Transforming Automaking: The Winning Move in the Oil Endgame
By Amory B. Lovins
The average car delivers only 12-13% of its fuel energy to the wheels;
6% accelerates the car, while less than 1% moves the driver. Weight
uses three-fourths of the car’s fuel, and saving one unit
of tractive load saves another seven units of energy lost en route
to the wheels, so the key to efficiency is to halve cars’
weight.
As Henry Ford said, “you do not need weight for strength.”
If you did, your bicycle helmet would be made of steel, not carbon,
and Formula One couldn’t exist. Carbon-reinforced thermoplastics
can absorb 6-12 times as much crash energy per pound as steel, decoupling
size from weight. Light-but-strong materials can make a car big,
which is protective, but not heavy, which is hostile, thus saving
both oil and lives.
Aerospace composites make carbon fiber seem too costly. Yet in 1994-96,
the Lockheed-Martin Skunk Works designed a 95%-carbon fighter airframe
one-third lighter but two-thirds cheaper than its 72%-metal predecessor.
Now Honda and Toyota are developing carbon-fiber airplane manufacturing,
doubtless to inform their automaking. BMW is rapidly commercializing
automated carbon-fiber automaking. Elsewhere, Fiberforge’s
process automatically places carbon and other fibers in the desired
positions, layers, and orientations, then thermoforms that “tailored
blank” to 3-D net shape. This process promises 80% of hand-lay-up
aerospace composites’ performance at 20% of their cost (www.autofieldguide.com/articles/080407.html).
In 2000, a Hypercar, Inc. team and two Tier Ones (component suppliers)
virtually-designed a production-costed and manufacturable ultralight
midsized crossover vehicle. This illustrative Revolution 1,889-lb
fuel-cell-hybrid concept SUV design could carry five adults in comfort
and up to 69 cubic feet of cargo, accelerate 0-60 mph in 8.2 seconds,
and go 330 miles on 3.4 kg of hydrogen at 114 mpg-equivalent (EPA
adjusted). In simulated crashes, it could hit a wall at 35 mph with
no damage to the passenger cell, or hit a steel SUV twice its weight,
each going 30 mph, without serious injury.
A peppier gasoline-hybrid AWD variant would get 66 mpg, be otherwise
comparable to Audi’s 2004 Allroad 2.7T, and cost less than
$2,500 more at 50,000/year production – a three-year payback
from fuel savings, due 68% to the halved curb weight. An analogous
midsize sedan would average 92 mpg.
Indeed, ultralighting can nearly double gasoline hybrids’
efficiency at no greater cost, thanks to the threefold smaller powertrain
and simpler manufacturing: Revolution’s body has 14 parts,
is self-fixturing and detoleranced in two dimensions, and could
be assembled with no hoists, no body shop, no paint shop, and a
capital intensity at least two-fifths below best current practice.
If composites manufacturing hit a snag, light-steel platforms like
Porsche Engineering’s 2002 ULSAB-AVC would be a realistic
backstop and worthy competitor, using more complex manufacturing
but cheaper materials.
My RMI team’s new Pentagon-cosponsored study, Winning the
Oil Endgame (www.oilendgame.com),
documents all these advances. It shows how to save half of U.S.
oil use at $12/bbl, and then replace the rest with biofuels and
saved natural gas. That would eliminate U.S. oil use by 2050 –
without needing federal legislation, CAFE, or gasoline taxes, but
led by business for profit.
Will America import efficient cars to displace foreign oil, or make
efficient cars and import neither oil nor cars? On that question
hangs Detroit’s future. The competitor isn’t just Toyota;
soon it could be Wal-Mart badging Shanghai Automotive.
Physicist Amory B. Lovins co-founded and leads Rocky
Mountain Institute (www.rmi.org)
– an independent, entrepreneurial, nonprofit applied research
center that fosters the efficient and restorative use of resources
to make the world secure, just, prosperous, and life-sustaining.
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