Apply the same design techniques to more conventional designs and less expensive engines and you could seriously reinvent automobile production in America. Rather than be strangled by committees obsessed with budget and using the lowest bidder parts, a supplier wiped out by the Big 3 bankruptcy, CNC can make lighter parts through mass production and auto buyers might feel some enthusiasm rather than resent what crap they're forced to buy because that's all which is available. What if a Mazda Miata were made of carbon fiber? That would halve the weight, and suddenly the original inline 4 engine would be able to make it quicker accelerating, which is what MOST people mean when they describe a fast car, not merely top speed. What if that engine had a small turbo like so many have now? A 1.6L turbo, stick shift on a car that weighs around 1200 pounds? That would be pretty interesting on twisty roads by the seaside or in the mountains.
What if the Ford Fiesta replaced its steel body with carbon fiber like the above RS-01? That drops the weight by half, and the existing turbo engine is already quick. What happens when the power to weight ratio doubles because the weight halves? How much wild fun would that be? The obvious answer to car sales doldrums is wide use of carbon fiber. This improves CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) and drastically improves acceleration so even a small efficient engine can get you up to freeway speed in 4-8 seconds rather than being run down by the truck in the slow lane. Modern turbo diesel engines have a wider torque band and are nearly as quiet as gasoline. Ford has imported its turbo diesel ecoboost 3 cylinder 1.0 L engine block for production in the USA. At this point I think they're being blocked by corruption in the Senate (small surprise) but that's the sort of thing which changes every couple years. Perhaps the new senate will clear the way. When the really corrupt ones retire or implode into senility obstacles get removed and small turbo diesels can get into things like a Fiat 500 built in America, from Carbon fiber instead of Indian Steel at the TATA plant. Besides, the world is about to lose the Red Sea and Suez Canal as a shipping route, thanks to Yemen converting to Al Qaeda. This is a big deal to Europe, and makes delivery of Indian products and Chinese products twice as expensive. American products become relatively cheaper, provided we can produce what they want. We're about 5 days to Europe by sea. China is now around 20. Think of all those manufacturing contracts... And China is unlikely to smash Al Qaeda in Yemen because they have other concerns. The USA has everything to gain by pulling out of Yemen entirely and letting the Red Sea become pirates and anti-ship missiles and the Middle East race to build nuclear weapons in every worthless desert. It is ironic that I agree with the President on pulling out the region. We gain economically by doing so. And we also stop spending money trying to civilize arabs by force. That hasn't worked so far, not in 2500 years. If the oil in Saudi has to go through its southern loading port, that's fine. If Suez gets attacked by radicals in Egypt, that's fine too. The returned high price of oil helps fracking operators, since oil services company Schlumberger laid off 9,000 oil workers due to the price dropping too low to profit. The price comes back, so do the workers. And so does the oil production, putting the USA as the top oil exporter, and justifying the Keystone XL pipeline. Exporting oil paid for a lot of civil engineering products, which made large areas of America inhabitable and catapaulted our rough frontier nation into first world status. We need to get back on top of this again, and the Keystone XL is important. Yes, we'd be shipping oil overseas, but we'd be shipping it to Europe, who can pay well for it, and it fixes our trade imbalance.
I really think every auto engineer should look hard at these videos and think about what Renault did and ask themselves if they like cars enough to investigate carbon fiber as a regular construction material. Building out of steel had its place, last century. Today we need lightness. Cars are as cheap and crappy as they can get, and steel and plastic car are coming from China and India now. The crappy cast plastic dashboards in American cars get slammed by Top Gear because they are crappy plastic. We have forests. We can put wood there. We can finish cars properly so the Europeans don't have such an easy target for snobbery. Even Jeremy Clarkson has found American cars he likes. Richard Hammond is a long-time fan of American muscle cars. James May likes the little ones he can drive barely in control with thin tires and throttle floored. Surely we can make something more fun than a Panda. Clarkson was very positive about the Fiesta and the Focus. They are proper hot-hatchbacks. With carbon fiber and the gearbox and suspension tuned to the weight, and the half-shaft to mechanically correct the torque steer, with independent rear rather than torsion bar... the Fiesta could get better. Much better. And it was already car of the year in 2013 despite its flaws and plastic dashboard that rattles. Surely if Renault can build something amazing, so can we?
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