Alé - Fewer Wheels, Fewer Fill-ups
by Matthew Sparkes, London, UK on 07. 6.07
The alé is a three wheeled car that according to the designers site uses a new engine system where vapor is burned, rather than liquid fuel. I'm not sure entirely how this differs from a normal combustion engine, but if the results they have been getting are correct then they are certainly doing something right.
The stable design can pull 1.7 g when cornering, even using road tyres, and can pull from 0-60mph in five seconds. This is pretty impressive performance for a drive-train that is also so frugal with fuel.
The car is being used to promote and test the engine developed by FuelVapor Technologies Inc. The company also plan to enter it into the Automotive X-Prize competition.
Brad Zimmerman, the head technician at the company, said after driving the car, “I drove it hard for 4 solid hours, throwing it into corners, accelerating and braking hard. The car’s performance is spectacular. After all that hard driving, we only went through $10 in gas.” Hardly the most objective of opinions, but I'm still excited. ::FuelVapor Technologies
See also ::Automotive X-Prize blog
More than 10 years ago some guy gave me copies of some papers for modifying engines to run on fuel vapor rather than fuel injected liquid. It seemed sort of conspiracy like, but (without being an engineer) it sounded like a solid idea. Fuel vapor creates a 'pop' explosion while fuel liquid is more like a 'slow burn'. An IC engines really run on 'pop' power. I hope it works!
I always wondered why cars use liquid fuel instead of fule vapor...I guess it cost too much to put that technology on all cars. $$$ is the what matters most when buying a car for most people. I love the front but the side and back of the "car" just don't look right to me. I see alot of changes happening in the automobile in the next 10 years....finally.
They don't even specify the number of miles per gallon in their specifications table !
What makes you think this car is fuel-efficient at all?
All of us know that it takes heat (heat of vaporization) to boil water so if we "boil" the liquid fuel into vapor before ignition, the energy needed for the heat of vaporization can instead be used to produce power.
If the fuel is in a vapor form, its molecules have energy of translation (linear or straight, rapid motion) while molecules in liquid form do not have this velocity. The rapid movement of these fuel molecules permit a more complete contact with the oxygen in the combustion chamber within the short period of ignition time as compared to liquid fuel to oxygen interaction. Remember that injected liquid molecules must first change into vapor and this does take a little time. The end result is to provide more power per unit of fuel and to give the vehicle higher mpg.
Vaporizing a liquid is bringing the particles down to the nanolevel where the molecular surface area is at a maximum. Liquid fuel particles have much less surface area as compared to volume and also have energy binding the fuel molecules together to overcome.
A simple analogy would be to compare an elephant to a mouse. A mouse must eat much more for its weight as compared to an elephant because its surface to body weight ratio is much greater than an elephant and therefore the loss of its body heat is proportionally greater. If an elephant lost as much heat to the environment as the mouse in proportion to its weight, it would have to consume thousands and not hundreds of pounds of food daily.
adrianakau2aol.com
This is complete bull.
While I would love to drive a car that looks spiffy, accelerates as fast as an Acura NSX, and get over 90 miles to the gallon, this car isn't it. How does it get the traction to make times like that with only 3 wheels on "street tires".
Current fuel injection technology is already trying to vaporize the fuel as much as possible produce more power, a cleaner burn, and better wear on the engine block. Current fuel injection works by spraying the fuel into chamber as a vapor. The chamber is pulling out and creating a vacuum to pull the fuel in and further vaporize the mix of fuel and air. I'm not sure how they would make improvements this current vaporization technology.
Also, this vehicle looks like it has no safety features at all. If I have a car that can move that fast, it has to have air bags, roll bars, and a crumple zone. Also, don't expect any of the luxuries normal cars have, like open-able windows, air conditioning, speakers, a comfortable seat.
If the car derives a value close to the numbers they are advertising, it is mostly due to the aerodynamic design, low weight, one seat design, efficient honda engine, low suspension, and the reduced traction of three wheels.
Running a 20:1 fuel/air mix might get you better mileage, and it might even win you the X-prize, but it will never make for a production vehicle that will carry a 60k mile or greater warranty.
Otherwise EVERY auto maker would reprogram the ECM to run 20:1 with a simple tweak of the software.
Very bad things happen in the long run if you run too lean!
This is complete bull.
While I would love to drive a car that looks spiffy, accelerates as fast as an Acura NSX, and get over 90 miles to the gallon, this car isn't it. How does it get the traction to make times like that with only 3 wheels on "street tires".
Current fuel injection technology is already trying to vaporize the fuel as much as possible produce more power, a cleaner burn, and better wear on the engine block. Current fuel injection works by spraying the fuel into chamber as a vapor. The chamber is pulling out and creating a vacuum to pull the fuel in and further vaporize the mix of fuel and air. I'm not sure how they would make improvements this current vaporization technology.
Also, this vehicle looks like it has no safety features at all. If I have a car that can move that fast, it has to have air bags, roll bars, and a crumple zone. Also, don't expect any of the luxuries normal cars have, like open-able windows, air conditioning, speakers, a comfortable seat.
If the car derives a value close to the numbers they are advertising, it is mostly due to the aerodynamic design, low weight, one seat design, efficient honda engine, low suspension, and the reduced traction of three wheels.
it certianly is cool looking. i bet the price tag is really pretty too
Space,
It took some poking around on their website, but they claim 92mpg. Looks like they have a a little way to go to get above 100mpg for the Automotive-X prize.
I hope they make it, it's certainly a slick looking design regardless of the mileage.
I just want a car that is fuel efficient and looks good this car looks great from the front but the back and sides looks like they ran out of money to finish the design.
It must me quite difficult to design a car, because so many of these independents are so ugly. But part of me refuses to believe that, who here didn't draw pictures of cars when they were kids?
Look at all of the art colleges and design schools, there must be at least one talented artist that car design a car.
It looks like a Pontiac in front and a Citroen in the back. Citroen was an excelent car, but ugly. Pontiac is normally good looking (Notable exception the Aztec) and a reasonably good car. Is it a two seater? I want to sit beside my wife, not in front of her. Heat,AC? I would sacrifice the rocket launcher take offs for a little usability. The styling is on the right trac but fix the back.
drop the older honda CRX HF in any low weight platform and you'll get a winner.
nothing new there.
see the VW Lupo 3L for real life car that get 100MPG (3L/100km) with 4 seats....
and that was 8 years ago.
Ref: "How does it get the traction to make times like that with only 3 wheels on "street tires"."
Easy, a motorbike does with only one driven wheel. With the correct weight distribution there can be enough traction.