Igertem a Lovins-cikket, ha megtalalom.  Hat a vegen a net-rol halasztam elo,
valahogy idevagdosom, ket reszben.  A mai resz egy abraig jut el, ami, ha
erdekli a nepet, a Rocky Mountain Institute www-jeben van benne.  Diana
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Amory Lovins:
Supercars


Synopsis



Ultralight hybrid-electric family cars could achieve <1,6 litres per 100 km
(composite) now, probably <=0,8-1,0 ultimately, with superior safety, amenity,
performance, and apparently price. Industrial implications are profound.


Abstract


Ultralight 4-passenger cars with modern hybrid-electric drives could achieve
<1,6 litres per 100 km (> 150 mi/US gal composite) with demonstrated
technologies 
such as switched reluctance motors, conventional buffer batteries, 
and compact petrol engines. Consumption <1,0, probably <=0,8, l/100
km (~240-300 mi/US gal) is probably achievable with advanced technologies
expected to be demonstrated shortly, such as monolithic solid-oxide fuel cells,

carbon-fibre flywheels, and small adiabatic diesels. Far from sacrificing other
attributes 
for efficiency, ultralight hybrids could be more safe, peppy, clean, durable,
reliable, quiet, comfortable, and beautiful than existing cars, yet be priced
about the same or less.

The key improvements required--chiefly aerodynamic drag and mass 56-57% below
present U.S.
production cars--have been demonstrated, and further ~2-3x reductions in
drag-mass product appear
feasible. Net-shape materials, chiefly polymer composites, could do this while
cutting production costs
through materials savings, hundredfold fewer parts, tenfold less assembly
labour and space, and halved
tooling costs. Epoxy dies, lay-in-the-mould colour, and other innovations
permit extremely short
product cycles, just-in-time local manufacturing with direct delivery (hence
the same retail price even if
production cost were considerably higher), and onsite maintenance. This would
fundamentally change
how cars are made and sold. It could be the biggest change in industrial
structure since the microchip.

Such "supercars" face serious cultural obstacles in the car industry and
institutional barriers in the
marketplace. Supercars' immense societal value merits policy intervention to
help speed and smooth this
challenging transition, making it less a hardship than a lucrative opportunity.
Supercars could also buy
time to implement, but cannot replace, fundamental transportation and land-use
reforms.

The Fallacy of Incrementalism

Troubled car industries now weaken many national economies, while inefficient
light vehicles and their
ever-increasing use are major causes of oil dependence, air pollution, noise,
climatic threats, and other
important social costs. These problems demand transportation and land-use
innovations, combined with
cleaner, more efficient vehicles (Johnson 1992). Yet the conventional wisdom
framing the U.S.
car-efficiency debate is that the doubling of new-car efficiency during 1973-86
virtually depleted the
"low-hanging fruit"--opportunities for fuel economy consistent with
affordability, safety, and
performance.

We shall argue that, on the contrary, the next doubling will be easier than the
first was, because it will
come from very different sources: not from incremental refinement of today's
cars but from replacing
them altogether with a different and functionally superior concept of car
design, manufacture, and sales
(Lovins 1991). We shall attempt to describe an auto-industry transformation
that seems technologically
plausible and commercially attractive in the 1990s and beyond, initially for
niche and later for general
markets, suggesting also analogues in other kinds of vehicles. The implications
of this transformation
are not all welcome, but the issue seems less whether it will happen than who
will do it first and best,
and whether it will be done thoughtfully.

New U.S.-made cars halved their fuel intensity during 1973-86, from ~17,8 to a
European-like 8,7 l/100 km; ~4% of the savings came from making the cars
smaller 
inside, ~96% from making them lighter and better (Patterson 1987).0 Although
that 
gradual decoupling of mass from size reached a temporary plateau using
conventional 
materials, many other refinements are far from saturated. Further
incremental improvements therefore yield a supply curve (Figure 1) extended 24%
from the U.S.
Department of Energy's (Difiglio et al. 1989) by adding two further measures,
idle-off and aggressive
transmission management (Ledbetter and Ross 1990). The curve shows cumulative
gains in new-car
fuel economy1, and their empirical marginal costs2, from fully deploying a
limited list3 of 17
well-quantified technologies already used in mass-produced platforms, without
changing the size, ride,
or acceleration of average U.S. 1987 cars. Most of the measures are
conventional, e.g., front-wheel
drive, four valves per cylinder, overhead cams, and five-speed overdrive
transmissions.

Figure 1. Supply curve for incremental improvements in the composite efficiency
of average new 1987
U.S. cars as implemented in the year 2000 (Ledbetter and Ross 1990), plus, as
an empirical check, the
1992 Honda Civic VX (Koomey et al. 1992)