Ultralight Car Crashworthiness

We've all heard the old saw, "The bigger they are, the harder they fall."
Well, the same is true of cars. Heavy cars have that much more inertia to
crash with. Drop a nerf ball from a 10 story and it lands undamaged; drop
that Heavy Chevy or Dodge Ram Tough and you wind up with a ball of metal.

The secret to 60 miles per gallon coupled with excellent performance we're
used to is lightness. A criticism of the all-aluminum car has been it is
1. Expensive and 2. Irrepairable after an accident.

1. Too expensive. Yes, if hand built as are all aircraft. But aluminum
can be adapted to the mass production assembly line and will cost little if
any more than a steel lead sled.

2. Collision repair. Build the car in three bolt-together sections: front
end, passenger compartment, and rear end. In a collision, replace the 1/3
damaged. If a car is hit hard enough to telegraph the damage, then it
should be written off, just as a steel car should. There are too many cars
out there that have substandard collision repair....there is only a 1/4
inch tolerance from true size on frames and this is seldom if ever achieved
in the old fashioned body shops we depend on. As for "frame straightening"
by applying hydraulic jacks to force steel back to its original shape, this
is dangerous and should be outlawed. In the future, when you buy a used
(pre-owned) car, you will be assured of not being stuck with somebody's
wreck.

 

The structure of a light aircraft is built by hand, but is still not
terribly expensive, because using assembly line techniques there is not
that much time and besides, aircraft workers are cheap. I think Cessna
is offering something like $12 an hour for new sheetmetal people.

 

That's because Textron is a bunch of cheap assholes.

 

Problem with aluminum is:

Expensive to spot weld, raw materials is more expensive, you have to use
thicker wall tube/sheets to attain same crashworthiness and
rigidity/torsional stiffness, which will make it only marginally lighter.

It corrodes.. paint line is expensive.

You can't bolt three sections together like that, you'll loose all the
torsional stiffness, and directing crash loads through these sections would
be tricky. It's not impossible, but a small light car will still end up
being expensive.


The problem is just wayyyyy too big to tackle. Yes, I'd love to have a
small car that is great on fuel, but, reality is, a Toyota Yaris
accomplishes all that for a mere... what, $10K USD?? It gets about 41mpg or
so.


You sound like you have great ideas, but bring them forward to any auto
manufacturer. They are not new ideas, they spend millions of $$$ to get it
right, and well, sometimes they do (Toyota Prius).


The Audi A8 is far from hand built.. and the chassis makes up the bulk of
the production costs. Great idea overall, but, steel is real. High
strength steel sections have completely revolutionized the auto industry,
the Yaris is only 2000 lbs!!!!!!!!!!! It's quite safe too!! The Caliber is
3100 lbs, wow... ok, it's bigger, but the Matrix is only 2750 lbs or so
(engineered to be light and safe).

 

Very dumb. It has nothing to do with size. If you made a nerf ball that
weighed as much as a car, it would behave the same was as the smaller
ball. It has to do with how objects manage energy, not size.

Audi & Jag both have aluminum cars.

Audi & Jag both do it. It's not cheap.

 

That's because the illegals have taken all the jobs at the
subcontractors in Wichita, leaving Textron as the low end employer in
Wichita. They don't dare hire illegals themselves as they are afraid of
the FAA and because they have military subcontracts, but their
suppliers damn well do.

And yes, they are cheap assholes.