oilychariot
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As a bit of Christmas reading for those of you looking for a rest from the turkey and presents: the future for MB and the rest of us! Much of what goes below was a reply to JohnMC's post in the 'Benz free zone' regarding punitive taxation for high-emission cars in France.
As Hawk20 suggested, this could transfer to a general page since it will have a huge effect on the future of MB. Dieselman suggests that inefficient spark-ignition engines, in fact all engines will have to become increasingly efficient through further development and that the obvious benefits of electric motors will become increasingly relevant. Hawk20 points out the problem of supplying power to electric motors - and should I add, generating, transmitting and storing the power; is this anything other than transferring pollution away from the city and to the country? He also thinks that current engines are well up their developmental potential curve, I tend to agree. After all, there is only so much energy can be released from a certain volume of air/fuel, no matter how many chips and blowers are bolted on.
The relatively recent addition of electronics to control combustion has taken efficiency to higher levels, just as the addition of catalysts saps efficiency in an attempt to disguise pollution. Further integration of petrol and diesel technologies will take place to further complicate and shelf-life engines. I think that cars taken as a whole are inefficient - not their engines, although the 25% efficiency of the petrol engines as quoted by dieselman does highlight the exhaust energy waste of any internal combustion engine.
Since it is small cars on short journeys which pollute most, perhaps the single most effective solution here is the application of an overnight heat-trap so that there is no cold start the next day. I think Saab introduced something along these lines a decade or more ago. Using the heat from exhaust gases is also surely a must? The exhaust-driven turbine is the only way we use waste heat energy at the moment (apart from some veg-oilers using the coolant to preheat their dripping or rape oil) - anyone have other ideas, apart from cooking your goose or turkey on the manifold?! http://forums.mercedesclub.org.uk/images/icons/icon10.gif
There are increasing numbers of people who take the approach - 'I'll be dead when the energy wars really begin in earnest' and this is probably a symptom of our less than elegant decay and the emergence of a New World Order in which we have less relevance than Switzerland. One of the reasons we led the World for so long from so tiny an island with such a small army is that meticulous forward planning meant we always had the edge over our European neighbours. They are welcome to their attitude but even if successive governments do lead us into oblivion it is good to have debate over how enlightened and progressive societies are thinking. Perhaps it really will go down to the wire - either war or severe economic depression before society at large sits up and takes note?
Anyway, on with the thread!
I think 'powerplants' are inefficient and of low performance because of the excess size and weight of the bodies they have to lug around. This should be the easiest solution in the medium term - the idea of a safe car being one which feels like a fortress is overdue for revision. Any half-decent piece of engineering is as light as possible, whether a bridge or aircraft. Engine related parts are already fault-prone and unecessarily difficult to repair through the excessive application and complication of electronic componentry - further development is unlikely to simplify this problem.
Items like electric seat motors and other excessively heavy and unnecessary bits and pieces should logically be the first to disappear. The Japanese, VW-Audi group and Ford are likely to remain in the medium term - far beyond that, technology will have changed to the extent that many manufacturers of today will have disappeared while others which have yet to emerge will be giants.
The best chance of survival is by keeping engineers abreast with technology but more importantly keeping their minds open to the impossible - so that when it happens, they can have a head start. The Japanese are excellent at this. The link between designer/engineer and production is fast disappearing to the extent that several companies exist simply to build cars to a company's design.
Cars such as the original Mini (for the urbanised 'West') and the 2CV (for where strength, dual-purpose practicality and longevity matter most) should be studied long and hard by the engineers - there is a lot to be learnt from these clever designs. After all, the rules of physics and mechanics never change, once a good design is established (eg the 1934 Citroen 'Traction Avant') only refinement, reliability and profit are left to be enhanced. Except for the cross-wise installation of the power unit a Ford Focus is exactly the same machine as the '34 French car - monocoque shell, strong suspension location, a wheel at each corner, front-drive, rising-rate springing, fine stability and handling and as streamlined as the general public of the time accept.
Frequently designers become lazy until there is a big shake-up of the rules - as well-illustrated by the vehicles which appeared after the war: Land-Rover, Mini, Morris Minor, Citroen 2CV, DS all set new targets for others to struggle to match in design terms, if not production quality. They were everything 95% of cars hadn't been prewar - cheap, tough, reliable, safe-handling and easy to drive. The 124 Mercedes is probably one of the late 20th century's classic pieces of design - aerodynamic, safe-handling, affordable, roomy and simple. And therefore long-lasting - the ultimate car for the 'environment'.
Reality is stranger than fiction: why is there no serious UK policy for self-reliance on energy? - instead of Russian gas, French electricity and resorting to more, expensive (not built) nukes backing up windmills (impossible as nuclear power stations have to run flat out all the time, they cannot be switched on when the wind drops - this sums up the awfully naive government of the day. If they are reading http://forums.mercedesclub.org.uk/images/icons/icon11.gif - hint: we are surrounded by the fastest flowing and highest tides in the world - which continue as long as the Moon rotates the Earth http://forums.mercedesclub.org.uk/images/icons/icon3.gif.) Where are the exhaust emission tests on central heating boilers, portable generators and open fires? Where is the heavy taxation on aviation? Or should that question be reversed - why the punitive taxation on personal transport, why are the nation's drivers so apathetic in resisting swingeing taxes? Motor car designers will attempt to beat the rules with inefficient hybrids for larger vehicles and continue to fix their figures to the politicians' targets, making cars even less driveable and more impossible to repair.
On the subject of electric motors, I think I read somewhere that a Japanese manufacturer (could have been Mitsubishi) already has in-hub motors ready for application in the motor car. Porsche, being an electrician, demonstrated this technology in one of his first cars.
Maybe a highly efficient piston engine or turbine could be the on-board power unit to help recharge the stored power in long-distance cars, at least until power cells and/or solar tech has evolved sufficiently? Using electric motors to drive a car through a gearbox is a bit daft given their ability to provide high torque at zero revs - hub motors displace gearboxes, clutches, driveshafts and so much else besides, and weight loss is self-perpetuating. I am amazed at how the motor car has slowly slid behind other forms of motive power in its development - even a council's lawnmower will have hydraulically-powered in-hub motors. Individula in-hub motors are individually controllable with no limit to positioning or suspension displacements - many present constraints could be wiped away at a stroke. How quaint it is that beneath the computers, head-up displays and silent logging of your speed and whereabouts in the 'modern' car, there remain reciprocating pistons, valves operated by spinning lobed shafts, synchromeshed gears engaging and disengaging, steel springs and hydraulic dampers bucking around, driveshafts and differentials linking gears and suspension together. So much of this could be seen operating in the mills of the 18th and 19th Century!
The stringent rules need to be be tough - in a proper shake-up the advance of technology dictates that some will go out of business/merge if Europe is to remain at all competitive in the world. The great danger of the EU is that it prevents the traditional home of ideas and culture from evolving in real time - the cost of protectionism is constantly being realised in the USA, but expectations are lower there than elsewhere in the world - bigger is still better, not a good philosophy for the 21st Century. Only when there is a sudden and large change in the rules (as after WW2) and the engineers are given free thought - as in Japan - will the motor car cease to be an easy way of making a living for cost accountants and a source of real pleasure once again for the consumer.
As Hawk20 suggested, this could transfer to a general page since it will have a huge effect on the future of MB. Dieselman suggests that inefficient spark-ignition engines, in fact all engines will have to become increasingly efficient through further development and that the obvious benefits of electric motors will become increasingly relevant. Hawk20 points out the problem of supplying power to electric motors - and should I add, generating, transmitting and storing the power; is this anything other than transferring pollution away from the city and to the country? He also thinks that current engines are well up their developmental potential curve, I tend to agree. After all, there is only so much energy can be released from a certain volume of air/fuel, no matter how many chips and blowers are bolted on.
The relatively recent addition of electronics to control combustion has taken efficiency to higher levels, just as the addition of catalysts saps efficiency in an attempt to disguise pollution. Further integration of petrol and diesel technologies will take place to further complicate and shelf-life engines. I think that cars taken as a whole are inefficient - not their engines, although the 25% efficiency of the petrol engines as quoted by dieselman does highlight the exhaust energy waste of any internal combustion engine.
Since it is small cars on short journeys which pollute most, perhaps the single most effective solution here is the application of an overnight heat-trap so that there is no cold start the next day. I think Saab introduced something along these lines a decade or more ago. Using the heat from exhaust gases is also surely a must? The exhaust-driven turbine is the only way we use waste heat energy at the moment (apart from some veg-oilers using the coolant to preheat their dripping or rape oil) - anyone have other ideas, apart from cooking your goose or turkey on the manifold?! http://forums.mercedesclub.org.uk/images/icons/icon10.gif
There are increasing numbers of people who take the approach - 'I'll be dead when the energy wars really begin in earnest' and this is probably a symptom of our less than elegant decay and the emergence of a New World Order in which we have less relevance than Switzerland. One of the reasons we led the World for so long from so tiny an island with such a small army is that meticulous forward planning meant we always had the edge over our European neighbours. They are welcome to their attitude but even if successive governments do lead us into oblivion it is good to have debate over how enlightened and progressive societies are thinking. Perhaps it really will go down to the wire - either war or severe economic depression before society at large sits up and takes note?
Anyway, on with the thread!
I think 'powerplants' are inefficient and of low performance because of the excess size and weight of the bodies they have to lug around. This should be the easiest solution in the medium term - the idea of a safe car being one which feels like a fortress is overdue for revision. Any half-decent piece of engineering is as light as possible, whether a bridge or aircraft. Engine related parts are already fault-prone and unecessarily difficult to repair through the excessive application and complication of electronic componentry - further development is unlikely to simplify this problem.
Items like electric seat motors and other excessively heavy and unnecessary bits and pieces should logically be the first to disappear. The Japanese, VW-Audi group and Ford are likely to remain in the medium term - far beyond that, technology will have changed to the extent that many manufacturers of today will have disappeared while others which have yet to emerge will be giants.
The best chance of survival is by keeping engineers abreast with technology but more importantly keeping their minds open to the impossible - so that when it happens, they can have a head start. The Japanese are excellent at this. The link between designer/engineer and production is fast disappearing to the extent that several companies exist simply to build cars to a company's design.
Cars such as the original Mini (for the urbanised 'West') and the 2CV (for where strength, dual-purpose practicality and longevity matter most) should be studied long and hard by the engineers - there is a lot to be learnt from these clever designs. After all, the rules of physics and mechanics never change, once a good design is established (eg the 1934 Citroen 'Traction Avant') only refinement, reliability and profit are left to be enhanced. Except for the cross-wise installation of the power unit a Ford Focus is exactly the same machine as the '34 French car - monocoque shell, strong suspension location, a wheel at each corner, front-drive, rising-rate springing, fine stability and handling and as streamlined as the general public of the time accept.
Frequently designers become lazy until there is a big shake-up of the rules - as well-illustrated by the vehicles which appeared after the war: Land-Rover, Mini, Morris Minor, Citroen 2CV, DS all set new targets for others to struggle to match in design terms, if not production quality. They were everything 95% of cars hadn't been prewar - cheap, tough, reliable, safe-handling and easy to drive. The 124 Mercedes is probably one of the late 20th century's classic pieces of design - aerodynamic, safe-handling, affordable, roomy and simple. And therefore long-lasting - the ultimate car for the 'environment'.
Reality is stranger than fiction: why is there no serious UK policy for self-reliance on energy? - instead of Russian gas, French electricity and resorting to more, expensive (not built) nukes backing up windmills (impossible as nuclear power stations have to run flat out all the time, they cannot be switched on when the wind drops - this sums up the awfully naive government of the day. If they are reading http://forums.mercedesclub.org.uk/images/icons/icon11.gif - hint: we are surrounded by the fastest flowing and highest tides in the world - which continue as long as the Moon rotates the Earth http://forums.mercedesclub.org.uk/images/icons/icon3.gif.) Where are the exhaust emission tests on central heating boilers, portable generators and open fires? Where is the heavy taxation on aviation? Or should that question be reversed - why the punitive taxation on personal transport, why are the nation's drivers so apathetic in resisting swingeing taxes? Motor car designers will attempt to beat the rules with inefficient hybrids for larger vehicles and continue to fix their figures to the politicians' targets, making cars even less driveable and more impossible to repair.
On the subject of electric motors, I think I read somewhere that a Japanese manufacturer (could have been Mitsubishi) already has in-hub motors ready for application in the motor car. Porsche, being an electrician, demonstrated this technology in one of his first cars.
Maybe a highly efficient piston engine or turbine could be the on-board power unit to help recharge the stored power in long-distance cars, at least until power cells and/or solar tech has evolved sufficiently? Using electric motors to drive a car through a gearbox is a bit daft given their ability to provide high torque at zero revs - hub motors displace gearboxes, clutches, driveshafts and so much else besides, and weight loss is self-perpetuating. I am amazed at how the motor car has slowly slid behind other forms of motive power in its development - even a council's lawnmower will have hydraulically-powered in-hub motors. Individula in-hub motors are individually controllable with no limit to positioning or suspension displacements - many present constraints could be wiped away at a stroke. How quaint it is that beneath the computers, head-up displays and silent logging of your speed and whereabouts in the 'modern' car, there remain reciprocating pistons, valves operated by spinning lobed shafts, synchromeshed gears engaging and disengaging, steel springs and hydraulic dampers bucking around, driveshafts and differentials linking gears and suspension together. So much of this could be seen operating in the mills of the 18th and 19th Century!
The stringent rules need to be be tough - in a proper shake-up the advance of technology dictates that some will go out of business/merge if Europe is to remain at all competitive in the world. The great danger of the EU is that it prevents the traditional home of ideas and culture from evolving in real time - the cost of protectionism is constantly being realised in the USA, but expectations are lower there than elsewhere in the world - bigger is still better, not a good philosophy for the 21st Century. Only when there is a sudden and large change in the rules (as after WW2) and the engineers are given free thought - as in Japan - will the motor car cease to be an easy way of making a living for cost accountants and a source of real pleasure once again for the consumer.
