuel economy has basically stayed the same and actually worsened in the aggregate scope since 1988.
if people were willing to drive smaller cars slower with less safety equipment, cars could be much lighter and we'd have 60, 70, or 100mpg NONhybrid cars.
i don't think people will go for that so i want people to figure out a way to make electric plug ins that are cheaper than regular cars. and people are working on it it's just that we have to change the whole economy and infrastructure first.
sorry for the continued discussion in this auxillary thread, and thanks peabody for trying to keep stuff in one thread... but your question here was interesting and i felt like responding.
as for moving this or other threads to foo... the whole point of these threads is so people can see who has both ss/fg and cars. i know it's off topic, but moving them will ruin the only interesting thing about them, which is how people's tastes line up cross-hobby.