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When drivers these days approach a filling station, they feel less depressed than they did as recently as a few weeks ago. The reason is that gas prices have declined by quite a margin in recent weeks. This may or may not be connected to the financial crisis which throws a shadow on the automotive industry and makes many an engineer fear for his/her job. But much like the financial crisis will pass over the coming months, so will the low gas price turn out to be a transient phenomenon.
Engineering departments in the industry, of course, know that, and they are poring on how they can reduce the thirst of their cars. Actually, they have achieved quite impressing results; lately I have seen a statistic comparing medium-sized vehicles ten years ago against today. While horsepower, motor torque and many other performance parameters have improved, they now run on less fuel per kilometer. Even though they have (like most of their owners) gained some weight during this period.
And now they run to great lengths to find ways how they can further improve the fuel efficiency. High-tech projects are filling their lab desks; the proposals range from electrifying the ancillary units to hydrogen drives and from hybrid concepts to what they call "longitudinal axis dynamics control" which basically means that they try to keep the speed constant by means of complex and intelligent driver assistance systems — and if then it turns out to be unavoidable to apply the brakes, they try to recuperate the kinetic energy.
One thing, however, won't change, even though this is not necessarily a positive aspect. The average weight of the vehicles will stay where it is, they make clear. For two reasons: First, safety. It demands its price — the many additional devices and controllers for antilock-brakes, side-collision protection, airbags, crumple zones etc inherently increase the weight of the vehicles. The other reason is comfort, with the same implications. "What they have they never give away again," said an automotive designer recently during a congress, describing the atavistic thinking of the masses in western countries.
For this reason, we constantly drag around a metric ton and a half (and some models significantly more) of metal, plastic, etc. Inert masses that have to be accelerated with us and that are responsible for the biggest part of the fuel consumption.
No, I am not advocating returning to the bicycle. But we should not taboo prescribing a slimming diet to our vehicles. It makes no sense to constantly carry around our living room with us. Such a diet would greatly help to get the fuel consumption down. Certainly it would be more effective than electrically-powered turbochargers or all these fancy things.
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